[1]: 52  He was acquainted with members of the Bengal renaissance movement of art, such as Nand Lal Bose and the Tagore brothers.

[1]: 52 He was born in 1890 into a Ramgarhia family in the tiny farming village of Verka, located near Amritsar, Punjab, India.

[1]: 52 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.

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."

Just as that chance encounter on Chowpati Beach led to his first prize in the painting, throughout his life he had many worthy patrons.

Rabindra Nath Tagore, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and artists and critics have paid tribute to his work.

[10] Several of its past students are now achieving recognition as artists or as art-teachers and it has been lately recognised by the Industrial Training Department of the Punjab Government to award a diploma of Art & Craft, teacher's course.