Born in Amoy, China in 1912, Lim Cheng Hoe came to Singapore when he was 7. Primarily a self-taught artist, Lim studied art under Richard Walker, Singapore’s first Art Inspector of Schools, at the Raffles Institution in the early 1930s. Lim was a prominent and significant first generation artist due to his treatment of the local landscape in the watercolour medium and is associated with the Nanyang Style. He was also a founding member of the Singapore Watercolour Society. Lim passed away in 1979 in Singapore.Prior to his retirement in 1966, Lim painted on Sundays, usually with a group of fellow artists, often travelling to all parts of Singapore in search of subject matter. The Singapore River is a favoured subject of many artists and Lim too, had painted it on several occasions. In ‘Busy River’, boats travelling on the waterway lead the viewer’s eye up the river to the warehouses that line the riverbank. This painting demonstrates Lim’s masterly control over the medium and is especially evident in the sensitive depiction of reflections on the water.
