Portrait of a remarkable lady – artist, writer, social worker and diplomat’s wife
She lived under the shadow of a personality as big as life. Her husband, Tissa Wijeyeratne, was Additional Secretary of Defence and Foreign Affairs under Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, as well as ambassador, active Socialist, founder of Sinhaputhra Finance, Barrister and Attorney-at-law. Tissa’s charisma, oratory skills, sense of humour and prankish nature overshadowed in society an extremely talented lady – his wife.
Vishaka was born on March 17, 1935, to an illustrious family in Anuradhapura. Her father, Dr. Edmund Ashoka Nuwaraweva Bulankulame, was one of the first Ceylonese medical doctors to pass out from the prestigious University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The Bulankulame family were custodians of the Atamasthana, and Dr. Bulankulame held the high post of Atamasthana Nilame for a short term, on behalf of his brother. All this framed Visakha within Buddhist traditional values.
Her mother, Ivy Dunuwille Senanayake, was the eldest daughter of D. S. Senanayake’s older brother, D. C. (Don Charles). She had both a traditional upbringing flavoured by the Westernised Senanayake upbringing.she was schooled at the Holy Family Convent and Newstead, Negombo, where she excelled. She went on to follow an intensive two-year course in agriculture at the Girls' School for Farming in Kundasale. This school of agriculture, which was of an extremely high standard, was established by her grand-uncle, D. S. Senanayake, when he was Prime Minister.
Visakha’s talents were nurtured under David Paynter and Stanley Abeysinghe, as an art and art literature student at the Heywood School of Fine Arts. This esteemed institution has groomed many of Sri Lanka’s finest artists, from the home of Don Charles Senanayake, “Sirimedura”, at Ward Place, in Colombo.
After her marriage to Tissa, son of Cabinet Minister Sir Edwin Wijeyeratne, and the birth of her first child, she was encouraged by her husband to seek work exposure in a foreign country – a tough proposal for a mother with a three-year-old daughter. She took the challenge, and in 1967 moved to St. Gallen, a city on the German side of Switzerland. Working and living alone, Visakha trained in hand embroidery, and later headed her department at Schleifer’s, an acclaimed embroidery establishment founded in 1865.
When she returned to Sri Lanka in 1966, she started a cottage industry to revive ancient Sinhala embroidery techniques, with Ananda Coomaraswamy’s “Medieval Sinhalese Art” as her primary source of inspiration.
Her skills in painting, sculpture, ceramic art, embroidery, writing, poetry and limerick composition, coupled with the teaching of hand embroidery and language lessons in German, French, Russian and Sinhala, brought in extra revenue for the family.
Visakha was an exemplary woman of yesteryear who faced the economic challenges of the modern day. The double income of husband and wife – now a necessity for most middle-income Sri Lankans – is best managed when one of the breadwinners is a stay-at-home parent who takes responsibility for the children.
Visakha’s views on feminism were conservative to the extent that she believed a woman’s role should be home-based, for the sake of the children, and that there is no substitute for a mother. With this con- servative non-western conviction, she embarked on projects that more often than not brought in more income than her husband earned. She believed that women should be economically independent, and she demonstrated this in her social work as a President of the Inner Wheel Club of Kandy, which is a part of the Rotary International movement.
As an artist, her Impressionistic style was greatly appreciated in Paris, where she exhibited on three occasions during her four years as the Sri Lankan ambassador’s wife. Her paintings were bought by dignitaries in Paris and the diplomatic circle of the early 1970s. Buyers included US Under-secretary of State, John N. Irwin II, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, Indonesia First Lady, Devi Sukarno, and British Liberal party leader, Jeremy Thorpe, to name a few.
On her return to Sri Lanka, in 1974, she discovered that the Sri Lankan art market did not appreciate her painting style, using heavy brushstrokes. She was forced to convert to a more realistic style, a transition she loathed. Her later landscapes and portraits had lost the effect of the heavy brushstrokes.
Visakha was also famous for one of the finest reproductions of the 1815 portrait of Rangamma, main consort of Kandy’s last king, Sri Wickreme Rajasinghe. She reproduced the painting five times, and each time the picture was snapped up by art buyers, at Visakha’s annual exhibitions at the Lionel Wendt, in Colombo. Reprints of “Rangamma”, produced by Tissa and Visakha Wijeyeratne, hung in more than 5,000 homes in Sri Lanka, and many continue to adorn these homes. The portrait was reproduced on the cover of the Sinhaputhra Finance 2012 Calendar.
Her other notable reproductions were of Fragonard’s “Inspiration”; Carlo Dolci’s “St. Cecilia”; Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”, and Renoir’s “Monet Reading.”
Visakha Bulankulame Wijeyeratne’s greatest honour came in 1981, when she was at her peak, with a commission to do the portrait of President J. R. Jayewardene. Her most notable international exposure was in 1987 when she exhibited, along with 56 Commonwealth artists, at The Bhownagree Gallery of the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, London. On display were her water colour renditions of orchids.
In her later years, the cottage industry she set up for the production of hand-embroidered sarees, kaftans, cushion covers, wall hangings, bed and table spreads, and the like, provided a livelihood for village women, mainly in the Kegalle area. The self-employed young women could work in their homes.
For financial reasons, Visakha focused more on her cottage industry than her paintings. The hand-woven goods were popular with tourists visiting her small shop at the Hotel Suisse, Kandy, in the early Eighties.
By this time, her paintings were few and far between. She turned to literary pursuits, writing jolly limericks and art-related articles for the newspapers, including pieces on the Sigiriya paintings. She also engaged in social welfare, and for a short time was a member of the board of directors of Sinhaputhra Finance, where she promoted the concept of micro loans.
A few of Visakha’s paintings are on display at the Sinhaputhra Finance head office in Kandy, and at her home in Hantaana. Her daughter, also an artist, has named her parental home “The Painted Garden”, where most of her mother’s works are displayed.
Visakha succumbed to multiple strokes and passed away after four hard-fought months, aged 64, on April 13, 1999. Her spirit and character live on in her poetry, limericks and paintings.
Gayathri Rajaguru