Category Archives: paintings

August 20, 2022 · 2:05 am

The Tales around a Painting: The Kandyan Ambassadors’ Audience in Dutch Colombo, 1772

Dr Srilal Fernando in Melbourne, reproducing the firs t part of an article that arpperas in THE CEYLANKAN, The journal of the ceylon Society of Australia, Vol25/3, August 2022. Its full title therein is as follows: “The Story of a Painting. Governor Falck’s Audience to the Kandyan Ambassadors in 1772drawn and painted from life by C F Reimer, Surgeon.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A group photograph is part of a visual record of a modern day conference. What did they do in 1772, long before the advent of photography? A skilled artist was commissioned to paint the scene as it happened. The occasion was the visit of 3 Kandyan ambassadors to attend a meeting with the then Dutch Governor , Iman Willem Falck in Colombo.

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June 25, 2022 · 8:35 pm

Errol Fernando’s Reading of the Day’s Play at Headingley

Errol Fernando to one “Gavin,” 25/26 June 2022

Predictions under the McCullum/Stokes alliance are totally impossible, Gavin.   England 55 for 6 chasing 329 and now 264 for 6  starting  all-important Day Three.  I was WAY off with my prediction in the previous Test.  Way off indeed, even by my standards.

However, I now have the perfect solution. I will make my usual prediction which I will keep to myself. I will then send you the OPPOSITE prediction  –  something completely absurd and ridiculous  –   and sure enough that is most likely to happen under McCullum/Stokes!  If I had done that in the previous Test I would have been hired by the bookmakers.

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May 13, 2022 · 7:56 pm

A Requiem For Barbara Sansoni: From 1962 ….

Somasiri Devendra, ** whose chosen title is “A wooden bridge, an iron house, and Barbara then ….”

.………… of such are memories made, writes Somasiri Devendra

So, Barbara has ridden off into the sunset, on her white horse, after “a hard day’s night” leaving behind memories of the times when she was a person, not an icon, and very good company indeed. Those memories reach back 60 years.

 Barbara and Hildon Sansoni in 1958

 

 

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April 25, 2022 · 6:13 pm

Always Ahead of the Present: Farewell Barbara Sansoni

Nazreen, Anjalendran & Ismeth farewell Barbara Sansoni —https://thuppahis.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post&calypsoify=1

ONE; Nazreen Sansoni, ……… Barbara Sansoni, the well-known Sri Lankan artist and designer, passed away on April 23rd at around 1.10 a.m., just one hour after her 94th birthday. Dominic, her devoted son and Kavi, her faithful right hand, were by her side – Simon, her eldest, could not make it as he was in London.

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April 9, 2022 · 8:36 pm

Buddhist Temples in Lanka: Evocative Thoughts

Uditha Devapriya, in The Island, 9 April 2022, … With input from and photographs by Manusha Lakshan … & bearing this title  “Some reflections on the temples of the South”

The social and cultural history of Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka has been the object of study for well over a century. Far from receding into a world of their own, these temples occupied a prominent place in the world around them. Buddhist monks lived under a code of piety and self-denial, and they operated under their own rules and customs. Yet despite being cut off from mundane concerns, they were very much linked to the society they hailed from. Granted entire villages for their upkeep, the clergy made use of the social institutions of their time, most prominently caste, to maintain their hold.

 

 Ceityagiri, 

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March 27, 2022 · 7:49 pm

David Paynter’s Open Homosexuality on Display THEN

Namini Wijedasa, on David Shillingford Paynter, in The Sunday Times, 22 November 2015, sent to me by Jane Russell of UK and Sri Lanka

David Shillingford Paynter was an ornament of the Anglo-Ceylonese community. His middle name indicates that his English father was a west countryman, most likely from Devon. Paynter combined a Protestant work ethic with a Sinhalese aesthetic sensibility about colour and form. 

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February 21, 2022 · 12:09 am

British Tourists commence return to Sri Lanka’s Touring Delights

Emma Thompson, in The Sunday Times …  of London…. where the title is “Sri Lanka at Its Most Glorius”  …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi …. and phtos added from his stock

The sacred city of Kandy courses with life. Monkeys tightrope along telephone cables, the trees around Kandy Lake are feathered with hordes of egrets, and the Temple of the Tooth — said to house the Buddha’s left canine — thrums with the sound of drums pounded every evening for puja (worship).

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January 22, 2022 · 5:30 pm

Romila Thapar & Sri Lanka’s Heritage in Today’s Dismal Context

Uditha Devapriya

On Thursday, the 27th of January, Professor Romila Thapar will deliver the Dr Roland Silva Memorial Lecture to the National Trust of Sri Lanka. Professor Thapar will be speaking about the museum in India, charting its evolution from private collections to public displays and placing it in the context of similar institutions from other colonial societies.

 

 

 

 

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January 19, 2022 · 10:03 am

Buddhism among Tamils in the Past … and Present-Day Squabbles

PK Balachandran, in The Citizen, 8 August 2021, where the title is “In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Link with Buddhism is Brushed Under the Carpet”

Unsustainable claims put forward by the Sinhalese and the Tamils on language, religion and ethnicity, have muddied Sri Lankan politics in the post-independence era. The Sinhalese loudly proclaim that Buddhism is quintessentially and exclusively, a “Sinhala” religion. The Tamils, on the other hand, claim with equal vehemence, that they have always been unalloyed Hindus, who had never ever had anything to do with Buddhism, which they identify with “Sinhala hegemony.”

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October 17, 2021 · 4:05 pm

The Nomenclature and Lineaments of White-Brown Cohabitation in British Ceylon: A Puzzle

MEMO from Michael Roberts, October 16 October 2021

Moving from BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI to the Greet and Paynter lineages in British Ceylon-and-thereafter has raised a query in my mind: how is it that the category “ANGLO-Ceylonese” did not take root in Ceylon and Lanka in contrast with British India where the label “Anglo-Indian” became well-entrenched[1] and therefore was carried over to the era after India secured Independence in 1947? As we know,[2] Revd Arthur Paynter was an Anglo-Indian missionary who established the Paynter Homes in the Himalayan region of India and then set up the Paynter Home in Nuwara Eliya. He had also married a fellow-missionary in the Salvation Army who was pursuing her commitment in India, one Miss Weerasooria from Dodanduwa … and together sired a talented lineage.

Photograph on display at the Paynter Home of the Paynter family. David Paynter stands at the centre, behind his mother Agnes

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