Ranjit Singh: Lion of the Punjab

Through exquisite artworks, glittering jewellery and weaponry discover how Ranjit Singh, one of the greatest figures in the history of India, established a hugely influential Sikh Empire at the beginning of the 19th century.

Through a stunning selection of over one hundred key objects from the Sikh Empire drawn from major private and public collections, explore how a voracious warrior-king named Ranjit Singh brought about a golden age in Punjab where trade boomed, the arts flourished and a formidable army was developed along European lines to keep any British, Afghan, Persian or Russian threat at bay.

Backed by the tactical support of a guileful mother-in-law and a holy man with a penchant for warfare, Ranjit Singh would emerge as the region’s undisputed ’maharaja’ or Great King at the beginning of the nineteenth century. His meteoric rise to power ushered in a short-lived but hugely influential Sikh Empire that would inextricably impact on the fortunes of Britain’s empire in the Indian subcontinent.

This book, published to coincide with an exhibition at the Wallace Collection, features historic artworks, jewellery and weaponry from Ranjit Singh’s court, courtiers and family members. Also highlighted are objects intimately connected with his son, Maharaja Duleep Singh - the deposed boy-king turned country squire who was a favourite of Queen Victoria and father of the prominent suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.

Richly illustrated, this catalogue also reveals the achievements of Ranjit Singh’s European and American Officials. Acknowledging Ranjit Singh’s remarkable feat of holding back the threat of a British invasion for four decades, these ’Firangis’ would nickname their esteemed Sikh sovereign ’The Napoleon of the East’.

Davinder Toor is a leading figure among a new generation of Indian & Islamic art collectors and dealers and is a familiar figure in and around the galleries and auction rooms of London and New York. He has acted as a consultant to major private collectors, auction houses and institutions such as the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum and Wallace Collection. He currently lectures on the Arts of the Royal Sikh Courts for the Victoria & Albert Museum’s prestigious ’Arts of Asia’ course. Both he and objects from the Toor collection of Sikh Art were featured on the BBC’s ’Lost Treasures of the Sikh Kingdom’ (2014) and ’The Stolen Maharajah: Britain’s Indian Royal’ (2018) documentaries.