Sardar Sobha Singh was born on 29 November 1901 in a Sikh family in Sri Hargobindpur, Gurdaspur district of Punjab.

Sobha Singh is fondly remembered as Darji and his daughter Bibi Gurcharan Kaur, assisted by her son Dr. Hirday Paul Singh, has converted Andretta into an ever-popular tourist destination not only for art enthusiasts but for all who admire his work.

At age 15, Sobha Singh entered the Industrial School at Amritsar for a one-year course in art and craft.

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.

[2] 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.

Randhawa, Prithviraj Kapoor, and Nirmal Chandra, and an incomplete head-study of the Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam.

[5] The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting released a documentary film titled Painter of the People based on his life and works.