Harmanis de Alwis Seneviratne

Harmanis de Alwis Seneviratne drew the plants of the island with a precision that served science long after his own lifetime. Born in 1792, he was taken on as a botanical artist at the botanic gardens, first at Kalutara and then, from 1822, at Peradeniya, where the superintendent Alexander Moon saw his gift and paid for his training. The ground at Peradeniya had been a pleasure garden of the kings of Kandy before Moon laid out the botanic gardens there in 1821. Over more than forty years he delineated upwards of two thousand Ceylon plants, and a small orchid was named in his honour.

His work founded a dynasty. His sons William and George, and members of two further generations, carried the family’s brush through the botanical and zoological illustration of Peradeniya and beyond. His exact, patient drawings are among the earliest sustained bodies of art made by a Ceylonese hand in the colonial century.

Sources

1. Royal Horticultural Society. ‘Harmanis de Alwis: A Botanical Illustrator in Colonial Ceylon’. RHS Digital Collections. https://collections.rhs.org.uk/view/355447
2. The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). ‘The Unknown de Alwises’ Brush with Asian Flora.’ 16 April 2017. https://www.sundaytimes.lk/170416/plus/the-unknown-de-alwises-brush-with-asian-flora-236894.html