Yomal Senerath-Yapa, in The Sunday Times, October 2026, where the title reads thus: “Legacy of ‘The Eastern Degas’ to give life to creativity” … & the sub-title runs thus “Seven decades of George Beven’s art to fund a new trust for artists”
Two Scottish lawyers who have made their ‘nest’ in Negombo after voyages across the world, have been left the entire art collection of George Beven, and according to his last will and testament are setting up a foundation to sell the collection and use the proceeds to help deserving Sri Lankan artists.
We meet Ian Wattie and Thomas Laurie over coffee, where the couple hark back to their first meeting with Beven and his partner Wolfgang Stange in London. “Larger than life” was ‘Wolf’ prancing across the Lyric Theatre, who when probed by Ian as to whether he had settled his complicated legal affairs, would inevitably drawl “no darling I haven’t, I haven’t”. Wolfgang’s heart was entirely given to dance (being a choreographer and dance director) and Ian had to find him lawyers to keep his finances straight.
With the passing of Beven in 2023 and of Wolfgang in 2024, the entire collection of art came to Ian and Thomas as custodians. These had been housed in three properties in Sri Lanka as well as in Beven and Wolfgang’s London house.
It’s a daunting legacy given that all art has to be catalogued and some of the ‘Ceylon monotones’ – one colour paintings of Ceylon society and scenes have to be perused to identify the personages therein celebrated, but it must also have been fascinating given it’s a chronicle of a tapestry of one of Lanka’s most celebrated modern artists.
A modern Master: Beven’s works (top: Reclining green man and above: Margot Fonteyn
It begins in the 1950s at the end of which Beven went to London (not a very welcoming metropolis for a foreign artist just then) yet a city which he conquered. “The Eastern Degas!” enthused the British press following his first solo exhibition (and indeed at his passing, broadsheets like the Guardian would carry obituaries).
From there to the ‘Swinging Sixties’ in Carnaby Street, where Beven did fashion sketches of those ‘big hair’ belles and cartoons. In the seventies he went on a long sojourn to China. His sketches from there are quirky and lively – of Red guards and hotel bellboys against mountain paintings.
He would then move to other techniques using a toothbrush to do Indian ink portraits, and his fingers to do oils, while he would do monotone portraits of people including dancers like Hilde Holger, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, and also Hollywood stars Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, while his portrait of Princess Margaret done in 1975 hangs at Kensington Palace today.
Intriguingly, the collection includes two paintings by Alexander Sofronoff kept by Beven, deeply nostalgic, beautiful landscapes of tropical Ceylon.
The ‘Sofronoffs’ had accumulated layers of dust over the years and are still at the restorers, say Ian and Thomas, adding that as section by section is cleaned, the splendour of the original colours are resplendent like in the painting ‘Sunrise at Sri Pada’ where the dawn on the mount, shrouded with clouds, is shown in light blues but also “beautiful oranges and reds”…
Just as avid for vibrant colour and the sun as Sofronoff was Beven, who would always return to Sri Lanka which he called “my only sunshine” says Ian.
Ian Wattie
As for the Beven Foundation, Ian and Thomas state it is “committed to principles of driving creativity, building capacity, promoting inclusivity, and encouraging reciprocity. In its early days, the Beven Foundation will hold focus groups with a range of artists to assess unmet needs in their artistic communities. The Foundation will seek to support artists at all career stages, from the provision of materials and work spaces, to training in artists’ rights, to promoting career-changing opportunities, such as support for travel and internships”.
Ian and Thomas say they will launch the Beven Foundation later this year at Barefoot, after all the paintings are restored and the probate completed.
| Beven the unassuming man | |
| George Beven was a Negombo lad, born in 1929 to Lorenz Beven who was the manager of a coconut estate and Kathleen Wright, a piano teacher. He schooled at Newstead College and Maris Stella College and while still at school sent some of his fashion sketches to the Ceylon Observer, following which he was offered a job. He had to decline as he was sitting for his exams, but the Editor said: “Finish your schooling and then come, the job is yours.”Having studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, he had his first solo exhibition at the Royal Empire Society, London. He went on to have numerous exhibitions in Sri Lanka and the UK, including a retrospective at the JDA Perera Gallery in Colombo last year. He met his life’s partner Wolfgang Stange in 1970 in London.He shunned the limelight: a friend described how, at the exhibition to mark Beven’s 90th birthday in Sri Lanka, “instead of taking centre stage and revelling in the attention, George was almost hidden in a corner watching the evening progress”. Beven passed away in 2023 in London. |
