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. After his retirement in 1966, Lim devoted more time to painting. ‘Singapore Waterfront from Kallang Basin’ displays the strongly atmospheric qualiity that characterises Lim’s later landscapes. It is the atmosphere and broad suggestions of form created by the suffusion of colours, and not the details that matter. Compositionally, the jutting rocks lead the viewer’s eye to the middle of the painting where the boats are and then upwards to the sky.
