Burmese Oil Painting ‘The Shwedagon in the Monsoon’, by Mya Thaung

This particularly beautiful oil-on-canvas Impressionist-like rendering of the paved walkway around Rangoon’s Shwedagon Pagoda and some of the ancillary buildings in the grounds of the Pagoda is by Mya Thaung. It shows the walkway, probably late afternoon, and after a monsoonal downpour. White birds in the foreground contrast with the finely rendered reflection in the rain pools and the monsoonal sky.

It is signed ‘Mya Thaung’ in the bottom left corner and dated ‘1998’.

Mya Thaung was born in 1943 in Bogalay. He studied at the State School of Fine Art in Rangoon from 1965 to 1967. His works have been shown in exhibitions in Korea, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

Dr Elizabeth Moore mentioned Mya Thaung’s architectural studies as particularly noteworthy in her seminal 1992 article on contemporary Burmese painters.

The painting here is in excellent condition. It was acquired in Burma in the late 1990s.