Old MASTERS

Donald Ramanayake:

Incomparable landscape painter

Biographies of landscape painters often convey the impression that nature was their subject's inspiration and that their art was founded upon the study of landscape itself. The art of most landscape painters, like that of most painters in fact derives principally from the example of other painters.

Landscape, especially landscape undisciplined by man, possesses particular difficulties to painting. Confronted by nature as it stretches away to the horizon in every direction in infinite complexity, the untaught eye is baffled. There is nothing spectacular, nothing even striking personal, about Donald Ramanayaka's landscapes because the personality of the painter was quiet, reticent and serene.

Donald Ramanayaka

I first came to know Donald Ramanayake in the 1960's at an exhibition held at the Ceylon Society of Arts. Having learned his rudiments of art from the late Gate Mudliyar A. C. G. S. Amarasekera he turned out to be one of the brilliant landscape painters during his period. He first had his early education at Cathedral College, Kotahena and later joined Trinity College, Kandy.

After leaving school, he got involved in full time painting. He became a life member of the Ceylon Society of Arts and participated in many exhibitions organised by the society. Most of his landscapes were upcountry scenes. He captured the scenic beauty of tea estates, mountains, waterfalls, footpaths, paddyfields and huts in the villages. He was influenced by a Russian interior decorator who was in Sri Lanka during this period. He was Alexander Dimitri Sofronoff and Mudliyar A. C. G. S. Amarasekera made a indelible mark in the study of painting landscape and sea scape.

In 1954 a painting of his was exhibited at the Royal College in London and televised by BBC in 1971. In 1971 he toured the US, Paris, Germany and Britain. His paintings were exhibited in Bangladesh, Bulgariya, Brazil, China and South Korea.

He had a individual style of painting landscapes. He was awarded a gold medal by the Sri Lanka National Art Gallery for the services and achievements in the sphere of art. He is a recipient of the Kalapathi and Kalabushana awards in 1988 and 1989 respectively.

He represented Sri Lanka at Dhaka, Bangladesh at the Asian Art Conference. He was elected president of Ceylon Society of Arts in 1975-1983.

He was born on November 18, 1920. His father was a planter. So most of his young days were spent in tea estates. This is the very reason that his work influenced many landscapes of tea estates, tea pluckers, factories, labourers working in estates and waterfalls. He met his wife at an art exhibition. A dark girl in her teens with sharp features was standing in front of a painting and admiring the special colours and the composition the artist had used in his painting.

After a little while a person had come to her and given his visiting card and had said if she is interested in learning art to contact him. After a few months when he proposed to her only she knew that it was Donald Ramanayake who gave the visiting card and it was one of his paintings that she was admiring at that particular exhibition. He got married to her in 1963. He was appointed curator of the National Art Gallery from 1984-1986 and has been a member of the advisory panel for Art and Sculpture of the Art Council of Sri Lanka.

And interesting enough, the older he grew the more skilful he became not only in the mixture of his colours but also in the texture of his design.

His last years brought no diminution in his genius. His art never suffered from the sunset of an outlived inspiration. On the contrary, like good wine, it improved with age.

Towards the end his robust strength began to give away. The end was now only a matter of weeks. It came one evening in May 2, 1993.

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