Born Tan Tiow Phuang (1911-1983) in Singapore, Dr Tan Tsze Chor went to China at age four for his education and returned at 17. A successful businessman known in the region as the ‘pepper king’, he was an avid collector of Chinese art and a philanthropist who donated money and artworks to various institutions, including the University of Malaya (now National University of Singapore) and the Singapore Art Society. Largely self-taught, Tan was influenced by ancient Chinese calligraphers, such as Yen Zhenqing (709-785) and Liu Gongquan (778-865), who were masters in the regular script. This work features Tan’s distinctive style which combines the seal, regular, running and cursive scripts in a single piece of calligraphy. Although charged with energy, the brushstrokes are more controlled than his later works.
