Amiban, William Fraser’s bibi, by a master artist working for William Fraser, from The Fraser Album, India, Haryana, circa 1816

In the Collection of William (1784-1835) and James Fraser (1783-1856)

Madame R. Levillier

Sotheby's London, 7 December 1977, lot 30

Hartnoll & Eyre Ltd., London

Acquired from the above in 1978 by Edward Ralph Dexter CBE (1935-2021)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Edward Dexter, known as Ted Dexter, has been described as the most charismatic English cricketer of his generation, considered the most exciting batsman in the world in the early 1960s. He played 62 Test matches for England, serving as captain of both the national side and also his county, Sussex, whom he led to their first ever trophies in 1963 and 1964.

M. Archer and T. Falk, India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35, London, 1989, p.18. fig. 8

R.E. Frykenberg (ed.), Delhi through the Ages: Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, Delhi, 1986, pl. 5.

W. Dalrymple, City of Djinns, London, 1993, p.109, (not illus.)

inscriptions

shabih-i khass-i sarun jatni maqbula frizan [sic] sahib ju hasan va nazakat bibin bi-nazir thi

‘a personal portrait of Sarun, the attractive Jatni of Mr Fraser, whose beauty and elegance are without peer’

This painting is from the Fraser Album, the celebrated series of brilliant paintings commissioned by William Fraser (1784-1835) and his brother James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856) between the years 1815 and 1820. Depicting characters and local life in Delhi and its surrounding areas, they form ‘an unmatched record of the social, cultural and everyday life of Delhi’s rural and urban residents.’ (Sharma 2019, p.145)

James and William Fraser were sons of Edward Fraser of Reelig, Inverness. William arrived in India in 1801 at the age of sixteen to take up a career in the political service of the East India Company. After training at Fort William College, Calcutta, he was appointed as assistant to the British Resident at Delhi. His work, a mixture of political, economic, judicial and military matters, in and around Delhi brought him into contact with a wide variety of people and places. In 1814 James Fraser followed his brother to India, intent on raising the family’s financial fortunes by joining a merchant house in Calcutta. They met up in 1815, by which time William had been posted as political agent to Major General Rollo Gillespie during the first Nepal War, and then continued as commissioner at Garwhal. They travelled together in the Himalayas and back to Delhi in August 1815. At this time James, who was a talented amateur painter himself and had an interest in recording the novel and varied aspects of life in India, commissioned an artist to paint portraits of some of the dancing girls that he and William had seen at nautch parties (soirees with dance performances, see Archer and Falk 1989, figs.15, 125-8, pp.36, 127-9). James stayed with William in Delhi until summer 1816, when he returned to Calcutta. Over the next four years, with James’s encouragement, William commissioned a highly talented artist or artists to record the people and scenes that he came across in his work and sent them to James in Calcutta. James left India in 1820 and returned to Scotland, but William continued in his political and administrative duties in and around Delhi.

Archer and Falk describe how William Fraser, on taking up residence in the subcontinent embraced the ways, manners, languages and customs of India. He began living a semi-nomadic existence, wearing native dress and becoming vegetarian. When Lady Nugent, the wife of the British Commander-in-Chief, visited Delhi she was genuinely shocked to discover that William had given up eating pork and beef and had grown a thick Rajput beard (Dalrymple 1993, p.107). The French botanist, Victor Jacquemont claimed that William had ‘six or seven legitimate wives, all living together near Delhi,’ and that ‘he must have as many children as the King of Persia’ (Falk and Archer 1989, India Revealed, p.18). Whether Jacquemont’s statement was accurate, William did spend a great deal of his time in the village of Rania, in the state of Haryana, where a beautiful girl known as Amiban resided. Amiban was to become William’s bibi, his favourite companion.

Amiban appears in a number of paintings that William Fraser commissioned of Rania. She is seen carrying water pots on her head whilst balancing a baby on her hip in The village of Jeewah Moocuddum, attached to Rania (The Edith and Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Sotheby’s London, 25 October 2023, lot 62), then in A street scene in the village of Rania (Falk and Archer, 1989, pl.72), she is depicted seated on the ground spinning cotton with her young daughter standing alongside. Again in The David Collection portrait of Salabat Bhatti and villagers at Rania, where she is described in William’s hand as ‘Amiban, Rajput [of the] tribe Makhokar, inhabitant of Bhatrani, sister-in-law of Khwaju Soha’. Yutikha Sharma (Branfoot (ed.) 2018, p.211) also suggests Amiban could be the young woman portrayed in Two women and a male buffalo in the village of Rania, in the Victoria & Albert Museum (IS.13-1989). And in Villagers at Rania (Simon Ray, 2012, no.69, Falk and Archer 1989, pl.75), Amiban is shown in an almost identical pose accompanied by a young boy. In the majority of the portraits Amiban is seen wearing the same purple choli blouse, red embroidered odhni shawl and printed ghagra skirt. Sharma states that ‘Amiban’s repeated appearance in successive group portraits and scenes reiterates her prominent status in the village [Rania] and in Fraser’s personal life.’ (ibid. p.216).

The young boy who stands beside Amiban in the current portrait and Villagers at Rania (Simon Ray, 2012, no.69) has previously been identified as Hazir Khan, brother of Soojah Mal and the son of the tax collector Nijabat Khan. However Dalrymple and Sharma have suggested (Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, p.124) that the boy is in fact Charles Fraser, William and Amiban’s son and that his previous identification as Hazir Khan could have been Fraser’s attempt to hide his son’s existence from his family in Scotland. Papers in the Fraser archive (folio 18, 15 July 1843) include a letter from Major William Brown to James Baillie Fraser, which talks of Brown remaining in India following the death of William and that he was well acquainted with Charles Fraser. ‘I know Charles Fraser, William’s eldest son very intimately and I am exceedingly lucky in being able to speak very highly of him, he is tolerably well off in the custom department and I hope it will not be very long ere he is promoted. I have never met the other boy William but I know he is patronised by Mr Elliott, the Secretary to the Board at Allahabad and I heard that he is doing very well’. (Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, p.124).