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.Albeit best known as a plein air artist, Lim also painted many portraits during the mid 1950s. He believed that studying the human figure could help him better represent form in his art. Lim produced portraits in both pastel and watercolour but the former was his preferred medium as he felt it lends itself better to the description of skin tones and textures. As a consequence there is a considerable number of portraits in pastel, but few in watercolour.
