Indira Devi, Maharani of Cooch Behar

1 portrait

© estate of Bertram Park / Camera Press

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Indira Devi, Maharani of Cooch Behar

by Bertram Park
gelatin silver print, circa 1920
11 1/4 in. x 8 3/4 in. (287 mm x 223 mm) image size
Purchased, 2015
Photographs Collection
NPG x199899

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Bertram Park (1883-1972), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 147 portraits, Sitter in 20 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • 100 Photographs, 2018, p. 48 Read entry

    Bertram Park (1883-1972) set up studios at 43 Dover Street, London, in 1919 with fellow photographers Marcus Adams and Yvonne Gregory, whom Park had married in 1916. The elegance and modernity of the Maharani of Cooch Behar (1892-1968) are reflected through Park’s clever use of light, to delineate the sitter’s form and beauty. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Maharani was one of the leading social figures in Anglo-Indian society and popularised the wearing of saris as a mode of dress in London. She opposed the Purdah system of female seclusion and often showed herself unveiled.

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1920back to top

Current affairs

The Government of Ireland Act (Fourth Home Rule Bill) partitions Ireland into the Irish Free State with a devolved parliament in Dublin and Northern Ireland with a devolved parliament in Belfast.
The Communist Party of Great Britain is founded in London, uniting a number of independent socialist and Marxist parties into a single, united party.

Art and science

Queen Alexandra unveils a monument to Edith Cavell in St Martin's Place opposite the National Portrait Gallery. The English nurse was executed in Germany for helping hundreds of allied soldiers to cross the border from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands.
George V officially opens the Imperial War Museum at the Crystal Palace.

International

The Kapp Putsch threatens the newly formed Weimar Republic. In defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the leaders of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt refused to disband and marched on Berlin, occupying it on the 13th March. With the general army refusing to defend the city, the government fled to Stuttgart. The rebellion, however, failed after the workers joined a general strike, disabling their plans.

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