Saya Myit (; 1888–1966) was a major painter of the Traditional School in Burma who was a painter of Buddhist works for religious sites in Lower Burma. He is also popularly known for his Buddhist illustrations for books published by Zabhu Meit Swe Publishing House and Byinmazo Company. However, in the 1990s an unknown, dynamic portion of his oeuvre surfaced in Burma—his more Western-style secular works, which had gone undocumented in Burma.
Early education
Saya Myit was born to a family of peasants in the Tammanaing village, Kawhmu, Twante Township. His father, U Sine, was a respected sculptor and thus Saya Myit studied sculpture under him. Like many children in rural areas during his period, he received a monastic education, where his talent in art was encouraged. It is said that during this time, he once drew a picture of fruit among leaves on the wall of the monastery, and a squirrel, taking the depiction for the real thing, jumped at the picture and slipped down the wall.
Professional education in art
His father died before he had finished his schooling, and his mother sent him to Saya Nyan (not to be confused with Ba Nyan) to study pavilion decoration. By the age of 16, he had fair mastery of this art. He later studied under the professional painter M.T. Hla (U Tun Hla) (1874–1946), who had a background in Traditional art, but who became a pioneer watercolorist of Burma, mastering Western techniques of painting. M.T. Hla picked up these skills through exposure to paintings by Robert Talbot Kelly in his book Burma Painted and Described, or postcards of the paintings from this book which were sold in stores. Hla also had contact and instruction of some kind with the Irish painter Sir Gerald Kelly; both Kellys traveled to Burma in the early 1900s and painted its landscapes and people. Thus, M.T. Hla would likely have trained Saya Myit in both the Traditional and Western style of painting. M.T. Hla was also considered a master of glass painting and apparently passed on these skills to Saya Myit although it seems no works in the glass painting genre have survived by either M.T. Hla or Saya Myit.
Surprising discoveries of works
In the late 1990s and in the early years after 2000, unknown works by Saya Myit were discovered in Burma which called for a reappraisal of his oeuvre and his contributions to Burmese painting. In about 1996, a Burmese art dealer, Tin Win of Beikthano Gallery, happened upon four works by Saya Myit that were in the possession of one of Saya Myit's publishers of Buddhist illustrations for books. The four works belonged to a set of paintings which have been entitled An Auspicious Charity. The two most provocative paintings in the four-piece set, Motor Car Procession and Carriage Procession (both 51 x 78.5 cm), have been reproduced in books. The former painting appears in Old Myanmar Paintings in the Collection of U Win (2006) by Hla Tin Htun and both paintings appear in Burmese Painting: A Linear and Lateral History (2009) by Andrew Ranard. On the basis of the features of the motor car depicted in Motor Car Procession, the works can be dated to the early 1930s. The two paintings with vehicles are dramatically different from anything that had been produced in Burmese painting up until that time, or even now, in style and technique. In both paintings, the vehicles (carriage and motor car) sit in the center of the pieces, surrounded by a large crowd of followers who are depicted in minuscule, realistic detail. The atmospheric effects and linear perspective in the piece are polished and so are the anatomical proportions of all the subjects. In this sense, the paintings are of the Western style, but both possess Traditional features in the statuesque, arrested quality of the scenes. The crowd scenes depict privileged and powerful persons as well as the subservient or anonymous with equal determination of detail, and have been described as possessing a "democratic gestalt".
Portrait works
Saya Myit, like his predecessor in the Traditional arts, Saya Aye (1872–1930), also produced a handful of stunning commissioned portraits. Three or four of these works by Saya Myit have emerged in Burma so far, and all of them, like Aye's portraits, mix features of Traditional Burmese painting—particularly floral arabesque—with Western-style painting. The colors in the paintings are rich and somber, Burmese in character, but unique to Saya Myit's work. Saya Myit was 16 years younger than Aye, and emerged as a painter in Burma later, when techniques of Western painting were more familiar to Burmese artists, and thus Myit's portraits, in technique at least, also reveal greater knowledge of Western painting.
