Ananda Samarakoone:

Musician and painter

Ananda Samarakoone (old master) was a prominent musician and painter. His father was a chief clerk in a number of estates in Matugama belonging to the British during the Colonial rule. His name was Samuel Samarakoone who presented the world with four sons.

The most accepted of these gifts was his second son, George Wilfred Alwis Samarakoone who first saw the light of day on January 13, 1911, in the village Liyanwela Wataraka. His mother Dominga Peris a school teacher, was from Nugegoda. His birth certificate recorded his name as George Wilfred Alwis Samarakoone, nationality Sinhala and religion Christianity. Later in life he took the name as Ananda Samarakoone and embraced Buddhism.

Ananda received his primary education at the Government Sinhalese School, Wawela, Piliyandala and later at Christian College, Kotte. From his earliest childhood he portrayed an aptitude for music and art. As soon as he had learned to read and write he wrote lyrics for children’s songs and in the kitchen of his home, in the classroom, in church - wherever he could lay his hand upon a bit of paper and pencil - he made sketches of people and scenery.

After his education at the age of 23 he joined the staff of his alma mater as the music and art teacher. In 1936 Ananda Samarakoon left for India in a quest to study Ravindranath music. At Shantiniketan he met Nandalal Bose most reputed painter who introduced him to painting. Before he left for India he married Chandra Seneviratne from Pannipitiya. Ananda studied for few years at Shantiniketan and returned to Sri Lanka with his wife.

Ananda Samarakoone

Ananda Samarakoone was one of the most talented of the Sri Lankan’s painters. His imagination was all embracing. The scope of his genius included, landscape painting, realistic stories, symbolical representations, tragedy, comedy, satire, farce, men, gods, devils, witches, the seen and the unseen. He displayed his genius as a painter and held eleven art exhibitions in India, Malaysia and Singapore. His work as a painter drew critical acclaim.

Though he was mostly known as a musician and lyricist in his homeland, outside his country he was acclaimed as a genius in painting. Here his reputation as an artist had preceded him. He spent his days conquering the hearts of the ladies by singing to their hearts. Whether single or married, a woman was to him equally desirable - and equally accessible. Very few could resist his impetuous wooing.

The women adored him, and the men were insanely jealous of him. And they had every right to be jealous. Sooner or later this heedless quest for the forbidden adventures of love was bound to cost him dearly. In 1940 he divorced his first wife and on December 20 and on the same year he got married to Caraline de Silva from Galle.

The attesting witnesses to this marriage were W. Dahanayake who became a member of parliament and later Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and T. D. Jayasuriya who was the Director of Education. While he was at Shantiniketan he acquainted himself with the beauties of Indian art. It was in India that he held most of his art exhibitions, and really discovered himself as an artist.

Ananda Samarakoone’s pictorial interpretations corresponded with every song he has written and sung. His pictorial language is expressed by the aesthetic vision of the folk and classical traditions of Buddhist paintings.

Thoughtful handling of the human figure, the colour effects are sober and striking. The colouring is simple, and most effective. These paintings were unique and very much his own but inter mixing the fine points and ingredients of Indian art.

Ananda Samarakoone continued to mix his orange, with purple, flaming yellow with dazzling greens. He expressed the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. He turned his favourite songs to painting. Songs such as, ‘ennada menike mamathiyambata,’ ‘punchi sudaha suduketiya,’ ‘vile malak pipila kadimai,’ ‘basa seetha gangule peena peena namukoe nago’ became masterpieces and greatly considered by art critics as the best.

The 1940s was his best period of his life when he reached the height of fame in art and music here and abroad. One Indian art critic Jasmine Roy wrote about his paintings in Mysindia February issue 1950 as

“There is something of music in his paintings: though the colour harmony is muted, he liens have all the charm and rhythm of the Indian Ragas. He is purely decorative art, as most Indian art is but added to this quality his symbolism is quite original and striking.”

His illustrations for the song ‘Ennada Menike Mamath Diyambata’ drew the following remarks for his contemporary music maestro Sunil Shantha “It is no easy task to discern weather Ananda Samarakoone was born as a musician or a painter.”

He penned the ‘Namo, Namo, Matha’ song in 1946 when he was teaching music and art at Mahinda College, Galle. This song was officially accepted by the State as the national anthem of Sri Lanka in 1952. Grief stricken by his son’s death he fled to India and between 1948-1951 and held exhibitions in Bombay Lucknow, Gova, Singapore, and Kualampoor and won the admiration of all art lovers.

In the 1948 February issue of the Illustrated Weekly of India carried one of Ananda’s paintings on the front cover. It was the first time a painting by a Sri Lankan artist was published in an Indian publication.

This was a great honour for him as well to his motherland. Ananda’s eleventh art exhibition and his last exhibition abroad, was held in Lucknow in 1951. On his return to Sri Lanka he held his first exhibition at the National Art Gallery, Colombo, graced by the then Governor General of Ceylon Lord Soulbury. In 1952 he divorced his second wife Caraline de Silva. On April 5, 1962 Ananda Samarakoone died as a result of taking an over-doze of sleeping tablets. He was 57 at the time of his death.