There is a popular Chinese adage: "If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Here, in Yong Mun Sen's watercolour, two anglers are perched on a big rock with fishing rods, with the waves swirling around the shallow waters. The spot may look unyielding, but experienced anglers just know where fishes foray for food though the anglers prefer to work solitary. The slightly droopy figures look patient, but company makes time fly by faster. The haul may not amount to much, but in Mun Sen's halcyon days, it suffices for the family meal, with the 'extras' sold or given to neighbours. It was a time of innocence, when people are simpler and more contented. The boulder represents land, with the water and the sky demarcated only by a thin horizon line. Or one can think of the historical story of (Jiang) Taigong, a Shang imperial minister, noted for fishing patiently for the right time to overthrow the corrupt Shang kingdom and helping set up the Zhou Dynasty. The work also recalls Dato' Tay Hooi Keat's 1947 watercolours, Fishing, Tanjung Bungah. Yong Mun Sen, dubbed the Father of Malaysian Painting, first dabbled in watercolours, for which he became mainly known, in 1930, but his reputation as artist and activist straddles both the then Malayan peninsular and Singapore. In 1966, he was honoured with posthumous Memorial exhibitions in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur (Gallery 11), followed by two major ones in 1972 at the National Art Gallery and the Penang State Art Gallery (PSAG). The PSAG gave him a full-blown retrospective in 1999. Among other things, Mun Sen co-founded the Penang Chinese Art Club and the Singapore Society of Chinese Artists, and was a proponent in the formation of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore. As early as 1948, he had held a solo exhibition in London (Malayan Pavilion, British Industrial Fair, 1948), besides later in Tasmania (Australia) and Cleveland (United States). He also set up his art gallery cum photography studio in Penang.