Sheikh Mohammad Sultan, popularly known as S M Sultan (1923-1994) was a renowned painter celebrated for his visionary depiction of muscular Bengali peasants. Born in Machimdia of Narail district, Sultan’s artistic journey began when he was a child. He was inspired by his father’s masonry work. Young Sultan secured financial support from the local zamindar to continue his study at the local school. He later went to Calcutta (now Kolkata) to pursue art education. Though he did not meet the entry requirement to enroll in the art course at the Government School of Art, Sultan was allowed admission at the behest of Hasan Shahid Suhrwardy, the poet and art critic who became his local patron. He dropped out of art school after four years in 1944 and began touring across India making sketches of landscapes. He had his first solo exhibition in 1946 in Shimla, India. He had two more exhibitions in Lahore and Karachi, respectively in 1948 and 1949 after Pakistan came into being following the partition of the subcontinent. He travelled to America and Europe only to have returned to his native village in 1953. His first major solo exhibition was held in Dhaka at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in 1976, which shaked up the status quo in the country’s art circle. A second wave took place when the German Cultural Centre organized his solo exhibition in 1987. Sultan’s work is characterized by its decolonial themes and like fables they have protagonists in the form of robust ,muscular figures, reflecting the strength of the bhumiputra, or the man of the soil. His communal vision centred on the peasantry, their ownership of land and the life lived in communion with nature found its proper expression after Bangladesh came into being in 1971. He received Ekushey Padak in 1982 and Swadhinata Padak (Independence Award) in 1993.