Portrait of Datuk Choong Lye Hock

This is a portrait of Datuk Choong Lye Hock (d.1960). Lye Hock was a pioneering oil and rice miller in Malaya. In the 1890s, he bought a mansion at Macalister Road in Penang, later known as the Choong Lye Hock mansion. Lye Hock’s father, the Choong family’s patriarch, Choong Cheng Kean, immigrated from China in the 18th century and established the family’s network which spanned Xiamen, Phuket, Kedah, and Penang. This portrait is unusual as the ornamental borders are painted on the reverse of a glass panel. This technique was used in Renaissance Italy and spread to Asia by Jesuit missionaries.