Artist And Art

Sheikh Mohammad Sultan was indeed art personified, To call him simply a painter of high distinction would be an understatement. In the last days of his life, he built his home in the suburban parts of Narail town. There in the eyes of the public, he was a saintly personage loved by all and lost in his search for truth and beauty. From afar, people watched with reverence his impulses of singing and dancing in the open in a trance. At his instance, again, the locals had come forward to build boats for occupational purpose. On his initiative and with funds he collected, an informal primary school and later a regular secondary school was built. And all through, he also ran a studio for teaching how to paint pictures. A fugitive from material pursuits, he nevertheless got involved in productive enterprises and public welfare initiatives. And all through his activities ran a cordless sequence of creativity that bore the hallmark of his charming personality. His whole life was spent like the rhymes of an epic. In his early life, Sultan was altogether wayward, brooking no bindings. 'A maniac in angry search for a touchstone" that was the impression he made on the small world of his kith and kin in his years of adolescence. Underneath his apparently wayward conduct, he was always looking for some order. A creative inspiration, a passion for replication kept his mind seized all the time. He was curious to see more, to know more and was always trying to figure out how best to transmit on paper and record the impression left on his mind by a visual experience, He acquired this tendency right in his childhood. Sultan's place of birth was village Masumdia in the-then Narail sub-division of (Greater) Jessore.

He was born in apoor family on August 10, 1924. His father was Sheikh Mescr Ali. Although the only child of his parents, Sultan's family was able to afTord his primary education only upto class five, After that primary schooling, Sultan had begun earning at a very young age for the subsistence of the family. Ile began as a helper for brick-laying work of his father. His father was a mason, Child Sultan used to draw materials for his father and watch him build. Distinguished writer Ahmed Safa described the character- formation of Sultan from his childhood work expenence as follows : 'There are some that are born, but the circumstances of their birth cannot hold them. All of them cannot be called rare-born either. There are some children born '"ith a peculiar nature in this world. Their natural urge ix to eat off the bindings of their birth. Not all of them manage to transcend into another life-cycle in their life-tirne. In crores, one may find only a few '*ho attain at birth transmigration into a higher life-cycle. The gcxj of life on his own comes forward to light that vsonderful flarrE of transcendence in the lamp of the new-born life. V.'hcther

Sheikh Mohammad Sultan blessed 'Aich that fortune and also cursed by that misfortune. Sultan alias Lal Mia was born in a rx-asunt family. father used to do hous.e-building in to farming for additional earning dunng the lean days of agricultural activity. House-builders are regar€ Machine generated alternative text: distinct class in our rural communities. But it is not a hereditary occupation. Just as some one in rural life becomes a singer or a bard out of his native talent, in the same way one becomes a house-builder out of dexterity with bamboo and cane. Till the other day when corrugated iron sheets were introduced in rural housing, a house- builder used to enjoy the prestige of an artist in a rural community... The eight-roof, two-roof cottages built these days are but misshapen manifestations of poverty, and awkward constructions for the vulgar need of roofs over artistry,

The beauty of traditional housing of rural Bangladesh with wood, bamboo and cane as rudiments is becoming extinct. Be that as it may, one can say this much at most about young Lal Mia that his urge for creating wonderful objects could be considered an inheritance from his house-builder parent....Child Lal Mia would draw with charcoal wherever he could, and if he could lay his hands on paints, he would be carried away. But where would hem get paints? Raw turmeric and 'pui' fruits provided him natural colours for paintings. One day such paintings of child Sultan caught the eyes of the local Zemindar. The noble was very impressed (and arranged for his further schooling). Details are not known how far his schooling continued there. In fact Lal Mia ran away to Calcutta before he was to sit for his last school examination. In his childhood, Sultan saw how his brick-layer father gave three-dimensional architectural shape to two-dimensional designs. Young Sultan's tendency developed in the opposite direction. He was enamoured with how to translate into two-dimensional designs the three- dimensional images of his visual experience. His inborn genius for drawing drove him in that direction. As Safa narrates, young Sultan's power of observation, his talent for drawings, his eagerness to learn attracted the attention of a rich Zemindar and local community bigwig Dhirendranath Roy. With charitable patronage, he continued his school education. His secondary school education had formally begun in 1928 in Narail Victoria Collegiate School. But before he finished high school, he left for Calcutta to obtain special schooling in art. Reaching Calcutta from a suburban rustic mofussil milieu sustained by mystic-minstrel culture, Sultan could not turn his eyes from anything he saw. And whatever he saw, he wanted to reproduce on paper. Anyhow, he finally managed to get admission into Calcutta Art College in 1940 on the recommendation of art-connoisseur Shahed Suhrawardy, once Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, to whom Sultan turned for help. Sultan himself described this stroke of fortune in his life as follows : "I ran away from home irked by stepmother's shenanigans. In Calcutta, I took shelter in the house of the Zemindar of Narail. My father was a mason in the employ of this Zemindar. The younger brother of the Zemindar was impressed by my passion for drawing. If I got hold of some supply of charcoal, I drew on the walls of the house. He brought for me from Britain two large-sized books with pictures and English writings. There were hosts of paintings and many types of sketches. The lord Zemindar told me, 'If you want to be an artist you have to learn these preliminary lessons in art.' I was a teenager at that time. I spent two years in that house, The younger brother of the art-connoisseur Zemindar then advised me, 'Lal Mia, if you want to be a big artist, you have to take lessons in art from a better teacher That means you have to get admission into an art school or college. Before that, though, you will have to pass an interview.' I stood first in an interview for admission in Calcutta Art School.

I had not passed matriculation (school final examination). So I was short of qualification for admission. The lord Zemindar said, 'There is a way. You have to approach Mr. Shahed Suhrawardy. He is a memberof the admission committee. If he recommends, there willbe no problem for you.'I took the address and set out for the house of Mr.Suhrawardy. 'When I reached there, he was going out in hisprivate car I stood in front of the house. He beckoned me to come forward, and asked me why I stood there. I told a lie that I had no one to care for me. Mr. Suhrawardy got out of the car and took me inside the house. He showed me to a room and told me to go in and address the lady seated in that room as my mother. The lady was childless, wife of an uncle of Mr. Shahed Suhrawardy. I found her, an aging pretty lady wearing gold ornaments, seated on a large bed over a snow-white bed-spread. I called her, 'mother'. She looked at me tenderly, came down from the bed, and hugged me. I became a member of the Suhrawardy family. The bar was lifted for my admission into the Art School. I also became the care-taker of the big library of the exceptional art-critic and savant, Shahed Suhrawardy. I

was thrilled beyond measure." But before he completed his regular course of art- education in the college, Sultan again set out on a tour of India. I shall quote Ahmed Safa again about this phase of Sultan's life: "Pictures drawn by adolescent Lal Mia caught the eyes of the art-critic, Shahed Suhrawardy He arranged for (Sultan's) board and lodging at his own residence, bought him clothings, and got him admitted into the art-school by waiver of his lack of requisite (scholastic) qualification.... (As if) a step of rebirth was crossed (by Sultan with his help). But Lal Mia alias Sultan once again stepped out for nowhere before his art-courses and exercises were finished, (He escaped) like the handsome graceful young man in Tegore's short story, 'The Guest', who found unexpected fortune of care and affection, riches and possessions, and a charruing bride, but left everything to quietly flee from Che attachnjen( of the (appointed) in-laws' household. In the first time, the rustic Lal Mia ran away from home to the city of Calcutta, In the second tilue, he left Calcutta to run the length of (he entire Indian expanse from Kanyakumarika to the It was the time of the Second World War, Himalayas For five or ten takas, Sultan used to draw ponraits of white soldiers and move from city to city in India. He had no thoughts no fears, no duties and responsibilities, 'but only the motion of wandering and intense fascination for beauty, No one can say what happened to Sultan's paintings of this period, where they are all gone," Sultan used to earn his upkeep by painting, He also took some informal lessons in dancing, He spent quite some time in Kashmir, the earthly paradise, Over two years, in fact, from 1944 to 1946, Political unrest had already started at that time in Kashmir, Then in the turmoil of colonial withdrawal, with the exodus of streams of refugees uprooted from their homes, he also departed for Karachi, the capital of the newly formed state of Pakistan, On arrival there, he earned the favour of Mohtarema Fatema Jinnah, sister of the Governor General Mohammad Ali Jinnah. She arranged for his free food and accommodation in the top hotel of Karachi at that time,

the Metropole. That hotel was the hangout of wealthy and an-loving Parsi community of Karachi at that time. Sultan, however, preferred to concentrate on painting large canvases of ill-fed, starved unbecoming features of the immigrant Mohajirs (refugees), instead of those of

well-groomed rich people around him, except for the

portraits of a few that he was persuaded to paint out of

personal affinity, The cardinal motif of his drawings,

watercolours and oils at that time became the raised fists

of will to live amongst destitute caravans and the

distressed looks of displaced families.

Then suddenly in the beaches of Karachi, where the shore

and the waters and the skies met in an orgy, Sultan felt a

tremendous urge to be alone, The unbound within the

bounds of nature seemed to lure him away, far from the

madding crowds of cities, Ile went to the wooded hills of

Kashmir adjoining Punjab to search for the essence of

beauty and diversity of natural formations, PIT)e flaming

colours of sunlight playing on the shaded forests along the

slopes of mountain peaks became the refrain of his

paintings, 'Il)is was the most colourful period of Sultan's

paintings, 'Ibe beauty of bright colours in orchestration

almost obliterated the Visual dilll•renlialion of lines and

forms in his compositions of Ibis period

Returning to Karachi, Sultan contributed O

art exhibitions. Ile also got involved with acting on stage

in amateur theater for some lime, An obndged

paraphrased version of a critique of Sultan's of

period written by S, Amjad Ali, an ar(-cJjnc of

Pakistan distinction in quoled hereunder

It is ijuportan( Co note various incidents in S,M, Sultan's

life to be able to appreciate his paintings. He spenl lus

childhood in the rustic countryside of Bengal, He gol

some formal art-education as a boy-wonder jn ColclJ11a

Ans School, But he did finish school and left jnsfead

as a wanderer traversing the enure sub-continent, (One

may say he did not obtain any regular educaljon. But wjlju

keen eyes he discerned the reproduction of works by

contemporary Inaster-paincers, albeit without fully

grasping the revolutionary injplications of techniques and

aesthetic values they represented,

He is earning a living somehow with pen and brush as bio

only resource, Ile knows no other vocation for Ijis

subsistence, He refuses to work on cornmercial an, Nor

does he have the patience for any conjmercjal endeavour

As a result he has been poor all his life, although al lirnes

he did enjoy affluence and often acted profligate, As be

grew up during the war, most of his buyers happened

incidentally to be British military officers who c arried

back home his paintings along willi other curios

mementos of their stay in India, Sultan han indeed been

greatly influenced by the taste and the ideah of' the forejgn

art-lovers as well as other anists willi whorl) he socialized

What has been said so far does not help a pail)lcv to

develop a singular style, Jn fact in such a circumstance a

painter may tend to create an-works in diverse styleb. 11

would be a reasonable assumption that Sultan

pictures in old Mughal miniature style, as there a high

demand for such paintings arnongst collectors during the

war, But the painter in Sultan had an exjuvssionBtic

that would not be satisfied by mechanical representation,

Every true allist creates pictorial an 10 please himself as

well as to please the buyer, Sultan the second

was a nece'Sity, but he was never persuaded to a

style that was not particularly suited 10 own

temperament, Like other young painters, he

to a style thal project» personality, when a

discontent continues key colour palette of his watercolour landscapes of

Bengal, wherein the serenity of pastoral environment is

depicted by the freedom of expanse of skies and waters,

of the fading horizon, the cocoanut trees, fishermen at

work and dainty cottages. They are flat, fluid and flimsy.

Then there are the Kashmir landscapes, most of which are

in oil colour, and all of them are very picturesque, loud

with vivid colours. They display the depth of violet

mountains, many kinds of shrubberies, trees, lakes and

streams, variegated pictures quite the opposite of the

monotone of Bengal landscapes.

Both these types of pictures evince a literary interest. One

can say that interest is highlighted by the restlessness of

the artist, whose aim is essentially to project an identity of

attractive signs and important symbols as natural objects,

and not to search for aesthetic values in the study of forms

and colours or their synthesis in purposeful configuration.

Severally or in totality, the narrative in these pictures do

not qualify for structural credibility. They are not the

products of instant viewing. His landscapes revolve in fast

and fine movements of growth, and on large canvases the

play of light on them becomes the motif of his

compositions. But that is not all of Sultan. In many close-

range views and in some watercolour landscapes, one is

struck by the drama of light and shade around a lone tree,

on the shrubbery or a bright green paddy field. He painted

these pictures keeping in mind the subtle changes of tone

in the colours and shades of foliage brought about by

shifting sunlight. He displays tremendous excitement in

this type of works. Such works not only demand skill and

artistry in presentation of objects and dexterity in

mounting successive washes of transparent colours, but

also requires capacity to animate every picture with adroit

expressionistic touches and to rebuild reality in mind with

the rhythm and intensity of the dynamics of life The

characteristic of a tree thus not only lends itself to many a

splendid interpretations, but also becomes a high-quality

object of art by permutation of lines and colours, light and

shade.

In the works referred to as above, Sultan disturbs his

pictorial background, forms and perspectives for the

tremendous attraction of colours and colour harmony But

the same is not very applicable to his small-sized beautiful

landscapes, particularly those in which he applied oil

colour with spatula. In these pictures, he is much more

sensitive about the composite structure of pictorial values,

of the plasticity of the content and of the relativity

between the surface and the depth of the picture. The

picture surface of such a painting is no more a uniform

plane, but attains peculiarity by articulate application of

thick broad coats of paints and loud colour combination.

Different tones of the same colour as well create a cascade

of liveliness supplementing the sensitivity of the subject

Side by side the accommodation of a variety of colours

adds to the structural semblance of the picture and creates

a faultless musical orchestration. Like Cezanne said,

when the order of colours reaches the highest level of

excellence, the forms also reach that peak. These pictures

have no literary interesc They are only modes of

expression of the painter's personality and his own

realisation about forms and colours, trees and rocks, hills

and valleys."

The editor of a collection entitled 'Art in Pakistan'

published in the fifties recognized Sultan as the most

promising painter of the-then Pakistan, East and West put

together. About Sultanis life-style in this period, Matlub

Ali writes as follows :

"It is difficult to imagine today Sultan dressed as Mir

Zafar on stage throwing lines at the audience in a loud

voice : 'By God I solemnly promise never ever to betray

my master,' But surprisingly, that was the way it

happened. Towards the end of 1951 before the cold of

winter fully set in, on stage in Katrak Hall in Karachi,

capital of the-then Pakistan, Sultan appeared as Mir Zafar

for two nights in the play Sirajuddowla in front of an

audience of Bengali and non-Bengali spectators, I learnt

about it from Radio-journalist Aftabuddin Ahmed. In

early fifties Artist Sultan reappeared in Karachi and

lodged with Aftabuddin Ahmed. Screen, stage and music

artist Khan Ataur Rahman was also staying in the same

house. Two leading figures of people's music

(ganosangeet) of Bangladesh, Music Composer Altaf

Mahmood, a martyr of the liberation war, and Sheikh

Lutfar Rahman were also in Karachi at that time. Others

from (East) Bengal who were there got together with them

and decided to stage the play Sirajuddowla. Khan Ataur

Rahman was to direct the play and also to act in the

leading role. Everything was fixed, but the one acting in

the role of Mir Zafar was not upto the mark. After two

months of rehearsal, the problem remained with acting

Mir Zafar. Who else could be found to perform that role?

Sultan had a long thin beard and long locks of hair

flowing from his head. Like a padre he wore black or

brown gowns. He also wore heavy 'shoes'. At that time,

his Bengali pronunciation was not that good. He spoke

fluent Urdu and also English. His voice was quite loud

and sonorous. Everybody agreed that his theatrical style

of speaking aloud, his tall figure and his gait suited the

role of Mir Zafar. At first he was reluctant to play that

part. But when persuaded to accept the role, he did so in

earnest. He said, 'After all I am born Bengali. If I practice

a little, the pronunciations will improve.' Rehearsal took

place for three months in the residence of Aftab Ahmed,

who also played the part of Mohanlal and a double role as

well in that play.

Sultan appeared on stage in his own regular dress of black

gown, natural beard and long locks, supplemented only by

a golden fibre-belt around his waist and a turban on his

head. His part was well-rehearsed, his pronunciation

corrected by adequate practice by that time. The director

curtailed his movement on the stage, since his long gown

imposed limitations on walking freely. But all said and

done, Sultan fared well in his first appearance as an actor.

That ends the story of Sultan as a stage actor.

About this time Sultan alone was chosen to represent

Pakistan as a whole, although he belonged the eastern

parts, in an international conference on art in Paris. He

read a paper in English in that conference.

I must narrate another story that I heard from Mr. Aftab

(Ahmed). Khan Ataur Rahman was playing his

harmonium and Sultan was making a portraiture of Aftab

on an ordinary writing paper with a pen filled with red

ink, The portraiture was nearly finished, when Sultan

suddenly left it and began humming to the tune of

harmonium music, and then began to move his spatula in

the rhythm of the music to create forms by adding paints

extraneously up and down over the portraiture.

For the person whose portrait was being done, it was an

awkward situation. Sultan consoled him by an

explanation. Quite simply, Sultan explained that what he

had added was the tune of the music. In other words,

while humming with the music as he was doing the

portraiture, he was so carried away by the tune that he had

begun rendering the notes of the music into visual forms

on the canvas. The subject of portraiture got momentarily

lost from his mind.

Sultan indeed was a born artist. He could easily roam in

various fields of art. Music, of course, he studied in depth.

A flute was his constant companion; he always carried

one in the large pocket of the gown he used to wear at that

time."

When he got the chance to go abroad, Sultan embarked on

a world tour. In Europe and America wherever he went, he

made shows of his paintings or in the least peddled his

artful paintings by the roadside.

On return from America, Sultan did not feel like carrying

on in Sind or Punjab. He returned to Dhaka in the first half

of the fifties, towards the end of 1953. He was allowed to

lodge for sometime in a room of the building in

Segunbagicha that was temporarily requisitioned for the

Dhaka Government Institute of Arts. About his life-style

at that time, Social Anthropologist Borhanuddin Khan

Jahangir wrote : " Sometime in the middle of the fifties'

decade, (Painter) Aminul told me: Sultan has come to

Dhaka, after travelling around in America, England and

(West) Pakistan. He wants to see everyone (in the circle of

writers and artists). Sultan by that time was already a

legend. An artist, a vagrant, a traveller, an ascetic, a

maverick, a rake, he paints and throws away paintings, his

pleasure is in making works of art, not in possessing them.

And he plays the flute, takes narcotics, looks for Radha

(goddess of love) or imagines himself to be Radha.

Aminul had a room in the Art School accommodation at

that time. It was his studio. I saw Sultan there, wearing a

black-bordered Sari, playing his flute. There was sunlight

underneath a Bokul tree (in the yard), a crow was sitting

with its back to the sun there, in the sky there were

floating white clouds; in the melody of Sultan's flute

twisted and turned the images of Dhaka city, beyond

Dhaka the villages, streams and woods, and all of them

combined to utter the name Narail, the spoils of Narail's

flute. As he finished playing the flute, Sultan inhaled a

puff of smoke of ganja (Indian hemp), stood up and said,

'Radha has come, I must go, she is waiting in a boat on

the river Buriganga'. Along with and behind Sultan, some

three of us also started on foot to reach the banks of

Buriganga. With sporadic 'Radha, Radha' refrain and

somewhat dancing gait of Sultan, we also followed

miming the rhythms of imaginary drums and cymbals;

men on the streets were bewildered. On the Buriganga, we

spent a longtime cruising on boat, and from time to time

Sultan played flute which the waves on the river seemed

to stretch their necks to hear. Back to the Art School.

Sultan began drawing with rapid fingers trees, rivers,

birds, all familiar objects traced with unfamiliar

suggestions, the beckoning of the invisible within the

visible scene. Next day when I came back looking for

Sultan, I was told he had disappeared. Perhaps he had

gone off to Narail. He had left behind his shoulder-bag,

some drawing sheets, his flute; with his Sultan alone,

Sultan had left, again an ascetic, a wanderer, vagrant,

maverick and a rake. Sultan always leaves behind his

material possessions, but he takes along with him one

possession without fail. That is Sultan's self. Sultan has

never surrendered his own Sultan to anyone, did not make

himself hostage to fame or to position or to money or to

any institution or even to any woman. His self was his

immovable property, his source, resource, focus, base and

root of existence."

This writer also met Sultan for the first time that year. I

was struck by his mental exercise of geometrical

abstraction in the natural fluency of landscapes that he

painted, oblivious of visual reality, with earth colours and

vegetable dyes. And I noticed he avoided trigonometry in

his design-effects. His moods found spontaneous

expression by blithe brush movements in circles and

semicircles forming chains of foliage. Avoiding right

angles, acute angles and obtuse angles alike, he

rhythmically bound his imagery in breaking waves of

bow-forms. After some twenty, twenty-two years, we find

the tensile beauty of such bow-forms, in the muscular

depiction of the sublimity of struggle for existence of the

tiller of the soil, exhibited in the oils of Sultan. The painter

portrayed the occupational fidelity of the working man, in

various types of village scenes with abundance of skies,

fields, riverbanks, clouds, woods and cottage shelters,

both in receiving the gracious bounties and in suffering

the wrathful retributions of nature. The looks in prayer

and the aplomb of muscles of the toiling people are

presented by Sultan in the rhythmic spiral of his

brushstrokes in bow-from on extra-large canvases. Some

connoisseurs have identified in his tendency to magnify

muscular plethora in his figures the influence of

Michelangelo, the master-painter of Catholic art of the

European Renaissance. If such an influence was there,

Sultan fully assimilated that influence by his own

simplistic style of representation of the woman's veil, the

man's brawn, the foliage, the clouds, the curves of

pathway, the swirls of river flow, et al.

Machine generated alternative text:

Sneaking away from Dhaka on his way to Narail, Sultan

first arrived in Khulna. Recitation-artist Shahabuddin

Ahmed writes about Sultan in this period : "It was 1954. I

was a second-year science student of Doulatpur BL

College. Near the Doulatpur football ground at the

southwest corner, there was a large tree of kadomba

blossoms. I saw there a slim man in dhoti and undershirt

in his thirties. He had his hair parted in the middle like

women do-dense, dark, somewhat curly abundant hair

flowing upto his shoulders. His face was covered with

beard and moustache. He was tall and brown-skinned.

And in his hand there was a bamboo flute. At first sight,

Sultan appeared to be a madman released from the

Sanatorium in Hemayetpur, Pabna.

People steer clear of madmen out of fear, but are also

curious about them. That curiosity is stronger amongst

young people. Some of us students began to gather around

that tree out of such curiosity. Our classes did not start as

yet. The hour was about 9 or 10 in the morning. The

madman began playing on his flute. Not a hypnotic

fascinating tune, but it was clear the madman was an

accomplished flute-player.

The bell rang for the class to begin. We entered the

classroom. A notice came from the Principal. A Bengali

artist returned from Europe would address the students at

12 noon. We were asked to be present. Arriving on time at

the assembly, we were surprised to see the same flutist in

dhoti and undershirt present there. He was the returnee

artist from Europe scheduled to give the lecture. He had a

white chalk in his hand and a huge blackboard behind

him.

Principal Fazlur Rahman introduced him to us as a

famous painter who had recently returned after his tour of

USA, London and Paris. He would talk on modern art and

explain to the audience what is art, what is painting. He is

known as SM Sultan. His full name is Sheikh Mohammad

Sultan.

The lecture started in English. Sultan spoke fluently as if

English was his mother tongue. And from time to time he

turned around and made some drawings on the black board.

We were spellbound by the sketches, some of humans,

some of animals, some of nature. It was not the content of

his sketches that overwhelmed us, but their speed of

execution, their spontaneity and their vigorous style.

Sultan's lecture was not limited to pictorial art alone. It

stretched into materialistic philosophy and the philosophy

of life. As he carried on his discourse, he also answered

questions from inquisitive students. And he repeatedly

said, we must go back to the void, we must return to the

void. It is from nothingness that everything evolved. We

have to return to that nothingness.

We realised that the man was not an ordinary madman, he

was mad with a purpose. He was lodged in a room in

Daulatpur College hostel. After the classes ended, we

went to see him there to find out more about this peculiar

man.

He brought out a copy of the epic Meghnadbadh from his

suitcase and began reciting parts from therein. My friends

pointed to me and said, 'He is Shahabuddin, he is good in

recitation'. Sultan said, 'Is that so? You do the reading

then. I like Modhusudan more the Tagore. He is an

exceptional poet.'

My bond of friendship with Sultan was fonned by that

recitation. But I did not know him well then. Some old

newspapers in English like New York Times, Daily

Telegraph, Herald Tribune etc. were brought out from

Sultan's suitcase. They contained reports on Sultan's

paintings along with his picture, with beard and long locks

of hair, wearing a sherwani (long coat). We realised he

was not a madman but a genius.

We also learnt that, like Michael Madhusudan (the poet),

Sultan was also a man from (greater) Jessore.

The two had some similarity of character. Both were

neglectful of regular life, reckless in habit. The difference

was Madhusudan drank wine, while Sultan smoked ganja

(Indian hemp).

Sultan (one day) was talking to us and smoking ganja

while moodily making pencil sketches in an exercise book

at the same time. He was drawing effortlessly and very

fast many types of sketches, of men and animals. I used to

do physical exercise at that time. As such, I had some idea

about sinews and muscles. I found Sultan's knowledge of

body anatomy like that of a physician. There was no

visible muscle in the body that Sultan did not know about.

He was aware of muscular details not only of the forearm

but also those around the joints of the fist and the palm of

the hand. Not only that, the veins and tendons too of a

physique came out animated by his brushstrokes and

pencil movements.

Suddenly he stopped drawing pictures and asked whether

it was possible to bring a harmonium and a tabla (finger

drum). In no time a harmonium and a tabla were brought

in. He started singing. At one point, he snatched the tabla

from the student who was playing accompaniment, and

began playing tabla himselL

There was more surprise to come. He started lecturing us

about the art of dancing, and then began dancing himself

in classical mode, nodding to the tabla-player student to

keep beats on tabla. We realised Sultan was an

accomplished artist in many fields of art. He made it

clear to us that if an artist had knowledge only about the

branch of art that he practices, he would be an imperfect

artist, not a consummate one. To be a perfect artist, it was imperative to acquire knowledge about various fields and

motifs of art. I have not met a contemporary painter as yet

who had knowledge about so many different subjects.

Suddenly Sultan got lost. Where did this crazy genius go?

We heard, he was seen with a ganja-addict mendicant of

Panbari temple, Maheshwarpasha. He was also seen with

that mendicant gazing straight at the red rising sun at

dawn with singular attention. Then we heard, Sultan was

no longer in that temple. He had gone back to Jessore, to

his own homestead. Sultan thus got lost creating a great

wonderment and curiosity in our minds. But like static

electricity, his short encounter with us remained engraved

in our memory....

(In Dhaka) towards 1958-59, I found Sultan again in the

house of poet Jasimuddin. The Sultan I saw this time was

a different Sultan. The first thing I noticed was his attire.

He had locks of hair as before, but his moustache and

beard were clean-shaven. His clothings were changed

altogether. He had a roomy lungi of earthen yellow colour

on him. There was no ektara or dotara (folk musical

instruments) in his hand, but a very large tanpura (a

classical instrument for accompaniment).

Where were you so long?

In West Pakistan (he said).

He was speaking in a calm, low voice.

I understood he spent his days boarding with several of his

Pakistani friends all this while and has been painting a lot

as he pleased...

I had met (poet) Jasimuddin in a poetry-reading event at

Jessore in the house of Zemindar Manujkanta Majumdar

On the wall in a room of Manujkanta Majumdar's house,

a watercolour portrait of Modhusudan Datta was hanging.

I heard that Sultan made that portrait. Meek as he was in

courtesy and conduct, Sultan could not say no to requests

of his friends or persons he cherished or was fond of.

Many people wanted to be intimate with a man of genius

like him. They invited him to their homes and often got

him to paint splendid pictures according to their needs.

Generous and prodigal, Sultan from time to time became

penniless. Some shrewd friends of his used to take

advantage of that, lodged him in their houses, and with

petty amounts paid, obtained from him invaluable

paintings to beautify their homes or walls or to flaunt their

elite status, Perhaps in some such friend's house,

Jasimuddin, the poet of' the bounty of spectacular nature,

discovered Sultan, the lover of nature and the spectacles

of nature,"

After that for a period of some twelve years, Sultan was

indeed completely lost frorn the eyes; of the public and

civic society. In the-then Narail subdivision of Jessore

district, he ran a school for lessons in painting for some

time.

He then retired again to the seclusion of rural life away

from the humdrum of townships. He took shelter in a

dilapidated building. The hermit in him became so

misanthropic that he usually refused to see anybody. He

kept himself in hiding, so to say. Sculptor Matiur Rahman

has written about the establishment and the demise of his

art school in Narail as follows :

"It was the year 1969. I left my employment with

Kohinoor Group of Industries and took a job with Ideal

Life Insurance. I arrived in my own sub-divisional

headquarter Narail town as Agency Manager (of the

Insurance Company), with a Motorcycle, some cash, and

a certificate of registration as a second-class contractor.

(One day) On the road at Rupganj Bazar, I saw a melee in

front of a sweetmeat shop. The crowd blocked the road.

No one was moving to make way for my Vespa despite

repeated honking. I stopped the motorbike to go into the

crowd, and found some young men bloodied in the face

on the road. A very agitated, tall lanky gentleman who was

visible over the heads of others was shouting abuses in

English. He had a bamboo flute in his hand which had

been broken into strands like in a broom. I asked a

shopkeeper who was placidly standing by, 'Who is that

man?' He said his name was Lal Mia, an artist. In fact he

was a ganja addict. He takes tea and sweets in this shop.

Some students threw him out of the tea-shop. And see,

how he has beaten up and bloodied some of the boys for

that.

Looking at him I was bewitched at first sight. I had heard

a lot about him, that he plays with snakes, dances in

groups playing ghetto (boy in love-lorn Radha role)

wearing a saree, plays on flute. On hearsay, I had

developed a contempt for that man. I do not know how

that sense of contempt vanished right away. I was angry

that he was ill-treated and asked how much money is

owed to the shopkeeper. At that, slowly the crowd

dispersed one by one. The shopkeepers who were

instigating the trouble also sneaked away. At that point I

lost my temper, On the spur of the moment I hit the

sweetmeat-maker with my fist and threw tuy Inoneybag

at his face, asking him to take whatever money was due.

I also denudes that he pays conu»ensation for the

dishonor of the artist on his account, The sweetmeat-

maker cowered, but quietly took the tnoney due, only

seventy tak'as. I asked Sultan to goin tne on the Vespa.

Sultan was silent all this while. He now said, 'But I do not

know you. I live with coeliac in the Shiva temple.' I

practically forced him to ride the Vespa with to leave the

place and proceed to ruy establishtnent in the sub divisional

town. Third he sat on tuy bedstead, exhumed, resting his head on his hand. I took out some clay that was stored

under the bedstead, and quickly modelled a figure with

that material. I put it on the table in front of him, and told

him I was also a humble artist. That was why I had been

so tnuch hurt by an artist's dishonour. I told him not to

take ganja in a teashop ever from now. I asked him to put

up in my office premises and take his meal in the

restaurant below. Bringing in some half a pound of ganja,

I said, 'take it, smoke as much as you like.' Sultan said,

'This is your office. You have farnily and children. I have

none. I do not take much ganja by myself. Those who

smoke ganja with me would not dare to come and have it

at your place. I am not a lone person, I have many

friends.' I asked who were they. He said, Ramgopal the

pariah handler of corpses for autopsy in the hospital was

one, and many such others. I assured him all of them

would be welcome at my place. I had no caste prejudice

nor was I selective in communion. I kept him confined in

the premises for quite a few days, and he got the

impression that I want to control his ways. He said at this

stage, 'For eighteen years, I had not taken a regular meal

of rice. I do not have any regular place to stay. The Shiva

temple is my refuge. I keep the company of the day-

labourer, the sweeper, the coolie and the like.' I suggested

then, 'What about my joining that crowd?' Sultan was

very happy at the suggestion. A newcomer with whom he

can talk and have camaraderie is welcome to the Shiva

temple. First we made a bet, for 21 days we shall have no

solid food. I shall then stay with him in the Shiva temple.

Thus began my life as a libertine, even in the same town

where my wife and children were left at the in-laws'

house. I earned ill-repute as a ganja addict. Infamy spread

like a blaze that the son-in-law of Gani Munshi has gone

crazy joining Sultan's ganja circle. On the eighteenth day

Sultan went to his patron, namely Saidur who was a friend

those in distress of hunger in Narail, and said, 'Saidur, I

am in a spell of lunacy. I did not take a meal for the last

18 days. Give me some money to buy food.' Sultan

returned to the Shiva temple with fever from eating water-

fermented rice with hilsha fish at Il O'clock in the night

at Sonargaon hotel by the launch-terminal, with the five

takas he had obtained from Saidur. I was waiting for him

until midnight, when he sent word to me through a

rickshaw-puller to come to the Shiva temple. There I

found him shivering with high temperature. As I went in,

he confessed, 'I could not keep the wager. I sneaked out

to take rice. You please have a meal as well.' I said, 'No,

three more days have to pass as yet.' Three more days (of

my fasting) passed. I lost eight pounds in weight. And on

the streets, I was named a madcap and a narcotic. As soon

as my Vespa went past. someone would say, if he did not

say so in the face, 'There goes the son-in-law of Gani

Munshi, the new ganja addict.'

Our sustenance at this time came from the charity of

Saidur in the kind of rice, and coarse and fine flour for

staple food, and Sultan's flute at the cemented poolside of

the zemindar's mansion overlooking the red water lilies at

night. Sultan used to play on his flute in moonlight. I saw

the red shapla flowers dancing in the lake to the tune of

the flute. Unbelievable as they may be, I saw many things

that could drive one out of one's wits. One day I found a

serpent that had bitten Sultan and dropped dead, I got

scared and left the Shiva temple. I had similar other

experiences. As days passed, I was progressively

becoming a destitute. So I asked Sultan one day, 'You

have so many patrons. If you could think of one whom we

could approach readily, let us do so. You are an anist.

Your identity is your paintings. It does not befit you to kill

time in idle talk and taming mongooses and foxes.' That

day was a full moon. Sultan played on his flute for a very

long time. We could not sleep. Around 12 midnight, I felt

a little drowsy and was lying on bed. Sultan suddenly got

up and said, 'Please bring me paper, pigments and

brushes. I want to paint. It was about quarter to one past

midnight. The whole area was asleep. Where could I get

brush and paints at that hour? I had an instant brainwave.

Packing paper of cigarette cartons were there in the shop

of Haripada Das. I left on my Vespa right away and

banged on the door of Haripada Das to wake him up, I

asked for some packing paper. He was flabbergasted and

said, 'Son-in-law, you have gone mad. You have come for

some paper at this hour of the night for Lal Mia to paint

pictures?' But the nice guy gave me a few sheets of paper

all right. Brushes were made by chewing dried sprigs of

date-trees. A yellow container left by a deranged devotee

of the Shiva temple was used to mix colour with lamp-oil.

The product was a 12"x9" picture that looked practically

incomprehensible. In an exhibition in Khulna, that picture

was named 'The dreams'.

Enam Ahmed Chowdhury was the Deputy Commissioner

of Jessore at that time. Shawkat Ali was the Sub-

Divisional Officer of Narail. I took Sultan to Mr.

Chowdhury. He was very happy to hear that Sultan had

started painting again. As I said Sultan needed a studio, he

immediately suggested that I submit an application in

plain paper for space in the name of an Institute of Fine

Art, Narail. I submitted the application (on Sultan's

behalf). The proposed art college was so named. Sultan

was named as Director, also to act as the Principal. But

Sultan Bhai did not understand official formalities. To

obtain any support from the government, it was necessary

to abide by rules and regulations. Sitting in the D.C.'s

office, we made out two applications in fact, one for.

financial ascistancc for an art exhibition, and the other for

an abandoned house. The I).C, got the applications typcd

by his stenographer and signed by us, From the I)istrict

Council, a grant of takas was qanctioned for thc

proposed art college, and an old building was allocated by

the D.C. for that purpose, two-storied building

belonged to a Shailen Ghosh of Rupganj, and bore the

name 'Kurigram', Paintings began to be executed in right

earnest. Repair work of the house and work in the garden

to grow flowers were undertaken at the same time, Six or

seven persons were engaged for gardening work.

Living with Sultan for a year, I saw some of his kith and

kin. Amongst them, his maternal uncle Nuru dear used to

sell lime. I gave him a place to stay in the Art College

without Sultan's consent and provided him with a lot of

financial assistance. One of Sultan's stepbrothers left his

employment in the army. Ile also visited the collcgc

several times. In the area, Nanda's father Indu Babu was

the rnan who actually regarded Sultan like a demigod, and

was eager to entertain the latter in his own home, Ile was

a clerk in our local Purulia Union. All the members of his

household, his wife and children were artists, some

involved in singing, some in painting.

After eighteen years, Sultan had his first exhibition (of

reappearance) in Khulna opening 20 September, 1969,

with thirty four paintings. In the meantime, Mr. Enam

(Chowdhury) had been transferred and posted as Deputy

Commissioner of Khulna. As soon as he joined his (new)

post, he sent word to bring Sultan there (from Narail,

Jessore). We reached Khulna. It was proposed that

Sultan's exhibition (funded by Jessore District Council)

would take place in Khulna Club for one evening, The

date was fixed, and arrangements began, keeping one

month's time in hand. All materials, including indigenous

course cotton sheets, sticky clay, carbon black, organic

yellow, fine powder and also proper hardboards were

provided, Stretches of canvas and large-sized hardboards

were all treated first with boiled sago for background

coating, Sketches were drawn on twenty to twenty five

canvases and hardboards with charcoal. Brushworks

followed simultaneously on several drawings with oil

colour. Patches of oil colour were also put by the spatula.

And watercolour paintings went on at the same time on

the drawing board. It seemed as if a single painter was

doing the work of a plural exhibition, What an outburst of

inconceivable energy! The scheduled date of the

exhibition was reached in no time, Only a wcck was left.

The Sub-divisional Officer (of Narail) Mr Showkat was

transferred meanwhile to Khulna„,. Sultan was beginning

to turn listless. Earlier he had expressed his wish that I

would join him in a group show. To humour him, I started

doing sornc work too in clay-modeling and

I finjshcd sotnc twenty five to thirty works but Sultan

continued to be listlcss, Mr, Enam was getting very

worried jndccd as the date of exhibition approached, llc

was phoning mc again and agajn about the progress of

Sultanfs pajnting«, Sornc members of the Khulna Club

were unhappy about holding up (norrnal) Club activities

for the exhibition, 'Il)cy were drumming into the cars of

the Deputy Cornmio,ioncr and thc Commissioner : Sultan

had forgotten how to paint, exhibition would fail to

rnatcrialisc, There was no point depriving the Club

mcmbcrs of norrnal facilities. MC Enam felt obliged to

ecnd his Al)C MC Shawkat with a car (to Narail) to get thc

paintings, Sultan was upset to see Mr. Shawkat corne and

press hard for complction of the paintings, HC stopped

work and refused to finish the paintings, To save the

situation, the Deputy Commissioner sent word suggesting

a stratagem that the paintings would be finished in

Khulna, Accordingly, all paintings finished or unfinished

and their colours still wet were arranged to be carefully

transported in scvcral trips by a pick-up motor vehicle to

reach the tin-shed auditorium of the Khulna Club, People

wcrc skeptical that so many paintings could be finished in

time for the exhibition, As Sultan resumed working on

them there, the Commissioner, D.C., A.D.C, and a

magistrate came from tirnc to time to keep company,

Medicines and tonics were brought to the club for the

asking, Sultan suddenly began working at an astonishing

speed. Within two days, he finished all the unfinished

compositions. But the colours remained wet.

Some thirty five thousand takas worth of paintings wcrc

sold in that exhibition. All that money was collected by

Khulna Club and through Mr Kamal Siddiqui, S.D,O.,

Narail, put in a bank account in the name of the Art

Institute with the Manager of the United Bank, Narail.

After the exhibition we remained in Hotcl Shahccn,

Khulna for a week as the guest of the Deputy

Commissioner, With some cash collections at the

exhibition, Mr. Enam Chowhdury bought for us art

materials worth about ten thousand takas. With all the left-

over and new materials, we returned to the building of

Shailcn Ghosh in Narial, Words went around meanwhile

that Lal 'Sahcb' has obtained lakhs of takas by sale of

paintings. Sultan's followers, holy men, monks, fakirs,

lunatics, all began to come running to the art-school (for

alms). Accounts were kept under the joint signature of the

S.D,O, and Mr. Sultan, On a number of occasions, Sultan

obtained the signature of the S.D.O. on chequcs to draw

money from the bank and distribute amongst the monks

and mendicants, At one point, the S.D.O, objected saying

the money was for the art college and not for reckless charity, Al that, some fifteen to twenty mendicants gathered

around the S.D„Os residence and began shunting at a high

pitch, Tie signed some blank cheques and threw

down the chegue bwk in disgust from upstairs. Within a

week, Sultan drew out all the money and distributed the

money amongst the monks and mendicants- The proposed

'UI college met its premature death and thus began again a

life of starvation for Sultan--

For five years, Sultan maintained a reclusive maniacal

minstrel's life-style. Some pet birds and beasts and an

adopted family was his only company. But this time, he

did not give up paintinv It is a pity that many of his works

of this period made with vegetable dyes have either been

spoiled for lack of care or simply lost.

In the last half of nineteen seventies, this forgotten painter

was rediscovered in Dhaka through his exhibition. The

looks of distress dug-out from the heart of rural

Bangladesh that was revealed in that exhibition carried the

marks of sweat and blood, but not of despair. The

signature of the indomitable life-force of eternal Bangla

Spirit that he brought out before the eyes of the

consumerism-bound citizens created a stir amongst the

an-connoisseurs within and without the country. There

was a craze amongst collectors to trace his whereabouts

and persuade him to sign his name on paintings he would

be paid in advance to compose with canvases and colours

supplied by his clients, Regarding this reappearance of

Sultan, Town Planner Professor Nazrul Islam

"Sultan materialised before the art-connoisseurs of Dhaka,

particularly the younger generation, as an extra-ordinary

genius in the first national art exhibition organised by he

Shilpakala Academy (1975). Very few of the regular

viewers of art exhibitions were at all aware of the painter

of promise of the fifties called Sultan. Thereafter the art-

lovers of Dhaka were simply overwhelmed by Sultan's

solo exhibition of more than 75 paintings organised by the

Academy in September 1976. A number of art-

connoisseurs became his devotee and his regular

companion- It is his popularity that led to his name being

bracketed with Master-painter Zainul Abedin and Painter

Quamrul HassarL These three painters are remembered

together primarily for the attribute of their paintings, not

for seniority alone. Amongst other characteristics, there is

a virtual common characteristic in these three painters- the

cardinal motif recurring in the compositions of all three

being the life of the toiling masses of rural Bangladesh and

their struggle for existence. In pictorial style, the three are

very different, but essentially tied to objective reality

Albeit both Zainul Abedin and Quamrul Hassan adhered

V) the grammar of modern paintings (in their deviations)

compared to Sultan, the latter probably chose to be

intentionally non-modern or inclined to "naive"

paintings... S, M,

Sultan's latest paintings hove bccn cornprchcnsivcly

rcnliscd in his 1976 solo exhibition, In the three dccadcs

that followed, those peculiarities did not change but were

only further shnrpcncd, Thc working man, the productive

mon, (how who arc the architects of the foundations of' the

econojny, they conje out as heroes and heroines in Sultan's

paintings, In case of' Bangladesh, it is transparent in

Sultan's ruind that that role is played by the peasant farmer

and his f'ajnily. It is also clear as n truth (o Sultan that the

pcnsanl nnd the economy of Bangladesh arc still very

dependent on nature, In Sultan's pictures, the fight

anjongst the peasants themselves for the rights of' land

which is the runin means of production gets more

importance than the civic struggle for the rights of

language, liven the struggle for indcpcndcncc is probably

counted as a theme lacking inuncdiatc rclcvancc,

Possession of the piece of' land that provides basic

subsistence gets priority over every other concern.

A peculiarity of Sultan's paintings is the physical

depiction of the Bangladeshi peasant as big-bodied with

unusually strong and developed muscularity. Yct in reality

one may rarely find in any other country around the world

the typical lean and weakly appearance of thc 13angali

peasant, Such a weakly peasant is to Sultan truly endowed

with immense power, At least that is what it should be,

what he wishes to see, Whcn wc ourselves sec thin-

looking sexagenarian Painter Sultan, and by his side the

plethora of animatcd figures on canvases thirty fcct in

length and seven f'cct in breadth, we can imaginc why

Sultan loved to attribute power to the apparently weakling

Bcngalcc peasant, Indeed power comes from inside, not

just from outward appearance."

The Shilpakala Academy awarded Sultan a special stipend

and status of Resident Artist, Many art-lovers were active

to persuade Sultan to come and live in Dhaka. But he was

averse to city life, For short spells of time, he would

accept the hospitality of someone or other in Khulna,

Chittagong or Dhaka. But he would soon bccornc restless

longing to return to the company of villagers and the pct

animals in his zoo. Painter Sycd Jahangir wrote about this

In 1977 1 was appointed Director of the

characteristic

Shilpakala Academy in charge of the Finc Arts

I)cpartmcnt, Somc time before that in 1976, a solo

exhibition of' Sultan was held in the Academy, There were

many drawings on paper, some small-sized oils as well as

bigger oil painting on canvases eight fcct in length and

four fcct in height, J Ic also had some twenty paintings on

hardboard in that exhibition, Ile used to stay in the round

hall of the Gallery and work on his paintings thcrc, The

initiative for the exhibition was (akcn by the-then Director

General of the Academy, Dr. Sirajul Islam. Subir

Indccd Simon Pereira became Sultan's constant

companion at that time, Simon described to me the

trcmcndous courage and perseverance that Sultan had to

maintain to bc able to execute those large paintings. The

subject matters of his paintings included—the liberation

war, the peasant of Bangladesh, the planting of saplings

by the primordial human, and the people of this country in

gcncral, And the theme in his own mind was the

visualisation of their struggle for existence. Sometimes he

(Af'tcr the exhibition) Sultan Bhai used to often get

excited about doing something novel, Suddenly he was

struck with thc idea that if he could get hold of a structure

that is still habitable in the decayed old township of

Sonargaon, he could make it his studio. This was done.

Shawkat Ali, the-then D.C. of Dhaka (who had earlier

cxpcricnce of Sultan's moods during his postings in

Khulna and Narail) extended his cooperation for

obtaining permission for the use of such a structure by

Sultan as his studio at a nominal rent. The Shilpakala

Academy had no direct responsibility of oversight in this

regard, but after I joined the Academy, I took it upon

myself to go and visit Sultan Bhai from time to time.

Sultan Bhai used to work on paper for drawings or for

watercolour paintings. In between he used to do some oils

on small-sized canvases. He hung these works like in a

gallery. Some times some tourists used to come to see

them. But what kept him more busy there was nightly

music sessions and parties. His companion was the local

barbar who was also his cook and his assistant at the same

time. This arrangement did not suit him for long either.

Moreover, he did not even pay the nominal rent that was

fixed for his accommodation. And on top of that, there

were complaints about his nightly adda (open house). So

Sultan had to pack up and leave that place to go back to

Narail. He lived there in the ruined structure of a

Zemindar's homestead.

He left some of his large paintings from his exhibition

held by the Academy in the house of National Professor

Mr. Razzaq. A truck was obtained with the help of his

admirers and in that truck, he took back (to Narail) those

paintings madc on hard board, many of which had by then

becn spoiled by carelessness and lack of maintenance.

(Back in Narail,) it was a long story. In early eighties

when once I went to see him there, Sultan Bhai himself

told me the entire episode of cleaning up the Zemindar's

residence to make it habitable for him to move in. I found

him comfortable in that environment living with pigeons,

chickens, cats, some other birds, and snakes, etc.

He used to live in the first floor. The corridor to go from

one roonn to another was dilapidated and without a roof. If

one's foot shipped, one would land on the shrubbery

underneath and invariably be snakebitten. Ilowever,

Sultan Bhai had in the tuean titue given shelter to a Ilindu

fatnily them in a dilapidated room. A widow and two

daughters. In exchange they looked after Sultan Bhai, Ile

used to teach earnestly one of the daughters how (o paint.

He pulled out her works from under his bed to show me.

He dtov my attention to nutny details in those works,

Amateurish watercolours but pafls stood out where the

sweeps of the teacher's brush were evident.

I went to see Sultan Bhai several times thereafter. By then

he had changed residence. The new house (next door) was

built for him by the-then General Officer Commanding of

the Jessore Cantontuent. A nice neat three-roomed

residence. And a big room for working on paintings with

an attached small ante-room. Sultan Bhai had meanwhile

built a "Children's Paradise" there. There was no other

such school at that time where children could have lessons

in the lap of nature. Next to the art-school, he built another

new structure — a ruini zoo. About a hundred animals were

collected like an ostrich, crows, starlings, a host of' cats, a

deer, a dozen rabbits, pigeons, chickens, doves etc. Sultan

Bhai had difficulty just to obtain their regular feed. It was

his habit to go around the zoo he had fondly raised and the

garden with many varieties of crouton hedgeplant.

Sometimes he went by himself to the banks of the Chitra

river nearby. He showed me around the riverbank and told

me 'I would build a boat here like Noah's Ark. I shall take

my young pupils in that boat on cruises to show them the

splendid beauty of Bangladesh.' In fact, he built such a

boat some time later. And he also took his school children

on cruises in that boat once or twice.

In the mean time, the government granted him the rare

honour as 'resident artist' of the Academy. In practice that

meant the sanction of a fixed monthly stipend to cover the

family expenses of Painter S. M. Sultan and the costs of

requisite art-materials like canvas, brushes and pigments

for his use. In exchange, he would give the Academy six

paintings per year. The arrangernent was to continue for

two years. In addition, he was to deliver one lecture on art

in each of four major universities every year. The purpose

was to make sure that he did not stop painting for want of

money. Later, his status as Resident Painter was extended

for life, upto the time of his death. During this period, he

was indeed by and large regular in doing paintings. He

executed many works on very large canvases. Other

painters in this country never attempted that as yet,

Sometimes he maintained proper perspective throughout

his cornposition, sometirnes he juxtaposed two

clinjensional renderings of objects side by side, A

peculiarity was obtained in most of' his pictures by his

preference for brown and yellow colours, with a touch of

red now and then.

Sultan 13hai apparently seemed to be taciturn, but in fact

he used to talk a lot. Once he stayed in my house (Or three

days. At (hat except for the short spells in bed, in bath

or for eating, he went on talking incessantly, And the

person he talked with was my daughter Toki, Then at

nigh( he would converse with me and Rashid (artist and

neighbor) sometimes, on philosophy, spiritualism and

science, Sometimes we agreed, sometimes differed.

Sultan Bhai would not get easily provoked, hc would

astutely avoid controversy. Although he claimed he had

got over his addiction to narcotics altogether, in fact he

could never give up the habit. But he did minimisc

stuoking hash to a large extent.

If I was not there at night and Rashid had probably left.

Sultan Bhai would start playing on his flute, Ile would

never leave the flute out of his easy reach. And he would

indicate it was high time for him to go back to Narail by

casual remarks like, 'Perhaps the zoo animals are

starving,' or 'if I am not there, they do not get their feed

properly', or 'they understand every thing. They also take

umbrage', or 'if in a fit of umbrage, they would not

respond to my calls. They would stay peeved.'

At government cost, a house of his choice was rented for

him in Mirpur (for the convenience of his execution of six

paintings for the Academy). The house was retained for a

year. But he never lived there, and avoided doing any

painting there on one pretext or another. Some of his

disciples occupied that house. The landlord demanded

compensation complaining of their rowdy drug-taking

parties (disaffecting his clientele) and gave notice to

terminate the tenancy. So we had to give up that house."

From that time onwards upto the end of his life. Sultan

simply continued to live in the cradle of rural Bangladesh,

doing painting in the company of his pet animals and in

the care of his adopted family, or otherwise may be

engaging in some welfare activity and in children's tuition

in his small village community. Not only his skills in

painting, but also his life as a whole was dedicated to

vivacious joy of creativity.

In 1987, a cojnprchensive exhibition of Sultan was held in

Dhaka with more than a hundred of his oils, water coloul

paintings and drawings executed in mid-eighties, alonl

with some specimens of work from different periods o

his life. In the words of Professor Nazrul Islant : "Withou

doubt that was a renuu•kable event in the arena of fint

ans in Dhaka. On the one hand it showed the attractive landscapes (Woods) he executed in the fifties, on the other

many drawings that he executed right at the time of the

exhibition- There were very very small pictures, as well as

very very large panels. Perhaps no other painter in this

country ever exhibited so many so very large oil

paintings.-

The principal sponsor of his exhibition in 1987 was the

Goethe Institute of Dhaka (German Cultural Institute).

The-then Director of the Institute, Peter Sevitz observed:

Sultan is the most forceful painter amongst the few

outstanding painters of this subcontinent He is the voice

of Asia- Sultan's source of strength is in his capacity for

survival. The human figures in his compositions carry the

message of man's '*ill to survive combating the odds of

existence. Bangladesh and Bangladeshis have little

(resource) other than their capacity for survival. One may

therefore recognise in his paintings the symbolism of this

nation's particular characteristics.

Professor Nazrul Islam, the town-planer and

environmentalist compared the landscapes of young

Sultan as seen in this comprehensive exhibition with his

landscapes done at more mature periods of his life.

"Sultan was a very talented landscape painter from his

early life. It is clear from his older works. But in the

eighties he has remained equally adept in turning out

excellent watercolour landscapes. His 1987 exhibition

bears witness to that. Two reproductions of his landscape

painting from the fifties can be seen from the book (on

show) entitled Art In Pakistan, third edition, 1964 written

by Jalaluddin Ahmed and published by Pakistan

Publications.

Both were done in oil, perhaps based on natural scenery in

Jessore region- In one, a bullock-cart is proceeding along

a mud road shaded by trees. The reproduction is in black

and white. In the other, some four poor villagers are seen

relaxing and taking food under a tree on the bank of a

meandering stream. Both the pictures were well-balanced

in composition, though the focus of the second picture

was somewhat indeterminate. The style of work was

impressionistic, of Van Gogh genre. His colour selection

and pattern of brush strokes patently converged with that

genre. The second picture was also somewhat reflective of

Sultan's philosophical thinking of that period. Nature was

dominant in that picture. The men there were cast in an

insignificant part. The men were like pygmies amidst the

large trees around them. Just the opposite is noticeable in

the later, more mature philosophy of the art of Sultan.

Nature is unimportant there, the men are enormously

importanL In the catalogue of Sultan's solo exhibition of

if'S;

1987 at the German Cultural Institute, the colour

reproduction of a third landscape painting of Sultan (from

earlier period) is included. It is a pure natural scenery,

three trees done in pastel colour No man or animal is

there. It is not signed by the painter, nor dated. An

exquisite work of impressionist genre, it is difficult to be

recognised as Sultan's painting if seen in isolation."

Sort of a confession was obtained from Sultan himself

about his works, by Painter and Research Scholar Dr

Rafiqul Alam, to suggest that Sultan "shuns spiritualism

but embraces mysticism". Perhaps he sought to

differentiate between the representational urges of Sultan

from "the spiritual in art" thesis of Kandinsky. And he

wrote as follows about a most fascinating picture called

'The First Plantation" by Sultan : "When at the fag end of

this (twentieth) century the whole world is worried about

environment, his painting 'The First Plantation' is

projected in our minds. Adam coming down to earth was

planting the first sapling. (We see) a brown-skin man with

immense power His body is firmly bound to the earth.

The colour of his skin and of the earth blend in harmony.

Hovering above is a 'Cupid' of (European) Renaissance

genre. In the eyes of Adam is a hypnotic vision. What is

Adam looking at? Many unspoken words are gathered in

those slightly slanted eyes! Sultan combining religion and

history synthesized the perception he developed through

his entire life about his country and (the sons of) the soil."

Painter and Art-critic Abul Mansur wrote a detailed

critique on the psyche of Sultan, characterising it as a

"liminal" frame of mind : "The first impact that Sultan's

art of painting has on a viewer is that of express power on

the verge of an explosion and of monumentality or

greatness. The viewer simply cannot take his eyes off

unconcerned, he has to become involved, curious and

attracted. The basic theme of his pictures, even

inexpensive rural landscapes, remains the people. Nature

is secondary there only as background accompaniment, ...

But then, representation of nature is certainly not the

purpose of Sultan. His job is to show ordinary humans as

powerful and sky high, larger than nature in natural

background. As a result, the proportions there (in his

paintings) get reversed — man becomes big and strong,

while nature recedes into insignificance. He is somewhat

akin to Zainul Abedin in this respect. But the two are also

remarkably different. In Zainul Abedin, nature is large and

dynamic, to keep pace with which man is engaged in an

excruciating struggle; in Sultan's paintings the dominance

of man over nature is absolute. Man does not contend with

nature, man rules nature. landscapes (Woods) he executed in the fifties, on the other

many drawings that he executed right at the time of the

exhibition- There were very very small pictures, as well as

very very large panels. Perhaps no other painter in this

country ever exhibited so many so very large oil

paintings.-

The principal sponsor of his exhibition in 1987 was the

Goethe Institute of Dhaka (German Cultural Institute).

The-then Director of the Institute, Peter Sevitz observed:

Sultan is the most forceful painter amongst the few

outstanding painters of this subcontinent He is the voice

of Asia- Sultan's source of strength is in his capacity for

survival. The human figures in his compositions carry the

message of man's '*ill to survive combating the odds of

existence. Bangladesh and Bangladeshis have little

(resource) other than their capacity for survival. One may

therefore recognise in his paintings the symbolism of this

nation's particular characteristics.

Professor Nazrul Islam, the town-planer and

environmentalist compared the landscapes of young

Sultan as seen in this comprehensive exhibition with his

landscapes done at more mature periods of his life.

"Sultan was a very talented landscape painter from his

early life. It is clear from his older works. But in the

eighties he has remained equally adept in turning out

excellent watercolour landscapes. His 1987 exhibition

bears witness to that. Two reproductions of his landscape

painting from the fifties can be seen from the book (on

show) entitled Art In Pakistan, third edition, 1964 written

by Jalaluddin Ahmed and published by Pakistan

Publications.

Both were done in oil, perhaps based on natural scenery in

Jessore region- In one, a bullock-cart is proceeding along

a mud road shaded by trees. The reproduction is in black

and white. In the other, some four poor villagers are seen

relaxing and taking food under a tree on the bank of a

meandering stream. Both the pictures were well-balanced

in composition, though the focus of the second picture

was somewhat indeterminate. The style of work was

impressionistic, of Van Gogh genre. His colour selection

and pattern of brush strokes patently converged with that

genre. The second picture was also somewhat reflective of

Sultan's philosophical thinking of that period. Nature was

dominant in that picture. The men there were cast in an

insignificant part. The men were like pygmies amidst the

large trees around them. Just the opposite is noticeable in

the later, more mature philosophy of the art of Sultan.

Nature is unimportant there, the men are enormously

importanL In the catalogue of Sultan's solo exhibition of

if'S;

1987 at the German Cultural Institute, the colour

reproduction of a third landscape painting of Sultan (from

earlier period) is included. It is a pure natural scenery,

three trees done in pastel colour No man or animal is

there. It is not signed by the painter, nor dated. An

exquisite work of impressionist genre, it is difficult to be

recognised as Sultan's painting if seen in isolation."

Sort of a confession was obtained from Sultan himself

about his works, by Painter and Research Scholar Dr

Rafiqul Alam, to suggest that Sultan "shuns spiritualism

but embraces mysticism". Perhaps he sought to

differentiate between the representational urges of Sultan

from "the spiritual in art" thesis of Kandinsky. And he

wrote as follows about a most fascinating picture called

'The First Plantation" by Sultan : "When at the fag end of

this (twentieth) century the whole world is worried about

environment, his painting 'The First Plantation' is

projected in our minds. Adam coming down to earth was

planting the first sapling. (We see) a brown-skin man with

immense power His body is firmly bound to the earth.

The colour of his skin and of the earth blend in harmony.

Hovering above is a 'Cupid' of (European) Renaissance

genre. In the eyes of Adam is a hypnotic vision. What is

Adam looking at? Many unspoken words are gathered in

those slightly slanted eyes! Sultan combining religion and

history synthesized the perception he developed through

his entire life about his country and (the sons of) the soil."

Painter and Art-critic Abul Mansur wrote a detailed

critique on the psyche of Sultan, characterising it as a

"liminal" frame of mind : "The first impact that Sultan's

art of painting has on a viewer is that of express power on

the verge of an explosion and of monumentality or

greatness. The viewer simply cannot take his eyes off

unconcerned, he has to become involved, curious and

attracted. The basic theme of his pictures, even

inexpensive rural landscapes, remains the people. Nature

is secondary there only as background accompaniment, ...

But then, representation of nature is certainly not the

purpose of Sultan. His job is to show ordinary humans as

powerful and sky high, larger than nature in natural

background. As a result, the proportions there (in his

paintings) get reversed — man becomes big and strong,

while nature recedes into insignificance. He is somewhat

akin to Zainul Abedin in this respect. But the two are also

remarkably different. In Zainul Abedin, nature is large and

dynamic, to keep pace with which man is engaged in an

excruciating struggle; in Sultan's paintings the dominance

of man over nature is absolute. Man does not contend with

nature, man rules nature.

Sultan bccomcs unique and exceptional as he depicts the

human phYQique, If the figures of men and women were

tnkcn out from hiq paintings, then the remainder would be

considcrcd very mundane indccd by artistic criteria,

Indecd a distinctivc dissemination has been obtained by

the inflated muscular male figures in his paintings, that

Icar through the mcn)branc of measly banality of his

pictures and take them to heights of aesthetic

preccntimcnt, It those figures that protect his pictures

from cheap scntimcntalism of rural scenery, and attains a

Awing of eternity. As if, Sultan was composing a folk-tale

on the daily chores of the hard-working peasantry of

Bangla countryside who arc the inheritors of the children

of Adam, the pritncval sons of the soil that torc the earth's

crust to bring out lhc first sheaf of' harvest, It is their daily

routine of life that he portrays, but through the panorama,

bc QCts human figures metamorphosed with explosive

physical strength that transcends the limits of the ordinary.

In this way, Sultan may also have covered up the

limitations of his incomplete formal education by

cxaggcrating in his own way features of human anatomy,

imparting an attractive quality of 'naive' or unskilled art of

born-artists and steadfastly giving expression to his faith

in linear repetition of a motif. His extra large canvases arc

not meticulous representations of objective reality of any

kind, They arc rather the reflections of a man's inner faith

under the spell of memories and dreams combined."

Abul Mansur regarded Sultan's male figures as symbols of

haughty, vulgar physical power. In Sultan's rendering of

female characters, on the other hand, Abul Mansur found

a sort of hcQitation not to depart from norms. He also

dclccted echoes of pre-Rephaelitc influences of the

Bengal School variety in Sultan's depiction of the village

woman. "In most cases, his women are hesitant to come

out of the bindings of formal schooling in portrayal,

Somctirnes they are even affected by the sentimentality of

the Bengal School, tender, rounded and puffed, By the

side of the mud-covered toiling male figures, they

sometimes appear to be commonplace and non-

dcscript."According to Abu) Mansur, the basic vitality of

Sultan's painting are derived from his lines. "Not

lines as akin to acadcmic drawings as in Zainul, nor the

accompaniment of courtly tradition of linear art of

Nandalal, nor lines that embrace the folk tradition like in

Jamini Roy or Quarnft/l Hassan, Onc could say Sultan's

lines were sorncthing like urbanised 'naive' art, as can be

sccn in the patterm of our rickshaw paintings,"

And this conscious or subconscious naivete had been

given an explanation by Abdul Mansur. European

anthropologists have noted a sequence of adoption of a

state of retreat from life or "rite of passage" by analysing

the old customs of primitive tribes of Africa. Abul Mansur

found similarity of such a state in Sultan's wayward

lifestyle. Anthropologist Van Genep identified in the

second stage of mature life of a primitive man a condition

called "liminality," which Abul Mansur termed as

borderline of consciousness. "At that second stage of ripe

age, the man's daily routine, social duties and codes of

conduct all remain in suspension. It could be compared to

the stage preceding birth or death. At the third stage, the

individual reenters social existence, but in a new shape

with new rights and obligations. Anthropologist Victor

Turner has later expanded the idea of liminality set forth

by Van Gencp. He applied it to various broad fields of

contemporary social criticism and art-criticism. Turner

showed that liminality is a condition that is not peculiar to

primitive or tribal societies only. In all societies at all

times, there are some people who voluntarily adopt such

conditions of liminality. That liminality may find

expression in a number of ways, like self-inflicted

poverty, vagrant nature, perverse conduct, defiance of

prevalent norms and even provocation of social conflict.

Such aberrations might render them as immoral,

unsuccessful people in the eyes of the society. Perhaps in

fact they are pursuing a different, possibly a higher level

of morality. "

Abul Mansur detected an "intimate correlation" between

the creativity of Sultan and his precarious liminality of

life-style, which is also noticeable in Van Gogh, Gaungin,

Michael Modhusudan or Kazi Nazrul. Sociologist and

Theoretician of Fine Arts Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir, on

the other hand, ignored suggestions of Sultan's

"mysticism" or his "liminality" or his "inspired-minstrel"

nature, and identified a language of protest in the

depiction of the peasant as a superman in Sultan's

paintings, calling it his native modernism : "Is the

experience of life in the inferior (Third) world marginal?

Sultan, returned from England-America-Pakistan, has an

answer to that question. He says the painters of the

subjugated world are not just ethnic painters, they are not

just exponents of marginal life-experience which is

limited to the past and is distant from modernity; they are

but the proponents of another reality from the complex,

separate and unique experience of slavery, dependence

and colonialism imposed on subjugated peoples. That

experience lends their communities distinctive voice and

vision, power to think, observe and speak out differently.

Such voice and vision are not outside the orbit of modern

productivity They are but another kind of modernity. It is

a native product of modernity, that of the peasant,

modernity of inspired-minstrel songs, it is the story of

resistance by the defeated, humiliated subjugated peasant,

by the righteous, the mendicant, the fakir. It is rich from

the experience of every day life. In the power grid called

modernity, that experience makes a different kind of

selection and a different pattern of fabric. From such

selection and fabric comes out native modernity...

(Sultan's native modernity) juxtaposes the incongruity of

global modernity and exposes the ferocity of colonialism.

That proposition is embedded in his search for symbols.

That symbolism is therefore a narration of reality, and that

narration Sultan did with skill and care. It is not easy to

limit the identification of his narration to any particular

phase of the history of Bangladesh or of Narail... (The aim

of native modernity) is to reconnect through a symbol.

That reconnection helps communities in finding their

mode of expressions, so that they can again assimilate

their own histories. Global modernity is not conducive to

the discovery or recovery of one's own histories and

colonial modernity subordinates one's own histories.

Sultan has by this process (of native modernity) brought

back the reality of the farmer's daily conduct of life.

Sultan sought to return to Radha (heart-throb of

adoration), to the farmer, to the birds and beasts through

the corridors of history, of diverse historical legends, saga

and songs of Bangladesh. That is why he needs his flute,

his (pet) birds and beasts, plough and oxen, et al both as

the means of mental return journey and as materials for

his physical conduct of life."

But from a different point of view, a range of art-critics

from S. Amjad Ali to Professor Nazrul Islam recognised

in Sultan's mind-set contemporary global modernism or

even ultra-modernism. Sultan never liked to hold on to the

immediate aesthetic experience he would go through in

executing a particular painting. He was unconcerned

about the durability of the materials he used in the

creation of his pictures. As if he was interested only to

emit a flying spark : it would flicker for a while and its

delight was in burning itself out. Professor Nazrul wrote

about this disinterested creativity of Sultan as follows .

"As in Sultan's exhibition of 1976, it was seen in Sultan's

1987 exhibition as well that Sultan had used even in his

fairly large paintings art materials that would not last

long. Often the canvas on which he painted was of an

inferior quality. Sometimes he manufactured the pigments

for his paintings himself. In the end these pigments

perhaps proved unstable, The English painter William

Blake used to do the same. Many of his paintings have

been worn out in course of time. Of course there arc some

amongst painters who do not care about the durability of

their works, To them, painting is the cnd in itself, not its

exhibition or its permanence." A contemporary expression

of creativity of the same genre can be found in "Body

Art:" or "Performance Art" in the West.

Painter Sultan held his first solo exhibition in 1946, in

Simla, the summer capital of British India. It was

organised by a Canadian Art. Connoisseur, Mrs. Hudson.

She herself bore the expenses of that exhibition by way of

a formal debut of a young talent, Sultan. His last solo

exhibition was sponsored by two young artists of this

country, Khaled Mahmud and Kanak Chanpa Chakma, in

the hall room of their petite Gallery Tone in Dhanmondi,

Dhaka. Art historian Matlub Ali wrote about that

exhibition : "The last exhibition of Sultan that was held in

his life time... deserves particular attention for the purpose

of evaluation of Sultan. One may say the full power of this

prolific creative painter was not represented adequately in

this exhibition at the fag-end of his life. One must also add

that nothing of Sultan was left underrepresented in this

exhibition. Indeed the men and women appeared in the

pictures of this exhibition in their own peculiar form, that

is to say with the stamp of "Sultani" significance. The

nature and environment of Bangladesh rural life and range

of daily activities that intimately wear the identity of

peasant humanity is exposed here (in this exhibition) by

the characteristic survivalist compositions of S M Sultan...

A total of 30 pictures were accommodated in the

exhibition. There were only a few watercolour paintings.

The rest were sketches/ drawings on white paper with

"marker" pen or broad soft-nibbed pen. Although the

seven watercolours all had separate titles, the drawings

were arranged in a series entitled "Life and Nature."

One thing struck me standing in front of the works of the

aged painter. There was no mark of the race for advanced

ideas as amongst other creative artists around the world

who have rendered the art of painting at the last rung of

the twentieth century multiplex and brought about a flood

of motley innovations in the East and West alike, with

techniques, execution, application and components of all

sorts. Yet it seemed to me that an immortal painter was

physically omnipresent through his works there (in the

exhibition). There was no hesitancy. S. M. Sultan, truly

respectful of and entirely self-reliant about his own

choices and layouts in the execution of works of art or

about his manner of expression, genuinely gave vent to

the bond of kinship and devotion existing between

creative arts and artists through ages. In his drawings, S.

M. Sultan used a few specific types of brushwork.

Sometimes he built up a flowing rhythm of continuous

curvatures, some times he used broken lines in sequence,

sometimes he freely gathered a profusion of cross-strokes.

A captivating artistic ambience of surroundings is thus

created for the composition of his drawings over a white

background, Even in his watercolours, he had this

tendency always to apply similar (linear) treatment.

But he was also amply faithful to distinctive radiation of

colour and transparency peculiar to the watercolour

medium, All these characteristics were in evidence in his

last exhibition that was held during his lifetitne."

On the occasion of that exhibition, Sheikh Mohanunacl

Sultan came for the last time to Dhaka. He was not happy.

He was in tears to go back to Narail, to his 'Children's

Paradise' in Kurigram. Poet-journalist Mohsin Hussain

recounted the situation : "On January Il (1994), Artist

Mithu escorted me from Gallery Tone to Hotel de

Amazon. There I found emaciated asthmatic Sultan Bhai.

He burst into tears like a child when he saw nne. I-Ie said,

'You are a poet, please take me back fronn this place.' I

agreed right away."

That very day the artist took the afternoon flight to Jessore

and proceeded to Narail. Since then he never left his

suburban village milieu in Kurigratll on the banks of the

river Chitra. Upto the last day of his life, he spent his time

painting, near to his adopted family, his pet birds and

animals and mother nature, or doing some welfare activity

for his small village community, particularly children's

education. Not only his native skill of painting, but also

his entire life was thus dedicated to the delight of creative

satisfaction.

His final painting workshop was held that very year in

Kurigram in the month of February. Painter Nasim Ahmed

Nadvi wrote about that workshop as follows : "The

benches laid out between the residence and studio of

Sultan for open-air study by children were temporarily

arranged to be covered by tin-roofing as additional

accommodation for the smooth conduct of the workshop,

Some of us chose the roof of the house-boat anchored at

river-ghat as our working studio. The participants in the

workshop were each required to finish two oil-paintings

of 3' x 3' size within its tenure, Accordingly 15 easels and

requisite quantities of canvas, oil colours and brushes

were brought from Dhaka. Sultan was physically

indisposed and we realised it would not be possible for

him to personally conduct the workshop. We therefore

thought it fit to get on with the workshop without him and

went to seek his permission for the same. Before we could

say anything, he began to speak with a great deal of

humility: I really do not have to guide you at all. On top

of that, my body has turned rebellious. I anl happy that

you all have conie to this backward village of ruine. This

is the land of clie 'embroidered quilt'. The tuakers of the art

of embroidered quilt never guide any one. They execute

their beautiful designs spontaneously fronl their own

minds. You please also do whatever you like according to

your own styles. But I shall be very happy if the people

and the natural surrounding of these parts find sotue place

in your conuoositions."

At the end of the workshop there was a river cruise,

during which Nadvi heard Sultan talking to himself

almost inaudibly : "In my youth, I went around the entire

(British) India driven by curiosity of imagination and

drawn by various attractions and sentinrnts, I was not

contented, So I crossed 'seven seas and thirteen rivers',

and went around the world led by my whirus, Then

suddenly on the screen of my mind the beauty and the

I was

nature of lovely Chitra (the river) was flashed

nostalgic. I carne back to her. No, I could not settle down

with her. Tirne rendered everything topsy-turvy.... Chitra

remained ever-flowing and I becotne a bohemian. I raised

no family, so how could I get children! That is why as the

light of my life is going out, I am building 'children's

paradise' on the banks of Chitra. If not in lily lifetime,

before the flow of Chitra dries up, I hope by the

cooperation of many others put together, the 'children's

paradise' will be able to stand on its own feet...

That year on the I()th of October at 16 hours 35 minutes

in the afternoon, Sultan 'the golden man of fine arts',

Sultan 'the angry humanist minstrel' breathed his last. The

whole morning of October I l, his moflal retnains in the

coffin lay in state in front of Public Library for

people to have a last look at his face. At 5 p.m. on October

I l, this great artist was laid to eternal test in the couflyard

of his residence in Kurigram. Rafiq Islam, a devotee of

Sultan, wrote, "The journey of life that began on August

10, 1923 canne to an end on October 10, 1994 by the

unsparing axe of time. A great septuagenarian entity was

drowned in the sound of ripples from the heavenly rivet'.

He will never wake up again. From all temporal banality

and business he is far away. Far far away fmm pigtuents,

brmshes, easel, canvas, banks of the river Chitrl, woods

and jungles, birds and beasts, snakes and lizards,

creativity, kith and kin, wicked ones, dear ones, friends

and all others."

Artist And Art

WATER COLOR

Children Art

FAMOUS PAINTER S. M SULTAN

Oil COlor

Silk painting step by step tutorial for beginner ||

রাজশাহী সিল্ক মসলিন কাপড়ের উপরে হ্যান্ড পেইন্ট ম্যাজিক || Silk fabric p...

রাজশাহী সিল্ক মসলিন কাপড়ের উপরে হ্যান্ড পেইন্ট ম্যাজিক || Silk fabric p...

Muslin saree women cloth hand painting || Women fashion Dress painting.

S M SULTAN PAINTING

test

Painter-minstrel Sheikh Mohammad Sultan

Subscribe & Follow

STAEDTLER

Popular Posts

Tags

Blog Archive

Link list 1

Link list 2

Link list 3

Link list 4