mily Eden is often regarded as the observer of the declining Sikh empire. However, another woman, Helen Mackenzie (née Douglas), was a direct witness to the transfer of power from the Sikh kingdom to British rule.

On her arrival in Lahore, Helen Mackenzie was received in the private chambers where the deposed Duleep Singh was living with Sir John Login and Lady Login, the custodians of the 12-year-old prince, first at Lahore Fort and later at Fatehgarh.

Mackenzie’s perception of Lahore was, therefore, shaped by a different and more confined lens, one that enabled her to paint and write the account later published as Life in the Mission, the Camp, and the Zenána; or, Six Years in India.

Helen Catherine Douglas was born in London in 1819 to Admiral John Erskine Douglas and Catherine Anne Griffith. In 1843, she married Lieutenant General Colin Mackenzie as his second wife. Mackenzie, an army officer in Madras, was part of the catastrophic retreat of Elphinstone’s army from Kabul in 1842 and was taken hostage by the Afghans.

In 1849, the couple moved to the Punjab. In the same year, Lahore, the capital of the Sikh kingdom, was annexed following the Second Anglo-Sikh War.

Helen Mackenzie visited the young Prince Duleep Singh in the Shish Mahal (the Glass Palace) of Lahore Fort. The walls and ceiling of the palace were adorned with thousands of precisely cut mirrors, reflecting light and fragmenting images in a manner reminiscent of a cubist composition. Mackenzie described her meeting with the young prince in these words:

“Dhalip Sing is about eleven years old, with beautiful eyes and nose, but the lower part of the face is too full.” (Six Years in India, p. 48)

This reveals the keen eye of an artist who carefully observed the features of the young prince, whom she would later sketch.

This sketch of Duleep Singh, if interpreted iconographically, conveys the detached despair of the last Sikh heir to the throne.

“I took a sketch of him and several of his attendants; and he in return sent for two native artists, who made hideous representations of J and me.” (Six Years in India, pp. 48-49)

Mackenzie produced several sketches during her stay there, ranging from portraits of notable figures to depictions of ordinary people present at the court. The titles of these sketches provide valuable information about the ethnic composition of those who served in the Sikh court. The Afghan Lady, Four Natives and A Group of Afghans, Sikhs and Others are among the examples.

In 1853, she published the three-volume travel memoir, Life in the Mission, the Camp, and the Zenána; or, Six Years in India, recounting her travels and stays at mission stations and military camps, as well as her experiences at the Sikh court in Lahore and across the Punjab, the North-Western Frontier Province (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Bengal. In doing so, she recorded a critical period in Lahore’s political and imperial history: the uncertainty and upheaval that followed the annexation of the city in 1849.

Twenty of her original sketches were reproduced as lithographs in the illustrated edition of the same work, published in 1856. Many of these plates were captioned and annotated in her own hand on the lithographic slabs, providing further details about the printed images. At the time, many women artists who travelled through India did not sign their work. Numerous paintings and sketches by anonymous women, often the wives and daughters of East India Company military and civil officers, have survived from the period.

Helen Mackenzie’s husband, Lieutenant General Colin Mackenzie, was stationed primarily in Madras and elsewhere in India, serving in Berar, Murshidabad, Bangalore and Calcutta. He died in 1881, after which Helen devoted herself to compiling her husband’s biography, a two-volume work titled Storms and Sunshine of a Soldier’s Life, which was published in 1884.

The narrative traces Colin Mackenzie’s life from his childhood to the difficult and harrowing years he spent as a captive of the Afghans. The biography is more a tribute from a widow to her late husband than an account by a travel writer. The spontaneity of the narrative, the intuitive approach and the quality of an eyewitness account are among the features that connect it to her earlier writings.

This sketch of Duleep Singh, if interpreted iconographically, conveys the detached despair of the last Sikh heir to the throne: hopeless and merely waiting to be transported to Fatehgarh and, later, to England. Helen recorded Duleep Singh’s separation from his mother, Rani Jindan, symbolising his departure from his culture, religion and imperial legacy, as well as the loss of an indigenised grandeur. Later, he would settle in Europe and marry Bamba Muller, the daughter of the German merchant Ludwig Muller and an Ethiopian woman, Sofia.

Helen Mackenzie’s illustrations and writings serve today as a valuable record of the turbulent years following the fall of the Sikh Empire in Lahore. She was an eyewitness to the final incorporation of the Punjab into the British Raj, an event that paved the way for the uprising of 1857, commonly known as the Ghadar.

The writer is an art historian, a critic and a curator teaching at the College of Art and Design, University of the Punjab, Lahore. He may be reached at [email protected].