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.Best known for his watercolour landscapes, Lim also painted many portraits especially in the mid 1950s, as a way to hone his skills and techniques in the representation of form. Although Lim produced portraits in both pastel and watercolour, the former was his preferred medium for he felt it could convey the human form, skin tones and textures better than watercolour.
