Jivan Ram, Raja (fl. 1825-1840) - Portrait of Lieutenant Jasper Trower, of the Bengal Horse Artillery Oil on canvas Signed and dated Jeewun Ram 1827 lower left, with indistinct Sanskrit inscription underneath 35.5 x 31 cm. (14 x 12 1/4 in) Provenance: the Trower family; by descent to the present owner Comparative literature: William Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections , London, 1844, vol. ii, pp.285-7 J.P. Losty, Of Far Off Lands and People: Paintings from India 1783-1881 , Indar Pasricha Fine Art exh. cat., London, 1993) J.P. Losty, Indian Portraiture in the British Period , The Indian Portrait, 1850-1860', ed. by Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala, National Portrait Gallery, 2010 J. P. Losty, A new portrait miniature by Jivan Ram acquired , Asian and African studies blog, British Library website, 12th January 2014 A previously unrecorded and unpublished oil painting by the Indian artist Raja Jivan Ram, whose work, miniatures and oils, are rarely available on the open market. Oil paintings by Ram are almost exclusively held in public institutions, with small collections in the British Library, London, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ram is recorded in contemporary literature by William Sleeman who described him as an excellent portrait-painter, and a very honest and agreeable person, [who] was lately employed to take the Emperor's portrait ( op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 285-7). A preliminary drawing is unfortunately all that remains of the portrait described by Sleeman, but the fact that the Mughal Emperor Akbar II (1806-37) commissioned his portrait to be painted by Ram highlights the regard that the artist had with the Indian, as well as the British, elite. [The drawing is now held in the British Library s India Office and Private Papers collection, ref.: Add.Or.3167] The high regard held for Ram by his contemporaries is further shown with his appointment in the 1830s by the famous Begum Samru of Sardhana (1745-1836), whose palace was decorated with some twenty of his oil paintings ( op. cit., Losty, Jan. 2014). The European influence on Indian portrait painting, which began in the 18th century, and was continued by artists travelling and working in India such as George Chinnery (1774-1852) and Thomas Hickey (1741-1824), is clearly apparent in the portrait of Lieutenant Jasper Trower. The most comparable portrait by Ram to the present work is that of Captain Robert McMullin, which is similarly dated 1827, and may well have been executed in close succession (currently held by the British Library, ref.: F863). The sitter, Lieutenant Jasper Trower (c.1807-1845) of the Bengal Horse Artillery, later a Captain in the 7th Light Field Battery, was killed in action during the Battle of Mudki, Punjab, 1845. We have been unable to find any record for an oil painting by Raja Jivan Ram available on the open market for the last 20 years.