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.Prior to his retirement in 1966, Lim reserved Sundays for painting expeditions with fellow artists, often travelling to different places in Singapore in search of subject matter. In Lim’s landscape paintings, people do not assume a major role; the emphasis has consistently been on nature (greenery, foliage, land, water) and the built environment (indigenous houses, cityscape). Lim’s landscapes have been described as lyrical and picturesque. ‘Kampong Scene’ depicts a few wooden houses of a coastal community; the houses are built on stilts and jut out into the sea.
