Painter Chen Chong Swee might not be as instantly recognisable a name as Georgette Chen, Liu Kang or Cheong Soo Pieng.

But his works are immediately identifiable as uniquely Singaporean, with a signature fusion of Chinese ink traditions and Singaporean subject matter.

He was one of the earliest Singapore artists to focus on painting Malay villages. In his works, one sees everyday life in Singapore in the first half of the 20th century. Fishing jetties, kampungs and people going about their daily routines abound in his paintings.

One of his most charming works in the National Collection is Ice Kachang Vendor, depicting a hawker making an ice ball treat for a young customer under the shelter of an enormous tree.

Pig Farm, an undated work, embodies Chen’s philosophy that art must be relatable to the viewer. Pig farms were once a common sight in Singapore and his serious treatment elevates this humble subject matter.

Of the Nanyang school of artists, Guangdong-born Chen is the most identifiably Chinese in style, hewing closely to Chinese ink traditions even as he dove wholeheartedly into painting the landscapes of his new-found home.

Many of his works, like Pig Farm, are laid out in the vertical or horizontal scroll format of traditional Chinese paintings.

He also created oil paintings which, thanks to his foundation in Chinese ink and Western watercolour techniques, are lighter in texture.

In the classic Chinese painter-scholar style, he also inscribed paintings with poetry and text. You can see an example of this in Pigs, another work in the National Collection, in which the artist-poet contemplates the fate of pigs as an analogy for human cruelty and selfishness.

Like Liu Kang, Chen was deeply engaged with the art community. Besides a long career as an arts educator, teaching at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts where he was head of the Chinese painting department, he also co-founded the Society of Chinese Artists and the Singapore Watercolour Society.

He also articulated his ideas about Chinese and Western art, and considered the early development of Singapore art in many published articles. Like Cheong Soo Pieng – with whom he travelled on that fateful 1952 Bali trip which catalysed the Nanyang school of painting – Chen never received a Cultural Medallion for his contributions to the art scene.

But Chen’s family has commemorated his legacy in another way. In 1994, Sotheby’s auctioned 138 paintings donated by the family, raising $730,000 for the Chen Chong Swee Art Scholarship fund, which is managed by the National Arts Council.

See this work at the National Gallery Singapore, DBS Singapore Gallery 2.