Footnotes

Provenance
Property from a private collection, UK.

Ramanayake is remembered primarily for his lyrical landscapes, which capture the shifting moods of Sri Lanka's countryside and coastal settings with great sensitivity. However, the present pair of watercolours — Untitled (Still Life with Yellow Flowers in a Glass Jar) and Untitled (Still Life with Blue Bowl and White Flowers), reveal a lesser-known, more intimate aspect of his practice. Both works are rare and significant examples of his foray into still life, demonstrating how his refined handling of watercolour could translate the poetry of nature into small-scale, contemplative compositions.

In the 1937 work, a glass jar is filled with yellow blossoms and is rendered with a delicacy of line and lightness of touch that evokes transience; the fleeting beauty of flowers freshly plucked. The second watercolour, depicting a blue bowl set beside white flowers, balances colour and form with a restrained elegance. Ramanayake's characteristic economy of brushwork and translucent washes lend the works an ethereal, almost meditative quality, distilling ordinary domestic subjects into quietly monumental images.

Though best known as a painter of landscapes, Ramanayake's Still Lifes' provide valuable insight into his broader artistic concerns. They suggest an artist deeply attuned to the natural world, yet equally interested in the symbolic weight of objects and the interplay between form, colour, and negative space. In this, Ramanayake resonates with contemporaneous developments in modern South Asian art, where everyday subjects were being elevated into vehicles of painterly experimentation and cultural expression.

Sri Lankan modern art of the mid-20th century was defined by a search for identity; poised between colonial artistic traditions and emerging post-independence sensibilities. Ramanayake's work belongs to this moment, rooted in observation yet infused with lyrical abstraction. These Still Lifes, rare survivals within his oeuvre, expand the understanding of his contribution, reminding us that his vision encompassed not only the grand vistas of Sri Lanka but also the quiet intimacy of flowers in a vessel, translated through a uniquely personal and poetic lens.