Background
Sardar Sobha Singh was born on 29 November 1901 in a Ramgarhia Sikh family in Sri Hargobindpur, Gurdaspur district of Punjab. His father, Deva Singh, was in the Indian cavalry.
Sardar Sobha Singh was born on 29 November 1901 in a Ramgarhia Sikh family in Sri Hargobindpur, Gurdaspur district of Punjab. His father, Deva Singh, was in the Indian cavalry.
At age 15, Sobha Singh entered the Industrial School at Amritsar for a one-year course in art and craft. He joined the British Indian army as a draughtsman and served in Baghdad, Mesopotamia (now Iraq). In 1923 he left army and returned to Amritsar, where he opened his art studio.
In the same year, he married Bibi Inder Kaur on Baisakhi day.
He worked from his studios at Amritsar, Lahore (1926) and Delhi (1931).
In 1946, He went back to Lahore and opened his studio at Anarkali and was working as an art director for a film when he was forced to leave the city due to partition of the country. In 1949 he settled down in Andretta (near Palampur), a remote and then little-known place in the Kangra Valley, beginning his career as a painter.
Now these days this place is very well known.
In 1949 he settled down in Andretta (near Palampur), a remote and then little-known hamlet in the Kangra Valley on the foothills of the Himalayas, beginning his career as a painter. Gurcharan Kaur"s son Hirdaypal Singh now manages the SOBHA SINGH ART GALLERY, a jewel in the heart of the Kangra Valley. Education and training The portrait he made in honour of the 500th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in 1969 is the one most people believe to be the visage of Guru Nanak.
Sobha Singh painted pictures of other gurus as well, Guru Amar Das, Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Har Krishan.
His paintings of Sohni Mahiwal and Heer Ranjha were also very popular. He also painted impressive portraits of national heroes and leaders like Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Mahatma Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri et cetera
His murals are displayed in the art gallery of Indian Parliament House in New Delhi. Sobha Singh also dabbled in sculpture, and did the busts of some eminent Punjabis such as Master of Surgery Randhawa, Prithviraj Kapoor and Nirmal Chandra, and an incomplete head-study of the Punjabi poetess Amrita Pritam.
General public can also visit his studio in Andretta.
Sobha Singh died in Chandigarh on 21 August 1986. Andreta (Palampur) is so popular because of the Sobha Singh painter called Sobha Singh art gallery. Many of the visitors including tourists visit Andreta also.