A remarkable pictorial record of Indian maharajas is the work of an Irish photographer of the famed Lafayette studio, writes David Orr in Delhi.
Wearing the finest brocade, huge strings of pearls, and turbans ornamented with priceless jewels, the maharajas stare intently into the lens or off into the middle distance - perhaps lost in reverie about a favourite courtesan or a tiger hunt of their youth. Their wives, the maharanis, are no less splendid in their gowns of white satin, diamond tiaras and ruby-studded necklaces.
Behind the camera was an Irishman, James Lauder, whose Lafayette studio - founded in Dublin in 1880 - boasts one of the oldest histories of any photographic business in the world.
The rulers of princely India and their consorts are among the more exotic images to have come from the Lafayette studio, which gained international prominence after the opening of a London branch in 1897. At its peak in the early decades of the last century, Lafayette counted among its clients Queen Victoria and a succession of other royalty and rulers that read like a Who's Who of the British empire. Lauder's reputation was such that in 1887 he was personally invited to Windsor to photograph Queen Victoria (see right).
James Joyce described Lafayette in Ulysses as "Dublin's premier photographic artist". Among Lauder's Irish subjects were WB Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Padraig Pearse.
The portraits of the maharajas and maharanis might have remained in relative obscurity had it not been for the curiosity of a Delhi-based publisher whose list of titles includes an impressive array of glossy coffee table books on Indian themes. Rolli Book's latest publication, The Lafayette Studio and Princely India, is the result of a chance discovery in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London three years ago.
"I was rummaging around, looking for some miniature Indian paintings," recalls Pramod Kumar. "I was astounded to discover in a drawer some remarkable images of maharajas dressed in their finery. I'd never seen anything like them. The prints had been made from the original glass negatives that were stored in the V&A's basement."
The Lafayette Studio and Princely India features a text by British scholar Russell Harris who has curated exhibitions of the princely portraits in India and Pakistan. The book was published in France to coincide with a recent Indian season at 16 Galleries Lafayette department stores and in India by Rolli Books in May.
The discovery of the maharaja photographs in the V&A was as nothing, however, to the good fortune that earlier saved the Lafayette archive for posterity. Workmen clearing a London attic in 1968 came across a pile of cardboard boxes full of old glass negatives.
Their instructions were to throw everything away and redecorate the property. A foreman, however, realised the potential value of the hoard after noticing images of Queen Victoria and Lloyd George. He packed up 80,000 dusty negatives weighing more than six tons and took them to Pinewood Studios where he worked.
There the unique photographic record of British sovereigns and Indian maharajas languished in a props store for another 20 years before being unearthed once again and passed on to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The style of the photographs - reminiscent of Victorian portrait painting - no doubt owes something to James Lauder's stint as an art student in Paris following his apprenticeship at his father's daguerreotype portrait studio in Dublin in the 1860s. Using the professional name of James Lafayette ("late of Paris," as his own firm billed him), Lauder opened his studio in Westmoreland Street, Dublin, at the age of 27. The firm's reputation was such that in 1887, he was invited to Windsor to photograph Queen Victoria. Branches were opened in England and, in 1890, one was established in Belfast. Business boomed as Lafayette went into the sale of photographic postcards and began syndicating images to Country Life and other publications.
Though hardly at the cutting edge of photographic experimentation, Lafayette's images capture all the glamour and gravitas of their subjects.
WHEN IT CAME to unsightly wrinkles and stray hairs, the precursor of Photoshop was at hand to make sure the clients were not disappointed. Once the photograph had been taken, the glass negatives would be sent to the company's workshops where a team of "retouchers" would skim off years from faces and waistlines (see photograph, bottom right).
The images from The Lafayette Studio and Princely India were taken in the company's London studio between 1897 and 1924. As the heart and capital of the British Empire, the city was a magnet for India royalty who came to hob-nob with the British aristocracy and attend royal gala occasions.
After a little light shopping - say, a Rolls-Royce and a couple of diamond necklaces - the footloose maharajas would wander into Lafayette's Bond Street studio for a portrait. There they would pose in formal settings, wearing full regalia and showing off their dazzling jewels and royal medals.
The princely titles of the book are wonderful. Here is Maj Gen Maharajadhiraja Maharana Shri Sir Bhopal Singh Bahadur of Udaipur staring at the camera with his huge, languorous eyes. Paralysed from the waist down due to tuberculosis and a spinal disorder, he perches delicately on a throne, a curving sword balanced on one knee, diamond anklets adorning his invalid's boots.
Best known to Irish people, certainly to the older inhabitants of Ballynahinch, Co Galway, will be Col Shri Sir Ranjitsinghji Vibhaji, Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar - popularly known in Connemara as "the Ranji". In his day one of the world's best cricketers (despite the loss of an eye in a shooting accident in 1915), Ranji fell in love with the west of Ireland, its people and its fishing. In 1924, he became the owner of Ballynahinch Castle, where he lived for at least part of every year until his death in 1933.
James Lauder died in Belgium in 1923. His firm's Dublin branch was finally sold in 1951 and the London studio was liquidated the following year. The name is carried on by Lafayette Photography, a portrait studio based in Stillorgan Industrial Estate, Co Dublin.