Umrao Singh Sher-Gil

Gil was born in 1870 to Surat Singh of Majitha, near Amritsar in then British India. He completed his early education in Amritsar and later studied at the Aitchison College in Lahore (in then undivided Punjab).{{Cite web |title=The Berardo Collection |url=https://berardocollection.com/?sid=50004&CID=100&work=1732&lang=en |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=berardocollection.com}} His younger brother Sundar Singh was an industrialist and a politician, who was later knighted by the then British Indian government. Gil was 11 when his father died in 1881.Sundaram, pp. xxiii-xli Having inherited the title as the head of the Majitha family, he traveled to England in 1896, and again in 1897 to attend the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. He also attended the Delhi Darbar in 1903 and in 1911.

Gil was a scholar of Persian and Sanskrit. He was associated with the Indian independence movement and was noted to have had links with the Gadar party, a revolutionary movement in the country, around 1915. When these links were identified his land holdings were confiscated by the then government.{{Cite web |title=sikhchic.com {{!}} The Art and Culture of the Diaspora {{!}} Umrao Singh Sher-Gil:His Misery and His Manuscript |url=https://www.sikhchic.com/article-detail.php?cat=11&id=2998 |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=www.sikhchic.com |archive-date=2020-03-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200308215641/http://sikhchic.com/article-detail.php?cat=11&id=2998 |url-status=live }}{{Cite journal |last=Jhaveri |first=Shanay |date=2016-01-01 |title=The journey in my head : cosmopolitanism and Indian male self-portraiture in 20th century India : Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, Bhupen Khakhar, Ragubhir Singh |url=https://www.academia.edu/91707140 |journal=The Royal College of Art}} He was an admirer of Russian author and activist, Leo Tolstoy, after whom he modeled his approach to humanism and even his looks. He was also a friend of the poet Muhammad Iqbal.{{Cite web |last=H |first=Sara |date=2021-06-08 |title=Amrita Shergil As Seen Through Her Father's Photographs |url=https://homegrown.co.in/homegrown-creators/artist-amrita-sher-gils-life-through-her-fathers-poignant-photographs |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=Homegrown |language=en |archive-date=2024-01-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128104239/https://homegrown.co.in/homegrown-creators/artist-amrita-sher-gils-life-through-her-fathers-poignant-photographs |url-status=live }}

Gil was one of the pioneers of photography in India, when he began photography in the early 1890s. After his marriage to the Hungarian opera singer, Marie Antoinette Gottesman-Baktay, the subjects of his photographic works were largely his family{{Spnd}}his wife and two daughters, and his own self portraits.{{Cite web |last=d'Arles |first=Les Rencontres |title=UMRAO SINGH SHER-GIL |url=http://www.rencontres-arles.com//en/expositions/view/1269/umrao-singh-sher-gil |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=www.rencontres-arles.com |archive-date=2024-01-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128104342/http://www.rencontres-arles.com//en/expositions/view/1269/umrao-singh-sher-gil |url-status=live }} He experimented with some of the then latest techniques including autochrome prints and stereoscope cameras.{{Cite book |last1=Hall |first1=Stuart |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JMxTAAAAMAAJ&q=DIFFERENT+:+A+HISTORICAL+CONTEXT+:+CONTEMPORARY+PHOTOGRAPHERS+AND+BLACK+IDENTITY |title=Different |last2=Sealy |first2=Mark |date=2001-10-22 |publisher=Phaidon Press |isbn=978-0-7148-4014-7 |language=en}} He produced hundreds of photographs of his family which were intentionally staged mise-en-scène, a format that he pioneered, with his home as the backdrop. Many of his works could be categorized as performative photography.{{Cite web |date=2019-05-06 |title=Moving Still: Performative Photography in India |url=https://montecristomagazine.com/arts/moving-still-performative-photography-in-india |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=MONTECRISTO |language=en-US |archive-date=2023-03-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230321074441/https://montecristomagazine.com/arts/moving-still-performative-photography-in-india |url-status=live }} His own self-portraits and the portraits of his family were noted for their residual sadness which further increased after the death of his daughter Amrita Sher-Gil in 1941 and the death of his wife in 1948.{{Cite web |date=2018-12-27 |title=Umrao Singh Sher-Gil's black and white self-portraits will mesmerise you |url=https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/umrao-singh-sher-gil-archives-gil-photoink-delhi-exhibition/ |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=Architectural Digest India |language=en-IN |archive-date=2023-05-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230529054559/https://www.architecturaldigest.in/content/umrao-singh-sher-gil-archives-gil-photoink-delhi-exhibition/ |url-status=live }}

Gil experimented with various toning methods and left behind over 3,000 prints and negatives, including over 80 self-portraits, chronicling life across Europe and India in the early part of the twentieth century.{{Cite journal |last=Li |first=Charles |date=2020-11-29 |title=A glimpse of Umraosingh Sher-Gil in Sanscrit 1145 |url=https://tst.hypotheses.org/1927 |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=Texts Surrounding Texts |doi=10.58079/uxz6 |language=en-US |archive-date=2023-10-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231005171258/https://tst.hypotheses.org/1927 |url-status=live }} Gil documented the family's life in Europe extensively through his photography and continued to do so after the family's return to India.{{Cite journal |last=Balaram |first=Rakhee |date=2017 |title=A Savage Garden: The Paris Photographs of Umrao Singh Sher-Gil |url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asu&AN=125908888&site=eds-live&scope=site |journal=Marg: A Magazine of the Arts |volume=69 |issue=1 |pages=48–57}}{{Cite journal |last=Singh |first=Kavita |date=2009 |title=[Umrao Singh Sher-Gil] |url= |journal=Marg |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=131–132}} These works spanned Paris, Budapest, Shimla, and Lahore, and presented a view into an aristocratic-bourgeois life across continents. His works were noted to have presented his family and himself as a "modern proto-postcolonial subject". His photographs have been posthumously exhibited in Canada, France, Spain, and UK, in addition to India.{{Cite web |last=PHOTOINK |title=PHOTOINK |url=https://www.photoink.net/artists/thesher-gilarchives |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=PHOTOINK |language=en-IN |archive-date=2023-09-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230926164110/https://www.photoink.net/artists/thesher-gilarchives |url-status=live }}

Gil was a scholar of Sanskrit, and one of his works include a manuscript on Pāṇinīyaśikṣā, a treatise of Sanskrit phonetics which is attributed to Pāṇini and Pingalacharya. The manuscript was published by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1930 in Paris, where he had then relocated his family for his daughters to study in the city.{{Cite web |title=Pāṇinīyaśikṣā |url=https://tst-project.github.io/mss/Sanscrit_1145.xml?facs=1 |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=tst-project.github.io |archive-date=2024-01-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128104239/https://tst-project.github.io/mss/Sanscrit_1145.xml?facs=1 |url-status=live }} A letter that he wrote to Hungarian scholar, Ignác Goldziher, which is now held at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, shows his engagement with prominent scholars of the time. Gil was considered a reclusive, but he maintained detailed diaries and records of letters, some of which have him writing about his written manuscripts of philosophical scriptures including the Mandukya Upanishad, both for his self-study and for his friends readings. In one of these notes, he wrote that despite his multiple readings it remains "unfathomable like an ocean of truth, which it is".{{Cite web |last=PHOTOINK |title=PHOTOINK |url=https://www.photoink.net/exhibitions/wakefulnessandthedreamstateaself-studybyumraosingh |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=PHOTOINK |language=en-IN |archive-date=2023-03-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230324094256/https://www.photoink.net/exhibitions/wakefulnessandthedreamstateaself-studybyumraosingh |url-status=live }}

A photography grant named after him was instituted by his family in 2015. In addition to photography and philosophy, Gil had varied interests including astronomy, carpentry, calligraphy, and yoga. An article in The New York Times many years after his death, called him "an eccentric polymath with a fondness for (and a startling resemblance to) Tolstoy".{{Cite news |last=Becker |first=Alida |date=December 2, 2007 |title=HOLIDAY BOOKS - India |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/Becker-t.html |work=The New York Times}}

File:Amrita Sher-Gil 2.jpg|Daughter Amrita Sher-Gil (1936)

File:Amrita Sher-Gil in sari.jpg|Daughter Amrita Sher-Gil (1936)

File:Amrita Sher-Gil with 3 paintings.jpg|Daughter Amrita Sher-Gil with her paintings (year unknown)

File:Portrait of Father SherGil 1935 Simla.jpg|Portrait of SherGil in Simla by his daughter (1935)

Gil married his first wife Narninder Kaur (1870s-1907) at the age of 13. They had three sons and a daughter; Balram, Satyavan (Vani), Vivek (Bikki), Prakash Kaur (Praki).Sundaram, pp. xxSundaram, pp. 184-185 Kaur died in 1907.

Gil met Marie Antoinette Gottesman-Baktay, a Hungarian Opera singer in 1911, when she was visiting Punjab accompanying Princess Bamba Sutherland. The couple married in 1912. He moved with her to Hungary before the First World War, where they had two daughters Amrita Sher-Gil, who would later go on to become a visual artist, and Indira Sundaram (née Sher-Gil), both of whom were extensive subjects of his photographic works.{{Cite web |title=Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation {{!}} Sher-Gil Sundaram Family |url=https://ssaf.in/sher-gil-sundaram-family/ |access-date=2024-01-28 |language=en-US |archive-date=2023-09-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230930150816/https://ssaf.in/sher-gil-sundaram-family/ |url-status=live }} The family lived in Hungary through the First World War, and then returned in 1921 to India, where they lived in Shimla.{{Cite web |date=2023-02-02 |title=Remembering Umrao Singh Sher‑Gil - Better Photography |url=http://www.betterphotography.in/perspectives/great-masters/umrao-singh-sher%E2%80%91gil/14773/ |access-date=2024-01-28 |archive-date=2023-02-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230202163725/http://www.betterphotography.in/perspectives/great-masters/umrao-singh-sher%E2%80%91gil/14773/ |url-status=bot: unknown }} The family returned to Europe in 1929 moving to France, living in Paris, where both his daughters studied. The family returned to India in 1934.

Gil died in 1954 at his daughter's home in New Delhi. He was aged 84. His wife had predeceased him in 1948, dying by suicide.{{Cite book |last1=Sher-Gil |first1=Umrao Singh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bx8MNAAACAAJ |title=Umrao Singh Sher-Gil: His Misery and His Manuscript |last2=Sundaram |first2=Vivan |last3=Ananth |first3=Deepak |date=2008 |publisher=Photoink |isbn=978-81-903911-1-5 |language=en |access-date=2024-01-28 |archive-date=2024-01-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128104345/https://books.google.com/books?id=bx8MNAAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=en |url-status=live }}{{Cite web |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: unseen brilliance |url=https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/05/04/amrita-sher-gil-unseen-brilliance/ |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=www.spiked-online.com |language=en-GB}}

• {{Cite book |last1=Sher-Gil |first1=Umrao Singh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bx8MNAAACAAJ |title=Umrao Singh Sher-Gil: His Misery and His Manuscript |last2=Sundaram |first2=Vivan |last3=Ananth |first3=Deepak |date=2008 |publisher=Photoink |isbn=978-81-903911-1-5 |language=en}}
• {{Cite book |last=Jhaveri |first=Shanay |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VHcuvwEACAAJ |title=The Journey in My Head: Cosmopolitanism and Indian Male Self-portraiture in 20th Century India : Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, Bhupen Khakhar, Ragubhir Singh |date=2016 |publisher=Royal College of Art |language=en}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite book |last1=Sundaram |first1=Vivan |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Tulika Books |location=New Delhi |volume=1|pages=1–417|isbn=978-81-89487-59-1}}
• {{cite book |last1=Sundaram |first1=Vivan |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Tulika Books |location=New Delhi |volume=2|pages=418–821|isbn=978-81-89487-59-1}}
• {{Cite book |last=Dalmia|first=Yashodhara |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mj3mlgEACAAJ |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life |date=2013 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=Gurugram |isbn=978-0-14-342026-2 |language=en}}

{{Amrita Sher-Gil|state=collapsed}}

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Category:1870 births

Category:1954 deaths

Category:People from Amritsar

Category:Majithia family

Category:Punjabi Sikhs

Category:Indian photographers

Category:People from Punjab Province (British India)