Maharani Chand Kaur (1802-1842), 1845 (c)

Unframed miniature portrait in watercolour on ivory by a contemporary artist, Lahore, India, 1845.

Chand Kaur married Maharaja Singh in 1812 and was the mother of Prince Nau Nihal Singh. Boht her husband and her son died on 5th November 1840, leading her to stake her claim to be regent to the Sikh throne, on the grounds that her son's widow was pregnant. A couple of months into her regency she was deposed and assassinated a year later, at the instigation of Maharaja Shere Singh. She was killed by her own slave girls who were promised rewards for killing the Maharani.

This miniature was previously catalogued as a portrait of Rani Jindan, but was later identified as a portrait of Rani Chand Kaur by the experts in the National Army Museum's 'Brothers in Arms' project in 2015.

From a frame of seventeen Indian miniatures painted on ivory.