Page 341 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

338 ART AND CRAFTS

d. S.M. Sultan (1923-1994)
Shawon Akand

1
Sultan was born on 10 August 1923 in the village of Machhimdia of Narail, situated
on the bank of the river Chitra. He lost his mother in his childhood. His father Sheikh
Mechher Ali was a construction worker. It is known that the designs and the art works
on the walls of the residence of the zamindar of Narail were created by Sultan’s father.
For this reason, Sultan liked to consider his father as an architect. We can assume that
this aspect of Sultan’s father enticed him to the world of painting.
Sultan started painting from his very childhood. For about five years from 1928 to
1933, he studied in a local primary school. His talent as a painter was first recognized
at the early age of ten in his classroom when he made a pencil sketch of the school
inspector, Dr. Shayamaprashad Mukherjee. Even before this, he attracted the attention
of Dhirendranath Ray, zamindar of Narail, by drawing an exact imitation of a marble
statue he got from abroad. It was because of the inspiration and cooperation of
Dhirendranath Ray that Sultan went to Kolkata in 1938 to fulfill his dream of
becoming a painter. In Kolkata Sultan took shelter at the residence of Satyen Ray,
another shareholder of the zamindar of Narail. There Sultan started learning painting
from Satyen Ray’s son Arun Ray, a student of Art School. After about three years, in
1941, he took part in the admission test of the Government Art School and stood first
in the test. Although he stood first, he did not have the minimum qualification of
Entrance Certificate to study in the Art School. However, he finally got the chance to
study in the Art School with the recommendations of the noted art critique Shahed
Suhrawardy. Till then his name was Lal Mia.
During the period of 1941 to 1944 Sultan took lessons in art at the Calcutta
fig. 8.24
Sheikh Mohammad Sultan Government Art School. During this period he got shelter and great patronization from
the family of Shahed Suhrawardy. In Art School, he secured second
place in the first year and secured first place in the second and third
years. However, he never really liked institution based regulated life.
As a result, ignoring everything, the patronization of the Suhrawardy
family, academic education and certificate, he set off on a tour of
India in 1944. Before this, Sultan joined the Khaksar movement in
1943. Members of the Khaksar movement did many social services,
such as taking care of patients, cremation of dead bodies, cleaning
drains, digging etc. Sultan visited different places with them. At the
beginning of his Bohemian lifestyle in 1944, Sultan reached Simla
via Agra, Delhi and Lukhnow. There, he started living with a group