This rare and powerful painting of a Maratha Chief is a particularly fine and sophisticated example of British colonial portraiture at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The origin of this gentleman is identifiable due to his flamboyant gold threaded red and white turban, worn in an extravagant manner, which corresponds with examples worn by high-ranking Maratha men of the period. Recent research has connected this portrait to the work of Robert Home (1752–1834), one of the most successful British artists to make the Indian subcontinent his home from 1790 until his death in 1834.

When this painting emerged from a private collection in 2012, comparisons were made to the portraits of James Wales (1747/8–1795), an artist who produced several likenesses of various Indian dignitaries in bust-length format from 1791 until his death four years later.¹ Although resplendent in details, Wales' portraits on this scale are generally bathed in full light and are painted in a much flatter and less dynamic manner. Most recently, a more convincing attribution to Robert Home has been made by Charles Greig. Born in Hull, Home initially trained in London with a founding member of the Royal Academy, Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), who encouraged him to undertake a tour of Italy. After Home spent several years working in Ireland, and following the unexpected death of his wife in 1783, family connections in the East India Company afforded him the opportunity to travel eastwards, arriving in Madras in January 1791.

In contrast to many of his contemporaries working in India, Home's interest in sophisticated atmospheric lighting and vibrant colour palette, as found here, is particularly noticeable in at least two examples. An early work, generally presumed to have been painted between 1781 and 1789 but possibly later, was offered at auction in 2014 (fig. 1).² This painting follows the same half-length format in a dark interior as the work in question and exhibits similar broad brushstrokes and strong, bright colouring. The other highly comparable painting, called a Portrait of a Malay Woman, is now in the Hunterian Museum (fig. 2). First recorded in the collection of Dr John Hunter (1728–1793) by 1793, it has by tradition been identified as one of Dr Hunter's patients and thus may have been produced when Home was still in England.³ The Hunterian painting features a similar level of sophistication in terms of composition and brushwork, often absent from his more formulaic portraits of Western sitters.

Home was capable of painting in several modes, from the humble and intimate, to the powerful grand manner paintings promoted at the Royal Academy. This is particularly evident in his official portraits, as seen, for example, in his portrayal of powerful Indian and Muslim rulers, such as the Ghazi-ud-din Haidor, King of Oudh (d. 1827) (fig. 3). The ample commissions he received from significant sitters afforded the painter a very comfortable life; he eventually retired to Cawnpore in 1827 and ceased painting before dying there in 1834 at the age of eighty-two. As Mildred Archer writes: Robert Home ‘had exemplified to the full the advantages that India could offer, even in the nineteenth century, to a simple but honest British portrait painter’.⁴

Home's sitters' book for the years 1795–1814, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, shows that relatively few of Home's portraits have survived into modern times.⁵ It appears that this portrait may have arrived in England at an early date, as it eventually found its way into the collection of an Oxfordshire pub by 1881 (see Provenance). The scarcity of his works suggests that many of his paintings stayed in India, where they may have fallen victim to deterioration due to the climate, or subsequent disinterest. The sitters' book lists several high-ranking Indian officials and other named sitters, alongside portraits more loosely described as 'A Native Gentleman'.6 The sitter in this painting has so far eluded identification but his dress would suggest that he was a gentleman of some consequence. Infrared imaging shows that the painter had initially conceived a slightly different arrangement of the turban, demonstrating the care taken by Home to describe his costume (fig. 4).

We are grateful to Charles Greig for suggesting the attribution to Robert Home on the basis of digital images.

¹ Wales' portrait of Bbyro Pundit, dated to 1792, is in the British Museum. Two other portraits, called Souae Madarou Peshwa and Ballajee Pundit, Nanna Furnareese, are in the collection of the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta.

² A connected drawing for this portrait is found in an album of Robert Home's drawings, now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, inv. no. V.A.M. E.1298–1943. As the cut-and-pasted drawing is inserted amongst other drawings of an Italianate nature, including portrait studies of western figures and drawings after the antique, it seems likely that it was completed in Europe rather than India.

³ Oil on canvas, 92 x 75 cm. For a full catalogue note on this painting see http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/Details/collect/46032.

⁴ M. Archer, India and British Portraiture 1770-1825, London and New York 1979, p. 332.

⁵ NPG130207 HOME (Robert) .I53 1795-1814.

⁶ This includes native gentlemen called Sanwal Daye, Meer Dilere Alli and others identified as Roy Ram Sing and Golam Ha Sing.