Richard Henricus

Richard Henricus was among the first professional painters that twentieth-century Sri Lanka records by name. He took up the Transitional Style from the temple work of the western lowlands, reinforced it, and carried it into the popular Buddhist art of the new century. His murals are nearly all lost, a single ceiling illustration at the Jayatilakarama at Grandpass among the little that survives, yet his drawings reached a wide public through the printed Buddhist texts of the day, sent to Britain for block-making and returned as half-tone plates of the life of the Buddha and the Jataka stories.

His painted architecture, all porcelain tiles, heavy pillars and velvet curtains, came out of nineteenth-century European romantic art, with touches of Mughal and Rajput building. His lasting importance lies less in what remains than in the pupil he trained: Sarlis, who would make the manner the common visual language of the Buddhist revival.