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.The years from 1955 to 1965 are considered the golden period in Lim’s oeuvre. A plein air artist, Lim often went around Singapore with fellow artists in search of subject matter. In ‘Picnic on the Beach’ Lim uses the luminosity of watercolour and its capacity for quick execution to great effect. With brush strokes of great freedom and vigour, he paints an impresssionistic scene of picnickers at the seaside on a bright day.
