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 as a landscape painter, Lim also painted portraits especially during the mid 1950s. A firm believer in the virtue of practice, Lim produced many portraits of people from all walks of life. He believed that studying the human figure could help him refine his techniques on representing form. For the portrait ‘Barbara’, Lim utilises free and expressive strokes to depict an elegant profile of a Caucasian lady.
