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. Nature and greenery are recurring subjects of Lim’s landscapes. By the late 1960s, Lim had attained great fluency in the depiction of trees and foliage, and as is typical of many of his landscapes from this period, Lim captures the lush greenery with astonishing exuberance and freedom of brush strokes. ‘Green Shades’ shows two strollers in the dappled shade of large trees.
