[1][2] However, in the 1990s an unknown, dynamic portion of his oeuvre surfaced in Burma—his more Western-style secular works, which had gone undocumented in Burma.
[3] Saya Myit was born to a family of peasants in the Tammanaing village, Kawhmu, Twante Township.
In the late 1990s and in the early years after 2000, unknown works by Saya Myit were discovered in Burma which called for a reappraisal of his oeuvre and his contributions to Burmese painting.
In both paintings, the vehicles (carriage and motor car) sit in the center of the pieces, surrounded by a large crowd of followers who are depicted in minuscule, realistic detail.
In this sense, the paintings are of the Western style, but both possess Traditional features in the statuesque, arrested quality of the scenes.
The crowd scenes depict privileged and powerful persons as well as the subservient or anonymous with equal determination of detail, and have been described as possessing a "democratic gestalt".
[8] Three or four of these works by Saya Myit have emerged in Burma so far, and all of them, like Aye's portraits, mix features of Traditional Burmese painting—particularly floral arabesque—with Western-style painting.
The colors in the paintings are rich and somber, Burmese in character, but unique to Saya Myit's work.
(Saya Aye never had the advantage of such training as he died in 1930, the year Ba Nyan returned from England.
In 1949, Myit later produced a masterful portrait in oil of the famous early traditional painter, royal artist Saya Chone, done with a heavy impasto technique and complete mastery of Western painting.