David Paynter (artist)

David's father, Arthur Stephen Paynter, was born in Bicester in Oxfordshire, where his family owned several breweries. Arthur married Anagi Weerasooriya, sister of Arnolis Weerasooriya,^[4] from the south of Sri Lanka.^[5] His parents were both members of the Salvation Army and worked in India, who after a number of years left in order to start the India Christian Mission. His parents moved to Ceylon in 1904, where they started a mission in Nuwara Eliya. Paynter had his primary education at Breeks Memorial School in India, and his secondary education at Trinity College, Kandy.

Apart from the basic guidance he received at Trinity, he had no formal art lessons. Yet Paynter entered the Royal Academy by winning a five-year scholarship in the open competition with students, many of whom received formal instruction in European art schools.^[6]

Paynter won the Royal Academy Gold Medal at the end of the fourth year along with the Edward Stott Travelling Scholarship which gave him two years in Italy. In 1936, he visited London for the third time – a productive and rewarding period in his art career. His one-man exhibition at the Wertheim Gallery in London brought him much recognition from art critics and journals in Europe. By invitation he participated in four international exhibitions in the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg in Rome, in New Delhi and at the World Fair held in New York. From 1923 to 1940 his paintings were exhibited every year at the Royal Academy in London. The themes of most of his early works are religious. In 1923 two of his best pictures The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and the Entombment were considered powerful and dramatic statements of deeply felt religious experiences.^[6]

In 1925, he returned to Sri Lanka and started work on the Trinity College Chapel murals. The Trinity Chapel was a monumental work of architecture exemplifying the core vision that Paynter shared – a European world view rooted in the vernacular of the land. Nothing of its type had even been imagined in the 1920s. The Independence Memorial Hall in Colombo – which borrowed heavily from the Trinity Chapel design – would not be created for another quarter century. Thus, in Rev Gaster's timeless design, Paynter found the ideal setting for his masterwork.^[7]

Work on the chapel began in 1923. By 1929, the side chapel was erected, and Paynter began work on his first mural. His murals in the chapel, which comprise 'Are Ye Able', 'Washing the Disciples' Feet', 'The Good Samaritan' and 'The Crucifixion', are Bible stories transferred to Ceylon people and scenery.^[2] By 1935, all the murals were complete, with the centrepiece being a massive depiction of The Crucifixion – Christ as a dark-skinned, clean-shaven native of the land, raised on his cross above the dusky gloom of a sullen swarm of mangroves – the transformation was total; a symbol of Christian faith expressed to perfection in Lankan idiom; it has arguably never been as beautifully expressed since.^{[citation needed]}

Paynter found time during his years at Trinity to work on numerous portraits, many of which may be seen in the college library. He also lent his talent to the creation of many set designs for plays, some of which are still spoken of in awe close to a century later.^{[citation needed]}