A painting bought for just £40 at a car boot sale in Britain turned out to be a remarkable piece of Indian art nearly three decades later. According to Antiques Trade Gazette, which documented the discovery in its 50 Great Objects collection, the painting sold for £75,000, excluding the buyer’s premium, at Roseberys in London on April 15, 2016. Initially catalogued with a modest estimate of £500 to £1,000, the work attracted intense bidding after specialists identified its subject as the historic walled city of Amritsar, with the Golden Temple in the background. Its possible artist was also linked to the city’s 19th-century artistic tradition.
A £40 purchase that remained unnoticed for decades
The painting belonged to a London taxi driver who had purchased it at a car boot sale around 30 years before the auction. The seller had initially asked £60, but the driver negotiated the price down to £40. For years, the painting remained an ordinary second-hand purchase rather than a recognised work of historical importance. Its significance only became apparent when it was brought to the attention of the art market and examined by specialists.
Roseberys offered the work in a specialist sale of Islamic and Indian art, giving it an estimate of £500 to £1,000.
Despite the modest valuation, the painting attracted multiple bidders, with competition eventually pushing the price to £75,000, excluding the buyer’s premium of 23%. The result was far beyond the original estimate and transformed the driver’s inexpensive purchase into a valuable auction discovery.
Painting depicted the historic city of Amritsar
The painting was a large Indian gouache miniature on paper, measuring approximately 59 by 85 centimetres. Its crowded composition depicted the walled old city of Amritsar, with the Golden Temple, also known as Harmandir Sahib, visible in the background. The Golden Temple is the holiest religious complex in Sikhism, making the painting’s subject particularly significant. Rather than presenting only a single building or a formal religious scene, the work captured a bustling urban setting filled with people and architectural details.
One of its most intriguing features was a small self-portrait believed to show the artist at work. In the upper-left portion of the composition, a figure can be seen painting a portrait inside an architectural alcove. This detail added another layer of interest to the painting, connecting its creator directly with the scene being depicted. The combination of the cityscape, religious landmark and numerous human figures offered a glimpse into the artistic representation of 19th-century Amritsar.
Artist may have been Baba Bishan Singh
Specialists attributed the painting tentatively to Baba Bishan Singh, an artist who lived from 1836 to around 1900. He belonged to a family of painters working in Lahore and Amritsar during the second half of the 19th century. According to Antiques Trade Gazette, the family was involved in maintaining the murals and decorative motifs on the walls of the Golden Temple. This connection made the possible attribution especially relevant to the painting’s subject.
According to Antiques Trade Gazette, Bishan Singh participated in the 1864 exhibition of arts and crafts in Lahore, where he displayed 10 pictures. These included depictions of the courts of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Sher Singh, as well as the Municipal Committee of Amritsar. The exhibition attracted the attention of Robert Baden-Powell, who later commented on Bishan Singh’s work in his Handbook of the Manufactures and Arts of the Punjab. He noted weaknesses in the perspective of the buildings but praised the quality of the figure drawing.
The possibility that the newly discovered painting was among the works shown in Lahore in 1864 adds historical interest, although the connection has not been established conclusively.
Auction specialist delivered unexpected news
The £75,000 result was an extraordinary outcome for the vendor, who had paid only £40 for the painting decades earlier. According to Antiques Trade Gazette, specialist Peter Greenway contacted the taxi driver after the sale to tell him the result. The driver reportedly told Greenway that he had been having a difficult day because his taxi had suffered a flat tyre, preventing him from going to work. After hearing the auction news, he decided to give himself the weekend off.
The story became a memorable example of how an overlooked object bought second-hand can turn out to have considerable artistic and historical importance. The painting’s journey from a car boot sale to a specialist auction also illustrates the role of expert research in identifying works that have been miscatalogued or remained unrecognised for years. Its final price reflected not simply the difference between £40 and £75,000, but the discovery of a potentially important record of Amritsar’s artistic and urban history.