Dato’ Chuah Thean Teng is not only the world-acknowledged founder-doyen of batik painting but also a great innovator with batik imagery and techniques, like this Cubistic panoply of a village scene schematized in geometric and organic forms like stained-glass mosaic, with the topography of mock Minangkabau roofing dominating. The composition plays on a raft of mast poles, sloping diagonal cuts, horizontal bars, odd geometric shapes and pockets of overhangs with matching colour schemes. Dato’ Chuah Thean Teng developed batik painting in 1953 after setting up a batik factory (1946-47) and presented it to the world in his solo at the Arts Council in Penang in 1955. Professor Michael Sullivan crowned him the ‘Father of Batik Painting’ (Chinese Art in the 20th Century, 1959). “In Teng, Malaya claims to have found her first national painter. Teng has conceived the idea of making pictures in batik – not just decorative designs, but large and frequently complex figure compositions.” He was invited to have an exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London, in 1959, and the only Malaysian among great world artists to be invited, to take part in the Commonwealth Artists of Fame exhibition in London, to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1977. Iconic images of his paintings, Two Of A Kind (1968) and Tell You A Secret (1987) were used as UNICEF greeting cards. He was the first Malaysian artist (after British-born Peter Harris) to be given a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery (NAG). Penang, his base since 1932, honoured him with a Retrospective in 1994, a ‘Datoship’ title in 1998, and the ‘Live Heritage Award’ in 2005. The NAG honoured Teng again in 2008 with a Tribute exhibition.