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.In the mid 1950s, Lim spent considerable effort on portraiture in order to refine his representation of form. A believer in the virtue of practice, he produced many portraits in both pastel and watercolour, with the former being his preferred medium. In ‘Dreaming’, Lim renders a girl with her eyes closed in monochrome, emphasising the sculptural characteristics of the face.
