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