Book Review

Engravings of yesteryear

Dr. Rajpal de Silva is an intriguing 67-year-old paediatrician turned author.

Laconically he said, "I worked as a paediatrician and it is as good as any branch of medicine." Dr. de Silva qualified from the University of Ceylon in 1956 and in 1964 left for England for post graduate studies in paediatric medicine. He practised for ten years as a paediatrician and then as a General Practitioner. "I have lived in England for 35 years. My three sons and four grandsons live in England."

Here is a man of medicine engrossed in newspaper engravings. "I have made it a mission to find out material that there was on Sri Lanka in the world outside," he says.

He travelled not in search of medicinal properties but to libraries and museums in Holland and Paris. In Jena of former East Germany he found a museum dedicated to Ernest Haeckel a friend of Darwin who was in Sri Lanka in the late 1870s and who had painted over 70 water colours of our country.

Other museums the doctor visited were the Congress in Washington and the Huntington in Los Angeles.

Who was it who set Dr de Silva on this new exciting road to find out about wooden engravings in newspapers?

"It was, the influence of my mother Maisie de Silva who died two years ago at the age of 89. She was a professional artist of portraits in oil and landscapes in water colours," Dr. de Silva said.

Living with an artistic mother while practising as a doctor he naturally developed an interest in art especially water colours, quintessentially a British medium and studied art history.

"I also developed an interest in collecting Victorian water colours." He began collecting prints in water colours when he could not afford sophisticated Impressionist art.

The doctor loved his art and was conscious of the importance of conserving art on paper. It became he said "almost a crusade" with him to pressurise the "national Museum authorities over the past twenty years to have and preserve the works of mid-nineteenth century artist Andrew Nicholl."

Dr. de Silva has jointly edited a catalogue of the National Museum on the collection of paintings of Andrew Nicholl which was declared open by the Prince of Wales in February this year.

Dr. de Silva has also published illustrations and Views of Dutch Ceylon 1602 - 1796'. In 1983 he also published The Early Prints of Ceylon 1800 - 1900.'

Dr. de Silva said he found that a significant part of the visual record of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in the nineteenth century consisted of engraved illustrations. These engravings in the British newspapers gave the British public an insight into the dress, customs, physical features, monuments, flora and fauna, of this country.

His new book Nineteenth Century Newspaper Engravings consists of 400 pages with illustrations. The cover is a reproduction by J. K. L. Van Dort of a bullock Hackery race in Colombo. (Pic above)

Until photography became popular in the 1860s, one had to rely on artists and softwood engravers to illustrate newspapers.

These wooden engravings were done by making a mirror image on softwood and putting ink and pressing it into the paper. It was a slow process. Then around 1822 the reproduction of an engraving was etched upon a sensitised metal plate that was then in vogue for printing.

The doctor mentions that at the outset there was no reliable pictorial journalism. The funny thing is that in events of which there was prior notice, drawings were usually made in advance perhaps depending on the imagination of the artists. Often naturally, inaccuracies resulted from this practice.

Later there was the introduction of accompanying notes that gave the artists necessary information to produce an illustration.

The book says that, however, papers like the Illustrated London News quickly built up a team of special artists who made rapid sketches of events.

The book is interesting reading both to the layman and to the student of history and art. For example the book reveals that the first illustrated Penny Magazine had material on Sri Lanka. It shows a distant view of Adam's Peak seen from Fort.

The book also depicts the adventures of Robert Knox who wrote the classic A Historical Relation of Ceylon. We recall Robert Knox paying a compliment to the women in the villages who worked hard while their husbands sat under the shade of a tree chewing betel.

There is also the depiction of a talipot palm in different stages of growth and a view of the Colombo road in 1833.

The book also writes of the Satyalokaya "Light of Truth" monthly Sinhala Christian journal which started publication in 1890.

It carried many engravings of prominent personalities ranging from Vasco da Gama, Socrates to Queen Victoria and even Shakespeare.

Nineteenth Century Newspaper Engravings of Ceylon is a magnificient work which should be a treasure in any library, home, university, school or museum.

More Plus  *  Kala Korner - by Dee Cee

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