4159

The Maharani of Cooch Behar, née Princess Indira Gaekwar of Baroda 1925

Seated, three-quarter length, full-face, wearing a gold and red sari, with drop gold and emerald earrings and matching pearl and emerald necklace and two other gold necklaces around her neck

Oil on canvas, 147.3 x 111.8 cm (58 x 44 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1925

Sitters’ Book II, f. 31: Indira Devi of Cooch Behar 30th  July 1922.

Private Collection

The stole in this portrait was left by Princess Indira in the artist’s studio after one of her sittings. Constance Hill, a niece of Lucy Guinness, later visited the studio and, fascinated by its silken beauty, picked it up and draped it around herself. The artist enjoyed the resulting effect so much that he painted a study portrait of the girl there and then [5642]. That painting is signed and dated 1922. Although the present portrait was not completed and signed until 1925, both their signatures in the artist’s sitters’ book on the same page in 1922 give credence to this story of the sharing of the Princess’s stole.

According to the sitter’s daughter, de László also painted the Maharani of Cooch Behar in 1919. However, such portrait has not been traced, and it might have been confused with a full-length portrait of her by Alfred Jonniaux. In this respect, and knowing de László’s methods, it is very likely that the “study of the Maharani of Cooch Behar” which was exhibited at the French Gallery in 1924 was the present work, although it was shown unfinished. There exists two preliminary pencil sketch for this portrait in the collection of a descendant of the artist [4161] and [112277].

De László painted the Maharani again in London in 1935 [4162], and he also painted her son-in-law, the Maharaja of Jaipur [5810], three times in 1935. The correspondence of the artist suggests that a third portrait of the Maharani might exist. In a letter dated 14 January 1927, de László mentioned an unfinished portrait which remained in his studio for three years, and he expressed the wish to paint something “quite different”^[1] during the next visit of the Maharani to his studio. A second letter suggests that de László undertook such a portrait before August 1927, but that its completion was postponed until the autumn.^[2] 

Princess Indira Gaekwar of Baroda, born in 1892, was the daughter of the Gaekwar of Baroda, in which state she spent her childhood. In 1910, at the age eighteen she was engaged to the forty-year-old Maharaja of Scindia of Gwalior, who himself was already married but childless. However in 1911 while attending the Delhi Durbar she met and fell in love with the younger son of the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and cancelled her engagement, despite the fact that the wedding arrangements were already well under way. After much family disapproval, she was finally allowed to marry the Maharaja in 1913. Three weeks after the wedding, upon the death of his elder brother, her husband was crowned Maharaja of Cooch Behar. The sitter and her husband had five children – two sons and three daughters – and their lives were divided between Cooch Behar, Calcutta, Darjeeling and England. In 1922 her husband died, leaving her a widow at the age of thirty. The family returned to India where the sitter acted as Regent for her young son, the new Maharaja.

Considered one of the most beautiful and best dressed women of her time, she was also a foremost hostess whose house guests at her famous parties and big game shoots included the Viceroy, heads of princely states and glamorous actors such as Douglas Fairbanks Junior. Throughout her life, she was also closely involved with the administration and running of Cooch Behar. She died in 1968.

PROVENANCE:         

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:                 

•French Gallery, London. A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1924, no. 47.

•Metropolitan Museum, New York. The Royal Costumes of India, 1985-1986, p. 15 in checklist for exhibition

LITERATURE:

•Lucy Moore, Maharanis: The Lives and Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses, Penguin/Viking, 2004, p. 189

•DLA063-0004, letter from de László to the Maharani of Cooch Behar, 14 January 1927

•DLA063-0002, letter from de László to the Maharani of Cooch Behar, 5 August 1927

CC 2013