Sir Christopher Ondaatje remembers the extraordinary unfulfilled talent of Ranil Deraniyagala (1936-1978) – PORTRAIT OF A TEMPESTUOUS RENAISSANCE ARTIST – BY SIR CHRISTOPHER ONDAATJE
Source: The Sri Lankan Anchorman
Ranil Deraniyagala was born on 16th December 1936 into a privileged Sri Lankan family respected for its intellectual and artistic accomplishments. His father was a palaeontologist and director of the National Museum. His grandfather was Sri Lanka’s first modern historian and his uncle, Justin Deraniyagala, was a founding member of the 43 Group and one of Sri Lanka’s most internationally renowned painters. He was educated at St. Thomas College in Mount Lavinia, and then educated in natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Later he studied clinical medicine at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in London, but abandoned this career to devote himself to painting and printmaking in 1960. He studied first at Kokoschka’s School of Vision and then at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He returned to Sri Lanka in 1965 where he lived in seclusion in Kolombugana in a mud hut and refined his printmaking technique. He then returned to his ancestral home in Kuruwita, near Ratnapura, where he created his best work. He featured in many important exhibitions in Europe and the United States of America; and a major exhibition of his work was held at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery in Colombo in 1974. The exhibition was opened by the Hon. Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
In an introduction to the exhibition Dr. Geoffrey Thurley (Department of English, Dublin University) stated: “If it is less imperative than it was five years ago for any statement on current painting to concern itself with the abstract – figurative dichotomy, it still seems unreal to ignore it … Ranil Deraniyagala is caught in a situation as acute in its way as that of the European painter haunted by abstraction as it is impossible for the Asian artist to deny the primacy of Western Art now, and imperative for him to remain true to his national identity. He can neither remain outside Western thought nor even quite identify himself with it.
The majority of Asian artists today tend to make one or two errors: either they deny their real selves and become sham Europeans or they peter out in mere decorativeness. Ranil Deraniyagala’s work is, I think, unique in not only avoiding both these snares, but in forging European influence and satire vision into a new idiom. For what is exciting in his later work is the grip he has acquired on certain kinds of emotional facts … It is a quality that is certainly not to be found in the work of any of his contemporaries, nor, interestingly in those artists who have made most impact on him: Matisse, the German Expressionists, and the composer Ravel. All of these artists have a common sensuousness, even a sensuality, which is significantly absent from contemporary Western painting.”
Dr. Thurley goes on to note that “there has been a steady evolution in Ranil Deraniyagala’s work from the early … Sinhalese pictures with their open fluent textures, to the recent sombre studies of men and women locked in a wrestle that is at once a game of love and a struggle to the death; and the tendency of this development has been towards a greater pragmatic articulateness in handling his chosen themes. He has never lost grip on that swinging fullness and physicalness that comes across as a special Asian quality, but he has enormously increased the density and solidity of his brushwork.”
I do agree with Dr. Thurley that Deraniyagala has forced the idiom of post-war European painting, and that his technique has been enormously modified by his exposure to Pollock and his ability to express and to explore sexual and erotic experience with a delicacy and a fullness unique in our time. He has also learned from Bacon, who managed to render the humiliating abjectness of the body; Matisse, who purveyed the quality of mature innocence; and Munch who openly displayed a sense of Nordic guilt.
Ranil Deraniyagala was a good friend of our family – particularly my mother Doris Gratiaen. Shortly before Deraniyagala’s 1974 exhibition, and at my urging, she commissioned Ranil to produce the large oil painting The Lovers. I remember buying and shipping him the rolled-up strip of canvas because at that time it was difficult to get good quality canvas in Sri Lanka. Deraniyagala was always fussy about his material. Shockingly, my mother died in April 1974. My brother Michael, my cousin Wendy Partridge and I flew from Canada to London for the funeral. Everybody was there. People from every walk of life. People who had befriended my mother and people whom my mother had befriended. She had always said that we were to organise a fantastic party when she died. And this my sister Janet and I did. It went on after the funeral, in her last flat on the King’s Road in Chelsea, until the early hours of the morning. All her friends dropped in at various times throughout the day, evening and night.
At about midnight, I casually mentioned that last Deraniyagala commission to Pearly Saravanamuttu, an old friend of my mother. Before she died my mother had arranged to have the painting sent out to England and had entrusted the shipment to a “ship’s captain”. But this was all we knew. Nobody had any idea who the mysterious ship’s captain was or whether the painting had been shipped. Pearly Saravanamuttu paled. It was as if she had suddenly seen a ghost, and indeed she may well have. She then told me the most extraordinary story.
Just hours before coming to the funeral she had met a young Sri Lankan accountant in North London who told her of a package he had received unexpectedly. He had absolutely no idea what it was but it was long and thin and he thought it might be a roll of cloth. It was very heavy. It had been sent to him from Sri Lanka by a friend but he had lost the address of the person to whom he had to deliver the package. We put two and two together and started combing the London telephone directory for his name and address.
Then, despite the hour, I telephoned the surprised accountant and asked whether I could pick up the package. I explained what it was and by opening the package at one end he knew that the painting was indeed mine. I said I would be there in half an hour as I had to go back to Canada the next day. It was raining hard and I had an awful time getting a taxi. The taxi driver waited while I collected the valuable package.
Back at my mother’s flat I carefully unrolled the canvas and saw Ranil Deraniyagala’s extraordinary enigmatic painting, The Lovers. It may have been his last major work. It certainly was the last thing my mother did for me and I don’t think it was merely a coincidence that I found the painting in such a strange way. I am sure that my mother had reached down, perhaps with some unseen help from Ranil, and completed this one last piece of unfinished business. The Lovers really is an extraordinary painting – sensitively passionate but in a troubled way. We all knew that Ranil had not been comfortable doing the painting, just as we all knew that he had been going through a very painful time personally. It reveals something of this turbulent battle. Every painting has its own story – this more than many others. It has a mysterious sense of doom that the casual observer might not at first notice.
Sadly, I learned only four years after rescuing The Lovers that Ranil Deraniyagala had killed himself on 4th August 1978. For some time he had been depressed after battling alcoholism, and being frustrated that he was not receiving the attention and understanding that his extremely complex artistry deserved. When Deraniyagala died Sri Lanka lost a brilliant painter and printmaker who had not attained anything like his full potential. In fact, particularly in his etching and engraving, his work was evolving into a unique idiom and he had already become the leading printmaker in the country. History will be kind to the legacy of this troubled genius who found his only true expression in his art.
– Sir Christopher Ondaatje is the author of The Man-Eater of Punanai and Woolf in Ceylon. He is a trustee of The National Portrait Gallery in England.
