Glimpses of royalty, 50 years on

PIRIYA KRAIRIKSH is one of the few people who’ve had the remarkable chance to closely observe Their Majesties the King and Queen amid personal activities like dining – even trekking in a forest. The respected scholar of Asian art history, whose uncle was head of the royal pages, sketched these events, and his drawings are now on view in the exhibition “From Corfu to Bhubing 1961-1964”, at the Siam Society in Bangkok.

Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn formally opened the show last Thursday to mark the occasion 50 years ago when His Majesty opened an exhibition of Piriya’s paintings. That also took place at the Siam Society, on December 4, 1963.

This time the show has 84 drawings, most of them done while the artist was living on the Greek island of Corfu, from 1962-1963, and while accompanying the King on a visit to Bhubing Palace, the royal residence in Chiang Mai, in 1963-64. 

This is the first time that all but two of these sketches have been shown in public. We’re getting to see them now thanks to their aesthetic, historical and art historical value. Done in pencil, felt-tip pen and ballpoint pen, they boast firm yet lively contours. Some are portraits, others landscapes. 

A sketch of Their Majesties having lunch in Chiang Mai’s Doi Pui Forest in 1964 is among the highlights. It shows them relaxing among courtiers and local guests. Another depicts the King wearing a backpack on a “trek to Pha Noi”. Still another has the Queen watching the King play piano at Bhubing Palace.

Their Majesties are seen mainly from the back, lending the drawings directness and intimacy, though they royal couple is unrecognisable without the aid of the caption cards. 

A portrait of Princess Sirindhorn at age nine is included, in short hair and with a big smile, also from the stay at Bhubing Palace.

“After my return to Bangkok in September 1963 [from a stint in Australia], my uncle, Khun Poonpherm Krairiksh, who was head of the Royal Pages Division, officially presented me to His Majesty the King at the Chitrlada Villa at Dusit Palace,” the artist explains in the exhibition catalogue. 

“His Majesty already knew me as Khun Poonpherm’s nephew because I’d visited him at the Villa Flonzaley near Vevey, Switzerland, in 1960, where Their Majesties were staying during their visit to Europe. Moreover, during Christmas that year I had joined Their Majesties for a skiing holiday in Gstaad. 

“After my presentation, His Majesty graciously gave me permission to paint portraits of him in his study, playing the saxophone and playing badminton. He 

 also allowed me to paint him while presenting robes to monks at Wat Bowonniwet Vihara at the end of Buddhist Lent.”

The King next invited Piriya to “join the royal party” at Bhubing Palace while he was hosting Queen Juliana and Crown Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands. The paintings from the exhibition that His Majesty opened in 1963 were presented to the King for his third-cycle birthday that same December, with proceeds from sales committed to his Anandamahidol Foundation.

Their Majesties were at Bhubing Palace in January, March and May 1964, and on one visit with them, Piriya did a sketch of the Queen that’s shown in the current exhibition.

It also features drawings he made at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting in London in 1960-1961, among them portraits of friends and relatives and landscapes.

In 1965, “on leave” from His Majesty’s service, Piriya studied sculpture with Henry Moore at the Royal College of Arts in London, then enrolled at Indiana University in the US, in pursuit of a BA. A friend steered him toward art history, “an academic subject I’d never known to exist”.

“So I laid down my brushes and took up art history. One art critic regretted that I had thrown away my future as an artist, saying, ‘His early work has defined him as potentially one of Thailand’s greatest artists’.” That was Herbert P Phillips, and the expression of dismay appears in the book “The Integrative Art of Modern Thailand”.

Piriya earned his doctorate in art history from Harvard and became curator of Asian art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. On his return to Thailand he taught art history at Thammasat University and, in retirement, became director of the Thai Khadi Institute. He has served as president of the Siam Society and senior research scholar for the Thailand Research Fund and has published many articles and books on Thai art, in both Thai and English, most recently “The Roots of Thai Art”.

Such a CV is admirable enough in itself, but Piriya’s time with the royal family makes his career all the more remarkable.

He recalls that, while Their Majesties were touring Switzerland, Greece, Belgium and Austria in September 1964, the King took time to visit the painter Oskar Kokoschka at his home near Montreux, Switzerland. Piriya went along, as did His Serene Highness Prince Kanwannadis Diskul, and they all enjoyed tea with the famed expressionist and his wife.

 

THE WAY THEY WERE

“Reminiscences from Corfu to Bhubing, 1961-1964” runs until September 6 at the Siam Society, open from 10 to 4.30 daily. 

n Find out more from the Piriya Krairiksh Foundation at (02) 655 1073, [email protected], www.Siam-Society.org and www.Siamese-Heritage.org.