J.D.A. Perera

J.D.A. Perera

J.D.A. Perera (1897-1967) (Sinhala: ජේ.ඩී.ඒ. පෙරේරා) was a well-known Sri Lankan portrait painter and teacher of art (Gunawardena, 2003). Life events Perera was born in 1897 at Pahalagama in Gampaha. He completed his primary education at Wesley and Ananda Colleges in Colombo and later followed his chosen art at then Ceylon Technical College. In Europe on a government scholarship in 1946-1947, Perera exhibited his works with the National Art Society of England, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Scottish Academy, the Leicester Galleries and the Paris Salon (Gunawardena, 2003). In 1953, he established the Government College of Fine Arts (later renamed the "Sri Lanka National Institute of Arts") for the teaching of drawing, painting, art crafts, sculpture, music and dancing (Dharmasiri, 1990). In the beginning, the medium of instruction for all visual arts subjects was English and therefore, Perera who became its first principal commenced a Department of Sinhala to conduct…