Things Fall Apart

a history of ideas - mainly my ideas

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Sangharaja Pirivena by GK, 1932

Sangharaja Pirivena, George Keyt, 1932
39 x 29 inches. Oil colour on canvas
Found this in Martin Russell's monograph on George Keyt and it brought back some very nice memories. It is funny how you can look at a picture and then suddenly remember so many things which have nothing to do with the painting/photograph in itself but it reminds you about a particular time, context and conversations! I never knew this painting was of the Sangharaja Pirivena and always imagined it to be a house - probably down Layards Road. It conveys a sense of tranquility and peace befitting a pirivena. I'm a big fan of GK's earlier works before he became the megastar he became - but yeah shows what an ignoramus I probably am.

Ashley Halpe writes in 1977 that

the pictures of the late 'twenties and thirties are distinguished for their meticulous dignity, realistic pose and sympathetic feeling for the charming and mannered simplicity of secular and religious life in his Kandyan society. Decorative romantic compositions on a grand scale also date from about this period, when a certain sombre sensuality, not yet exuberantly robust, set in motion by the influence of classical Sinhala and Hindu iconography began to exert its early and regenerating impact on his mind and art. The striking, uncluttered and bold simplicity of the mediaeval Kandyan temple frescoes also exercised their didactic appeal

I would love to see an exhibition of Keyt's work solely from the twenties and thirties before his Nayika period. 

Fingers crossed that the original and not a forgery now hangs on the walls of the President's House in Colombo!



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