BIKANER. Maharaja Ganga Singh as a young boy with the President of his Regency Council, circa 1890

A somewhat unusually sized card measuring 10 x 7 ins [between cabinet and royal sizes] by Bourne & Shepherd, Simla, Calcutta, & Bombay showing a young Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner in about 1890 [he was born in 1880] standing between the seated President of the Council of Regency and his wife. Charles Stuart Bayley [later Sir Charles, K.C.S.I.] was Political Agent in Bikaner from 1888 and spent three years in charge of the Regency Council. Ganga Singh’s education had been ably provided by Pandit Ram Chandra Dubey until the Council, all of whose members were approved by the British Government of India, decided to send him to Mayo College at Ajmer. The photograph itself is in excellent condition although there are a few marks [possibly old ink stains] to the margins of the card and its verso. The back of the card has a faint old stamp of the Tosha Khana, Bikaner indicating that it was at one time in a palace treasury. A scarce survival.        mar2/1

A small oval example of this portrait appears in Naveen Patnaik: A Desert Kingdom The Rajputs of Bikaner. [Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1990] page 22.