Lot 036
Chuah Thean Teng, Dato’
b. China, 1912 – d. Penang, 2008
Marketplace, 1950s
signed ‘Teng’ (lower left)
batik
90 x 70cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Singapore
ESTIMATE RM 32,000 – 60,000
PRICE REALISED RM 35,840.00
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This must be one of the best composed of Dato’ Chuah Thean Teng’s batiks, with the white blob of dress of the bent-over woman top head at an angle taking center stage against an effusive laminate-top cork-coloured backdrop. The splash of red sarong reveals she’s squatting to pick or scrutinize something, edible or no, at the crowded marketplace. The cork colours also act as an embalming shadow with figures all around etched out by lines that dovetail the batik cracking technique. Teng always has an eye for the little things of kampung folks at work and at leisure in the rural areas, which he often depicts with love and humour.
Dato’ Chuah Thean Teng is a world acclaimed art legend, dubbed the ‘Father of Batik Painting’ by the then Singapore-based Professor Michael Sullivan (Chinese Art in the 20th Century, 1959). The Penang State Government awarded him the Dato’ title in 1998, the Living Heritage status in 2005, and a Retrospective in 1994 (Penang State Art Gallery). He was also given a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 1965, and a Memorial Exhibition in 2008. He was trained in art at the Xiamen (Amoy) Art Institute, China (uncompleted), and moved to Penang in 1926. He set up his batik museum, Yahong Art Gallery, Batu Ferringhi, in 1974, from its earlier base in Leith Street in 1953. Images of two of his works, Two Of A Kind and Tell You A Secret, were chosen for UNICEF’s greeting cards in 1968 and 1988 respectively. Since auctions started in Malaysia in 2010 (Henry Butcher), Teng’s works have hit six digits seven times, the highest being a premium of RM176,000 in the Henry Butcher October 2012 auction. |