Born in 1923, Lim Tze Peng is largely a self-taught artist. In his oeuvre, ink paintings and calligraphic works feature prominently, although there is a small number of oils, watercolours and drawings. He created a unique style of ink painting using rich brush and tonal details, and this approach is often regarded as a manifestation of the Nanyang Style in the ink medium. Lim, a school principal until his retirement in the early 1980s, was awarded the Cultural Medallion by the Singapore government in 2003.Having grown up in a ‘kampong’ (village in Malay), trees have a special place in Lim’s art, and he has produced countless paintings of them. ‘Still Life - Mandarin Orange Tree’ depicts a centrally placed tree with little background context, a style that is similarly observed in a number of works of the same period found in the NHB collection.
