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.As a plein air artist, Lim drew the visible world that surrounds him. He often went around Singapore with fellow artists to search for suitable subject matter. The sea is a recurring theme for Lim. In ‘Nocturne’ he depicts dusk as it descends on a fishing villageby using impressionistic techniques, blurring details and replacing specific forms with broad masses.
