Born in 1943 in Indonesia, Tan migrated to Singapore as a child. After graduating from the Nanyang University in Singapore in 1968, he worked at the French Embassy for 24 years before becoming a full-time artist. In 1985, Tan was awarded the Gold Medal of the French Artist Salon and in 1987, the Singapore Cultural Medallion. In 2003, Tan was honoured with the World Economic Forum Crystal Award and Singapore Meritorious Award. In 1993, Tan became the first Singapore artist to have a private museum dedicated to the display of his extensive oeuvre of artistic and literary works. ‘Mountain Rain’ is evocative of monumental landscape paintings from the Northern Song dynasty. Its complex brushwork and ink wash present a rain-soaked vision of craggy mountain cliffs. Although firmly reinforcing the traditional Chinese viewpoint that man is but a small part of nature, this is not a typical Chinese landscape painting. The central triangular space left unpainted, creates an unusual spiral perspective that prompts the viewer to imagine himself looking at a patch of sky framed by towering cliffs..
