Richard Henricus

Richard Henricus was an early professional painter 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.

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. He and his brother Basil are counted the pioneers who first worked a vanishing point into the temple wall, setting their figures within a receding painted architecture so that the scene reads as a stage on which an ancient Indian drama is played out. The same hand supplied the great scenic backdrops for the Tower Hall theatre in Colombo, the Ramayana and Sakuntala among the Indian subjects, Sirisangabo and Valagamba among the Sinhala; the temple wall and the painted stage were, for Henricus, one craft. 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.

Sources

1. Bandaranayake and Dharmasiri. Sri Lankan Painting in the 20th Century. Colombo: National Trust of Sri Lanka, 2009.
2. kalalanka.wordpress.com. ‘Richard Henricus.’ 8 May 2023.