Walter Witharne

To the ’43 Group’s first exhibition in November 1943, Walter Witharne brought seventeen paintings, more than any of the other newcomers, and nearly all of them were landscapes of the Sabaragamuwa country: the river in spate, the floods at Ratnapura, Adam’s Peak seen from Kalawana and from the town, the falls at Bopath Ela. He painted a traditional view of that hill-and-river landscape, working in watercolour among other media, and the critics of the day called it pretty.

He was an invited exhibitor at the inauguration, not a member, and his work appeared again at the exhibition held in 1945 to commemorate Lionel Wendt, where a reviewer judged it pretty still, and bold, but not bold enough. After that he leaves no further trace, and no dates for his birth or death are known.

His seventeen Ratnapura scenes are worth keeping for what they mark: the older, gentler landscape tradition that the Group set beside its own experiments at the very first show, before the two ways of painting parted.

---

Sources

1. Weereratne, Neville. 43 Group: A Chronicle of Fifty Years in the Art of Sri Lanka. Melbourne: Lantana, 1993.
2. Weereratne, Neville. ‘Once and Future Artists’. The 43 Group. https://www.43group.org/chapters/chapter-14-once-and-future-artists