A watercolour portrait of Raja Surat Singh Majithia, full length, mounted on a grey horse.

Raja Surat Singh Majithia (d.1881) was commanding officer of the Sikh battalion posted at Peshwar during the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845-6. In the second war of 1848-9 he had commanded a division of 2000 men against the British. Having been taken prisoner, he was released from captivity in 1858 in order to aid in a rescue attempt of European people from the roof of the treasury in Varanasi, which housed the Sikh crown jewels. The treasury was under attack from Indian soldiers involved in the Rebellion against British colonial rule which had began in Meerut, northern India. The Sikh soldiers who formed the garrison guarding the treasury were persuaded by Surat Singh to remain loyal to the British, and consequently the European civilians and the jewels were taken to a place of safety. 

Egron Lundgren reported that Surat Singh had been so badly wounded, probably as a result of his actions at the treasury in Varanasi, that he could hardly walk and had trouble sitting in the saddle for any length of time. Lundgren described how the Sikh chieftain sat to him wearing his lemon yellow turban and purple sash. The scabbard of his sabre was covered with red velvet, he wore silver mounted pistols and, over his shoulder, a valuble English rifle presented to him by some British officers. In 1877 he was made Companion of the Star of India.

This is a watercolour from the Indian sketches album comprising watercolours and drawings by Egron Lundgren, Nicholas Chevalier, Count Gotz Burkhard Seckendorff and Robert Gosset Woodthorpe. Most of Lundgren's works within the album are set against a backdrop of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and were presented to Queen Victoria. Chevalier's watercolours represent high-ranking Sikh and Ceylonese [Sri Lankan] people who would have sat to the artist during his visits to India and Ceylon while journeying with Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, on the homeward voyage aboard HMS Galatea in 1870.