Lionel Wendt, the Oscar Wilde of Colombo

Lionel Wendt (1900-1944) was a photographer, cinematographer, pianist and scholar, who had a profound impact on the development of the fine arts in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon, a British colony until 1948).

















Of Ceylon-Dutch ancestry, Wendt studied law in London and practiced for awhile in Colombo, the capital of British Ceylon, but soon dedicated himself to his music.  Aside from being a concert pianist, he was a cinematographer, photographer, artist, literary critic (he imported books from London by the bushel), teacher, and patron of the arts.

He and his friends wore their hair long, wore flamboyant costumes, and delighted in scandalizing the Colombo blue-bloods.  He was big and brash and open, as one could be in Ceylon in the 1930s, the Oscar Wilde of Colombo.

His photography shows the influence of European modernism.

Yet Wendt was not just a Eurocentric flaneur; he wanted to develop a distinctly Sri Lankan vision.  He published photographs of rural Ceylon (Lionel Wendt's Ceylon, 1950), and spearheaded the documentary Song of Ceylon.  He brought two traditional dancers to England to film.

He organized the Photographic Society of Ceylon and the Colombo 43 Art Group.  There's a Lionel Wendt Art Center in Colombo, with two galleries and a theater dedicated to his memory.

He photographed many of his male lovers, creating an image of Ceylon as a homoerotic paradise that remains firmly embedded in the popular imagination today.

Yet none of the many articles and retrospectives published in Sri Lanka today mention that he was gay.  Seventy years after his death, Lionel Wendt is still closeted in his homeland.