Harry Pieris born in 1904, first studied painting under Mudaliyar A.C.G.S. Amarasekera who then suggested that his parents send him to England. At the age of 19, Pieris entered the Royal College of Art in South Kensington where Sir William Rothenstein first recognized Pieris’s talent for portraiture. He said that Pieris had “a marked gift in giving the essentials of the sitters’ characters and his execution is mostt capable’ (Weereratne, 1993; p50).

Pieris won the prize for the best portrait in 1926, the portrait of his uncle, Sir James Pieris.

Following a brief stay in Sri Lanka after his studies, Pieris lived in Paris for six years, where he worked under Robert Folk and had the privilege of getting to know Madame Popesco.

In 1935, Harry Pieris went to Bengal to teach at the Rabindranath Tagore’s school in Santiniketan, introduced to him by Sir Rothenstein.

Pieris returned to Sri Lanka in 1938, with a great appreciation of Indian art. Ivan Peries’s comment on this observation is pertinent. “He used the same earth colours that we see in those paintings (at Ajanta). His palatte was a combination of Indian red, yellow ochre, terre-verte, lapis lazuli and cerulean blue” (Weeraratne, 1993; p50). In addition Professor Dissanayake observed an architectural quality in his method of developing his compositions.