David Paynter

David Shillingford Paynter (5 March 1900 – 7 June 1975), was an internationally renowned Sri Lankan painter. He was a pioneer creator of a Sri Lankan idiom in what was essentially a Western art form. His most celebrated works are his murals at the Trinity College Chapel in Kandy and the Chapel of the Transfiguration, at S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia. The Sri Lanka Philatelic Bureau commemorated Christmas in 1996 with two stamps featuring the murals from the Trinity Chapel.

Early life

David's father, Arthur Stephen Paynter, was born in Bicester in Oxfordshire, where his family owned several breweries. Arthur married Anagi Weerasooriya, sister of Arnolis Weerasooriya, from the south of Sri Lanka. His parents were both members of the Salvation Army and worked in India, who after a number of years left in order to start the India Christian Mission. His parents moved to Ceylon in 1904, where they started a mission in Nuwara Eliya. Paynter had his primary education at Breeks Memorial School in India, and his secondary education at Trinity College, Kandy.

Apart from the basic guidance he received at Trinity, he had no formal art lessons. Yet Paynter entered the Royal Academy by winning a five-year scholarship in the open competition with students, many of whom received formal instruction in European art schools.

Paynter and the Royal Academy

Paynter won the Royal Academy Gold Medal at the end of the fourth year along with the Edward Stott Travelling Scholarship which gave him two years in Italy. In 1936, he visited London for the third time – a productive and rewarding period in his art career. His one-man exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery in London brought him much recognition from art critics and journals in Europe. By invitation he participated in four international exhibitions in the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg in Rome, in New Delhi and at the World Fair held in New York. From 1923 to 1940 his paintings were exhibited every year at the Royal Academy in London. The themes of most of his early works are religious. In 1923 two of his best pictures The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and the Entombment were considered powerful and dramatic statements of deeply felt religious experiences.

Work on the chapel began in 1923. By 1929, the side chapel was erected, and Paynter began work on his first mural. His murals in the chapel, which comprise 'Are Ye Able', 'Washing the Disciples' Feet', 'The Good Samaritan' and 'The Crucifixion', are Bible stories transferred to Ceylon people and scenery.

Last years Apart from his painting, Paynter was also involved in the social service work of the Paynters Homes for orphan children in Nuwara Eliya, which was started by his father. David commenced the Salt Spring Farm at Kumburupiddi near Trincomalee, in 1962 to settle boys from Paynter's Homes, and moved there permanently to settle as a farmer. In 1968 took up his palette to complete his final masterpiece – the mural known as 'The Transfiguration' at the chapel of St Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia.

Paynter died of a heart attack on 7 June 1975 and was buried in the Union Church cemetery in Nuwara Eliya.