He also met king George V in person, after he had saved one of the king's relatives from drowning.
Until a Western vanguard in painting swept Burma, after the Burmese painter Ba Nyan returned from training in London in 1930, Buddhist-inspired works of art heavily made up much of Burma's corpus of painting.
1930 was a threshold year in Burmese painting as that was when Ba Nyan returned from approximately eight years of academic and professional study in the painting arts in London.
In 1944, during the Japanese occupation, Ba Nyan led a group of artists that opened the school's successor, the Burmese Academy of Art, becoming the principal of the academy with Ba Kyi and San Win as instructors.
The art scholar and painter Min Naing, biographer of Ba Nyan, documents that after Ba Zaw returned to Burma in 1930 from three years of studies at the Royal College of Art in London that he began to teach watercolor “wash” painting to Saya Saung.