Purtab Singh

Emily Eden, an amateur English artist, spent six years in India with her brother, where they were guests of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and were hosted by his son Sher Singh. Eden documented her Indian experiences in drawings and letters. Of Ranjit Singh’s young grandson Pratab Singh, seen here, she writes:

December 10, 1838. “Shere Sing, and that darling little Pertab [sic], came again to dinner. We had little Pertab to sketch this morning, and he was very pleasant. I asked him to fix his eyes on M. who was acting interpreter. After a time he began to fidget, and his stern old Sikh tutor reproved him for it. Pertab declared he could not help it,—he was told to fix his eyes on M., and ‘this is the way he moves his head,’—and then he mimicked M. turning from one to another and interpreting, in such a funny little way.”
—Up the Country: Letters Written to Her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India, 1866

Pratab and his father Sher Singh were killed by Sikhs of a rival faction after Ranjit Singh’s death. Pratab was twelve years old at the time.