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.In the mid 1950s Lim focused on portraiture in order to refine his observation skills and representation of form. Although known as a watercolourist, he preferred pastel for portraiture as he felt it better describes the human form than watercolour, which is limited by its quick drying nature. ‘Malay Youth’ shows a man wearing a ‘songkok’, a type of cap worn by Malay men.
