S G Thakur Singh
S.G. Thakur Singh (1899–1976) is an Indian artist who painted in oils, pastels and water color
Childhood
He was born in the tiny farm village of Verka, four miles Northeast of Amritsar, Punjab, India. He received some art training from Mohammed Alam, the Muslim school teacher in the village.
Interviewed at the age of 74, Singh said that when he was seventeen, “I was forced by my guardians to join the Victoria Diamond Hindu Technical Institute, Lahore, to take up an engineering course. I wasted there two years and left it in disgust.” When he returned to his village his former teacher, Mohammed Alam, persuaded him to come to Mumbai, where Alam had secured a job as a scene-painter in a Mumbai theatre. While in Mumbai, Singh worked both at odd jobs in the studio and on his own, with Alam guiding him.
“One fine morning”, Singh recalls, “I was busy painting a landscape at Chowpati Beach, Mumbai, when a couple suddenly stopped beside me and began admiring my painting which was, by that time, almost complete. The gentlemen, an influential Parsi editor of a Bombay Magazine, goaded me into sending the painting to an exhibition of the Simla Fine Arts Society.” There his painting won the first prize of Rs. 500, among the landscapes. “I was then only eighteen, and you can well imagine my joy and pride at getting the prize”.