Lot 077
Kuo Juping
b. China, 1908 - d. 1966
My Daughter Playing Piano
oil on canvas laid on masonite board
60cm x 45cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur
ESTIMATE RM 18,000 – 32,000
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The name of the girl in a white frock with broad bluish bands playing the piano is Serene Koay Chooi Hoong. She is Kuo Ju Ping’s (nee Koay Seng Chye) daughter from his second marriage to May Fong Sien, who was an art teacher (Kuo had another daughter, born 1944, from his first marriage; his second marriage was around the early 1950s). For a girl to be able to take piano lessons during the 1960s, it must have been a luxury. Because of prejudices still prevalent those days, some girls don’t even get to be sent to school. The local music scene in Penang at that time was ruled by Jimmy Boyle and Paul Augustin. But Kuo, who took over his father’s import-export (rattan, cloves and nutmegs) business, Sin Guan Thye and Company, in Victoria Street, was fairly well-to-do, although he had to abruptly stop his studies as a pioneering batch of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA) in Singapore, to return to tend to the business. Kuo died of a stroke in March 1966 at the age of 58, but Serene Koay remembered him fondly: “He used to bring along a sketch-book whenever he went. While waiting to fetch me after school, or at the seaside or on a business trip to Balik Pulau, he would doodle on his sketchbook. I always admired his concentration in painting.” (Kuo Ju Ping Memorial Exhibition, Penang State Art Gallery, Aug 5-30, 1997, by Dato’ Dr. Tan Chee Khuan). Even though he left NAFA a year ahead of graduation, Kuo was already sound in all departments of the art field. He was a founding member of the Penang Chinese Art Club and was a mentor of Tan Choon Ghee (1930-2010), who became a legendary watercolorist. |
