Sheikh Muhammed Sultan

Sheikh Muhammed Sultan (1923–1994), widely known as S.M. Sultan or Laal Mia, was one of Bangladesh's most celebrated and unconventional painters. Born into a family of modest means in Narail, he showed artistic talent early and eventually made his way to the Government School of Art in Calcutta.

Sultan's most iconic works depict the farmers and peasants of rural Bangladesh with muscular, almost superhuman physiques — a deliberate artistic choice to restore dignity and power to those who work the land. Where colonial-era depictions often showed the Bengali peasant as emaciated and defeated, Sultan painted them as giants striding across lush fields.

Despite his international fame — he exhibited in New York, London and Karachi in the late 1940s — Sultan chose to return to his village of Narail, where he lived in self-imposed simplicity, surrounded by animals and children. He established a school for village children called the Children's Fantasy School.

His palette was characteristically lush: deep greens, rich browns, golden ochres — the colours of Bengal's riverine landscape. His canvases were large and ambitious, painted with a freedom that bordered on the ecstatic.