S.G. THAKAR SINGH "THE GOLDEN TEMPLE OF AMRITSAR" SIGNED & DATED 1954 LOWER RIGHT, WATERCOLOUR ON A

S.G. THAKAR SINGH "THE GOLDEN TEMPLE OF AMRITSAR" SIGNED & DATED 1954 LOWER RIGHT, WATERCOLOUR ON A WATERMARKED SHEET Property of A British Gentleman 102cm x 48cm Footnotes: Sardar Ganda Thakur Singh, an apprentice of the Lahore painter Mohammed Alam (1870-1940), began as a theatrical painter in Bombay and Calcutta. In 1917, at the age of eighteen, he was awarded a prize in an exhibition in Simla, and his painting After the Bath won 2nd Prize at the British Empire Exhibition in London in 1924. While he frequently painted female subjects with hints of eroticism, often conveyed through clinging drapery, he was also known for his landscapes. He was a founder member of the Punjab Fine Art Society in Calcutta, the Indian Academy of Fine Arts in Amritsar, and the Thakar Singh School of Arts. In 1953 he was nominated as a member of the Punjab Legislative Council. The Russian and Hungarian governments invited him to exhibit his work in Moscow, Leningrad and Budapest in 1959 (he had travelled extensively in the Soviet Union). He died in 1976. For a brief survey of his life and work, see M. Hasan, Painting in the Punjab Plains, Lahore 1998, p. 165.