The William Roberts Society

William Roberts:

Kumari de Zoysa

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Kumari de Zoysa, 1946
Oil on canvas, 48 cm x 38 cm

Kumari de Zoysa (b. 1931) was the daughter of WR's friends A. P. and Eleanor de Zoysa; WR had painted her father's portrait in c.1931. Her own portrait was painted during five sittings totalling 17 hours on 7–26 July 1946. She later graduated in political science from the London School of Economics, and then qualified as a barrister from Lincoln's Inn. After further studies in Paris and London, she taught at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka and at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, and was an affiliated fellow of the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. Under her married name of Kumari Jayawardena, she is the author of several books, including the widely used text Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (1986).
PROVENANCE: Kumari Jayawardena