Features
A father’s gift to a very young daughter, now an acclaimed book
” Also on auction was a catalogue: “George Keyt: an exhibition of paintings – 1920s to 1990s – published in 1991 to felicitate the artist on his 90th birthday.” Inscribed in the catalogue ‘For darling Diana from George Keyt 7.6. 93.’ The Catalogue is “brought to you by Nishad Avari” Head of Dept at Christie’s with its main auction rooms in London and branches all over the world, including Mumbai.
I quote from the Lot Essay in Christie’s catalogue: “From western perspective, George Keyt’s work from the 1930s onward is described in the context of Cubism or Fauvism and compared with the oeuvres of Paul Gauguin, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse. However, the sensuality and spirituality Keyt always imbibed in his drawing and paintings underscore their enduring connection with the classical artistic traditions of South Asia, from ancient frescoes and temple sculpture to Rajput court paintings and Kalighat patas. Grounded in these traditions, Keyt’s work rejected the limitations of Western academic art to embrace what we now term global modernism, paving the way for other artists in South Asia to forge new idioms of their own as well as a new artistic identity for the region.
“The present lot, an illustrated book of 23 poems … sheds light on a unique aspect of the artist’s early career, at the intersection of his expertise as an observer, artist and writer and his family life and role as a father. Filling the pages of his sketchbooks, these verses were, most likely, created to memorialize the stories of the varied cast of characters that Keyt painted on the walls of Diana’s nursery after she was born in 1935.
As she recalls “When I was born my father delighted in this new little person, playing and creating stories and pictures to amuse me. As I started to babble and then to talk, he put down these pictures and rhymes in a book.” (D Keyt, ‘Keyt’s sketches to a daughter’, The Sunday Times, Colombo November 10, 2013). The format of this book and its rhymes may be compared to the ‘nonsense rhymes’ of Edward Lear, and to the work of Ogden Nash and Roald Dahl, published later”
The couple of drawings and verses in the copy of Christie’s catalogue and the book now on sale at Vijita Yapa bookshops amazed me with their whimsical richness and the sure fire artistry in the sketched human and animal characters, family pets – Plato and Polly, heroes and villains, including actual characters like Auntie Suji (Sujatha Aluwihare – great friend of Diana’s Aunty Peggy) – and the dhoby. These real life and imagined human and animal characters were an important part of the three year old daughter’s life, and the father immortalized them for her and thus to posterity. “Keyt’s unique understanding of his child’s emotions and imagination, and his ability to represent them in his art and verse, is what brings this little book to life.”
The antics of the gombees are the most versified in the book; the gombee being the two year old’s name for the gombellas or golubellas who infested Kandy as I remember it of then.
“Whenever you see a gombee dance/You may safely say
That’s quite by chance / They seldom see themselves as others
For gombees never see their brothers.”
“The big trees cry/ The little trees hum
To see the gombees/ Come and come.
They bring their friends/ They come to the trees
They hang on the boughs/ And swing in the breeze.
Banda, Sumana, Sisily, Toby/ Went to the village to see the dhoby
To see the dhoby over the rocks/ And the little blue woman who darns the socks.”
Recollections
In 2013, to celebrate the century of her father’s birth, Diana published a facsimile edition of this special book so as to share the now world famous artist’s early talent and wit with other children. Included also were family photographs and on the cover was a portrait her father painted of her with her first born son. She said she recollects the joy of her childhood and hearing the wind in the rain trees and the sound of evening music of flute and tom toms floating over the water from the Dalada Maligawa across the Kandy Lake.
George Pervicival Sproule Keyt MBE (1901-1993) would have been connected to Cox Sproule, well known lawyer of Kandy who introduced the weaving of humorous stories around persons of Kandy starting with George E de Silva (apé George) and his malapropisms. He was the owner, I believe, of Green Café at Castle Street (now Kotugodella Vidiya) close to Trincomalee Street in Kandy, which was such a popular restaurant midway between elite Elephant House (patronized by Brit planters’ and businessmen’s families) and Paivas (famous for its Chinese rolls) and Silverdale open to the hoi polloi.
George Keyt was educated at Trinity College Kandy (TCK) but was never studious. He married Gladys Ruth Jansz in 1930 and had two daughters; Diana, his first born, in 1935. He must have had a job or jobs but soon after marriage left bread winning for the family to his wife who was a teacher at Trinity College. He preferred spending his time in the Malwatte Vihara imbibing Buddhist philosophy and absorbing art depicted lavishly in temples in, and surrounding Kandy.
I remember Mrs Keyt – a lovely, so dignified Head of the TCK Kindergarten. I substituted for my sister who was Grade 3 teacher when she went on maternity leave. I was just out of school and experimentally in sari wearing my hair in a ponytail. The little boys of Grade 3 hated me and when I wished them Good Morning first thing in the morning, their response was “When is our Sir coming back?” (even female teachers were Sir to them. I was not addressed thus because I was nothing to them!!).
In contrast Mrs Keyt was so welcoming, understanding and simply sweet to me. She guessed I was scared of my students so she advised me to just take no notice. She even advised me to enter for a Miss Ceylon contest or Air Lanka as an air hostess, sure my Kandyan sari would score points. I was certainly no beauty, not even pretty. Mrs Keyt was being kind to me to compensate for my difficulty in controlling the Grade 3 miscreants. Life was very simple and very natural then, especially in Kandy, six/seven decades ago.
Another remembered incident is one April when I was Head Librarian of the Overseas Children’s School in Pelawatte with the two libraries designated each year to organize Avurudhu celebrations to introduce this SL cultural event to expat kids. We rounded up volunteer students and acted Tamil and Sinhala rituals and customs celebrating April 13/14. For the Sinhala rituals we needed a boy to role play the father in sarong. One year around seven Sinhala boys in the middle and senior schools were asked whether they would oblige. All said they never wore sarong. Diana Keyt’s son who was in the library hearing some refusals, volunteered to play the part. “I wear sarong all the time at home, especially at night.” That is a memory embedded in my mind with its deeper significances.
I looked through the large sized book of drawings and verses at Vijita Yapa bookshop. Priced at Rs 2,490 (I hope I am correct), the coffee table publication is a treasure to possess. Christie’s catalogue I quoted from carried this very revealing information:
Price estimate USD 8,000 – 12,000. Price realized USD 69,300.