This portrait by Shister demonstrates the desires of upper-class Chinese community to memorialise themselves and also their ancestors through the Western art tradition of portraiture. The work also demonstrates Shister’s status and circulation within Singapore, as not being confined to the British community and to include the Chinese community as well. Anatole Shister graduated in 1915 from the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg, where he was tutored by Ilya Yefimovich Repin (b.1844, Russia; d.1930, Finland), a leading painter and sculptor recognized for establishing the basis of Socialist Realism. Shister’s travels are a signification of his itinerant status as an artist who travelled from place to place searching for inspiration and work. His sitters included then luminaries such as Sir Huge Clifford, Sir Cecil Clementi and RJ Farrer and Eu Tong Sen.
