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.Best known for his watercolour landscapes, pastel was however Lim’s preferred medium for portraiture as he felt it lends itself better to the description of skin tones and textures. In the mid 1950s, Lim started painting portraits as he believed it would help him refine his techniques in the representation of form in his art.
