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. After his retirement in 1966, Lim devoted more time to painting. At the same time, his art begins to lean towards abstraction and is less concerned with details and clearly delineated shapes. Instead the focus for Lim is to capture the atmospheric quality of a location. ‘Kampong Kebayan’ offers a panoramic view of lowlands in the foreground with a mountain rising majestically beyond.
