In this painting, Tchang depicts his wife in a qipao/ cheongsam on a wooden deck chair with a folded book in her hands. The presence of what appears to be a painting (or the back of a painting) in the background suggests that the location may have been the artist’s studio. Depicting Chen as elegant and composed, Tchang’s portrait captures a period of relative calm before the Japanese Occupation and the unravelling of the Tchangs’ lives.Tchang was an intellectual, a critic and editor, an educator as well as a social “leader” and pivotal member of key art agencies and communities such as Society of Chinese Artists. A critic and activist against the Japanese Occupation of China and subsequently Singapore, Tchang was killed in 1942 during the Sook Ching Operation.
