A rare drawing from life of Ghulam Haidar Khan, son of Dost Mohammad Khan, Amir of Afghanistan b...

A rare drawing from life of Ghulam Haidar Khan, son of Dost Mohammad Khan, Amir of Afghanistan by Brevet-Major (later General) Harry Lumsden, at Peshawar, dated 30th March 1855 pen and ink on paper, signed lower right, inscribed Sirdar Hyder Khan, 30th March 1855 230 x 160 mm. (sight) Footnotes: The life of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Burnett Lumsden KCSI, CB (1821-96) in India and Afghanistan is well documented in the biography, Lumsden of the Guides , by General Sir Peter S. Lumsden, GCB, CSI and George R. Elsmie, CSI, first published in 1899. As a soldier in the army of the East India Company he was part of the Anglo-Indian force which occupied Kabul in the First Afghan War (1839-42). He fought in the first and second Anglo-Sikh Wars and was wounded at Sobraon. He became assistant to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lahore in 1846, and was afterwards stationed at Peshawar, forming his own cavalry corps known as the Guides in 1847, who were locally recruited to protect the Northern Frontier from attacks by warring tribes hostile to British rule. In 1857 he was sent on a mission to Kandahar with his younger brother, Sir Peter Lumsden, in connection with the subsidy paid by the Indian government to the Amir, and was in Afghanistan throughout the Mutiny. He took part in the Waziri Expedition of 1860, was in command of the Hyderabad Contingent from 1862, and left India in 1869. He became a lieutenant-general in 1875; that same year he retired and moved to Scotland where he spent the rest of his life. For a cased 12-bore hammer gun once owned by Lumsden, see Bonhams, San Francisco, Antique Arms and Armor , 2nd June 2009, lot 3316. Amir Dost Mohammad Khan (1792-1863) was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty. He was a formidable military and political strategist and considered to be one of the greatest Afghan rulers. By 1854, after a serious uprising in Balkh and further difficulties arising in Herat and Kandahar through the intrigues of Persia, the Amir sought an alliance with the British and a letter of goodwill was forwarded to the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, in Calcutta, who proposed that the friendship of the British and the Afghans should be recorded in a valid treaty. The Emir was invited to deputise a Sirdar of high rank and wisdom to Peshawar to meet a British officer, who would be appointed to act as agent of the Governor-General, and who would have full powers to enter into and execute a treaty. In response to this invitation the Emir sent his son and heir-apparent, Sirdar Ghulam Haidar Khan (1816-1858), to Peshawar to act as his plenipotentiary. Sir John Lawrence was sent to Peshawar, and was invested with full powers to negotiate with Ghulam Haidar Khan. The meeting took place and the treaty was concluded at Peshawar on the 30th March 1855, the date of our drawing. It was guaranteed that the British should respect the Amir's possessions in Afghanistan, and never interfere with them, while the Amir engaged, similarly, to respect British territory. In the present drawing it is very likely Ghulam Haidar Khan is holding up a copy of this treaty (apparently shown written in both Persian and English) as witnessed by Lumsden's date inscription 30th March 1855 . For two portraits of Ghulam Haidar Khan (dressed very similarly, though sitting in a chair rather than standing, and minus the sword) and his father Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, both dated AH 1271/AD 1854, by Muhammad Azim, see Sotheby's, Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures , 26th April 1990, lots 94 and 95 (formerly in the collection at Coulston House, Haddingtonshire, home of the Marquis of Dalhousie, Governor-General from 1848-1856). Two portraits of an Afghan ambassador and a minister by the same artist, Muhammad Azim, are in the British Museum (formerly in the India Office Library), also dated AH 1271/AD 1854; they were amongst the papers of Sir Herbert Edwardes, who went to Peshawar in 1854 as Commissioner and appears to have been involved in the negotiations mentioned above. See M. Archer, Company Drawings in the India Office Library , London 1972, pp . 216-217, nos. 183, i, ii. (For a portrait of Edwardes see lot 255 in this sale). For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com