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Machine generated alternative text: Painter-minstrel Sheikh Mohammad Sultan
Woman with pitcher. Oil on Canvas 120cm 68cm 1969
To those who knew him, 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 hisimpulses 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 a poor 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 it is fortunate or unfortunate, it dcx:s not haprxn to Sheikh Mohammad Sultan blessed 'Aich that g(.xxJ 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€.kd as a
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FAMOUS PAINTER S. M SULTAN
The first tree plantation . Oil on canvas
S M Sultan led a life that was as colorful and dynamite
as was his .He was born in a poor family, but poverty could not stand in the wave
of his mobility He read in the prestigious Calcutta Government School Ots Art,
and received generous support fem. his early mentor, the celebrated art critic Shamed
Suhrawardy. But Sultan's nature was
against spreading roots anywhere, so he moved on, travelling to different
regions of India. working all the while and selling his art work to whoever
bought them.
After the partition of the subcontinent in 1947,
Sultan to in Pakistan, then moved to England and USA. In London, his shown in
an exhibition alongside those of Picasso and Paul Klee- he came back to
Bangladesh, he spent part of his time in Dhaka, but mostly in Narail, Jessore,
his home town, where 'he settled in the 1980s. Sultan began to raise a family,
which consisted of a ot- pet animals, birds and snakes, and children. The birds
and beasts found a sanctuary in his house, and the children found a safe He
named the space he created for children Sishu Shot-go Children's Heaven.
Sultan
had stayed away from the mainstream art practices of Bangladesh, pursuing his
unique style and maintaining his focus on subjects from the life of the common
people. He painted on large cuisses. and his peasants and workers always
appeared larger than life brawny bodies and a single-minded dedication to the
task at hand. The women and children too looked healthy, contented. This
Sultan's dream of plenty and prosperity that he always had about the common people.
It
is difficult to chronicle the life and work of an artist who created a unique
tradition in and lived away from the limelight.
Artist. Sheikh Mohammed Sultan
For his achievement in fine arts he was awarded with the Ekushey Padak in 1982; the Bangladesh Charu Shilpi Sangsad Award in 1986; and the Independence Day Award in 1993.[2] His works are held in several major collections in Bangladesh, including the Bangladesh National Museum, the National Art Gallery (Bangladesh), the S.M. Sultan Memorial Museum, and the Bengal Foundation.
Sultan was born in Machimdia village, in what was then Jessore District, British India (now Narail District, Bangladesh) on 10 August 1923. After five years of primary education at Victoria Collegiate School in Narail, he went to work for his father, a mason. Even as a child he felt a strong artistic urge. He seized every opportunity to draw with charcoal, and developed his talent depicting the buildings his father worked on.[3] Sultan wanted to study art in Calcutta (Kolkata), but his family did not have the means to send him. Eventually, he secured financial support from the local zamindar and went to Calcutta in 1938.[4]
There poet and art critic Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy restyled him S. M. Sultan and offered him accommodation in his home and the use of his library.[3] Sultan did not meet the admissions requirements of the Government School of Art, but in 1941 managed to get in with the help of Suhrawardy, who was on the school's governing body.[4][5] Under Principal Mukul Chandra Dey the school deemphasized the copying of Old Masters and moved beyond Indian mythological, allegorical, and historical subjects. Students were encouraged to paint contemporary landscapes and portraits expressing original themes from their own life experience. c.Wikipedia
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