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Saya Saung

(1898–1952) was an early Burmese watercolorist who adopted the Western style of painting and became famous in Burma for his landscape works. He is less known for his portraits, about seven of which have surfaced in recent years. Saya Saung is the only early Western-style painter who has the honorific “Saya” (meaning master) automatically attached to his name, a title generally reserved for the painters of the Traditional School in Burma. In Saya Saung’s case, the honorific may have attached to him because he was from Mandalay, the capital of the fallen Konbaung Dynasty (1752–1885) and the heart of the Traditional arts, where artisans trained rigorously in apprenticeship systems working themselves up gradually to the status of master, or Saya. Saya Saung did not pass through such demanding and subservient rites of passage in his acquisition of talents in Western painting, but once he was recognized as possessing master-level skills, it would have been natural in the cloistered world of Mandalay for the title “Saya” to be applied to his name. 

A limited number of Saya Saung’s landscape works emerged on the art market in Burma in the 1990s and sold off quickly to collectors. During this same period and into the years after 2000, many other paintings surfaced in the UK, corroborating claims that Saya Saung’s work sold well to British colonials. The majority of the works which surfaced in Burma and the UK were of Upper Burma scenes—often of the old Mandalay Palace and moat, Mandalay Hill, boats on the Irrawaddy River, or village scenes. One fascinating portion of Saung’s oeuvre are his little-known portraits. Approximately seven have appeared thus far, but there may be a dozen or two more. But as Saya Saung never signed his paintings with dates, one can only speculate on his periods.