Artist community mourns painter Shahid Jalal’s death

LAHORE:The death of Pakistan’s prominent and world famous painter Shahid Jalal, famed for his oil landscapes, who passed away due to a sudden heart attack in Lahore on Tuesday at 72, is being mourned by the art world and the artist community all across the country.

Shahid Jalal was a chartered accountant who became Lahore's well-known artist in his middle years. Brother of historian Ayesha Jalal, Shahid had effervescent, kind, straight talking and humble personality.

Shahid Jalal was born in 1948. His death came as a sudden shock to the world of art and the entire art community in Pakistan and many other countries. In 2017, Ejaz Art Gallery had a solo exhibition by Shahid Jalal titled ‘Flower Carpets of Lahore.’ A recipient of the Pride of Performance Presidential Award, Shahid Jalal developed a style of his own, which is executed with thick impasto brush strokes. There is nothing casual or even offhand in his work. Both the subject and the style are neat, orderly, planned, precise and refined, like the artist himself.

He was one of the outstanding painters of nature. He was mentored by the late master artist Khalid Iqbal and he studied at the National College of Arts in 1979-80. The artist exhibited his paintings in Washington, Sotheby’s in London, Stockholm, Delhi Trinale.

Shahid Jalal won the Punjab Painters Exhibition in 1989 as well as the President’s Award for Pride of Performance in the field of painting in 1994. He was a ‘plein air’ painter; he painted outdoors and was best known for his saturated depiction of Lahore’s flower carpets and gardens. His paintings are rich in detail and design. The artist seldom exhibited his paintings, and whenever he showed, his works would sell like hot cakes.

Many Art gallerias in the country, including Ejaz Art Galleries, Hamail, Ocean Art Gallery and others have expressed a great sense of loss over the demise of this larger than life figure in Pakistani art world. They have offered their condolences to his family and friends.