This is a portrait that is rare in that it has signatures by two great artists of Singapore's hugely significant Equator Artist Society (EAS): Chua Mia Tee and Lee Boon Wang. It took some time before the duo, who are brothers-in-law (Chua married Lee Boon Ngan, also an Equator artist) collaborated again in the epic 1973 Surrender (of the British to the Japanese), based on a commissioned 1942 painting by Miyamoto Saburo. According to fellow Equator stalwart Koeh Sia Yong and Singapore's foremost archivist-researcher-chronicler and curator Koh Nguang How, the sitter was Ong Tian Soo, also an Equator artist of note, who graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore in 1955, two years after Boon Wang, and three years after Chua. It was painted in 1958, two years after the formation of EAS, by Lim Yew Kuan. That year, in 1958, Equator organised its inaugural exhibition featuring more than 400 works. In 1958, Chua was working as a book illustrator for the Shanghai Book Company. He had also painted portraits of then presidents Benjamin Sheares, Ong Teng Cheong and Yusof Ishak (the portrait was used on the Singapore currency). Others portraited include former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, former chief justice Wee Chong Jin, former founding SIA managing director Lim Chin Beng and billionaire Wee Cho Yaw. Chua Mia Tee (Cai Ming Zhi) is known for his epic works with a strong Social Realism content like National Language Class (1959), Epic Poem Of Malaya (1955), and Workers In A Canteen (1974). He graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in 1952, and had even taught there for two years. At NAFA, he was taught by the founder Lim Hak Tai, Cheong Soo Pieng, See Hiang To and Koh Tong Leong. He worked mostly as an illustrator until 1974, when he turned fulltime. He was awarded the Culture Medallion in 2015. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out, his parents migrated to Singapore (1937), he was only six. The family had to flee Singapore again when the Japanese invaded, before returning in 1945. He was given a major retrospective, Directing The Real, at the Singapore National Gallery, from Nov 26, 2021 to Nov 20, 2022. Like Chua, Lee Boon Wang (1934-2016) emigrated from China to Singapore with his family as a child. He graduated from NAFA in 1953, and later taught there briefly, and later worked in advertising. He held his last solo at the Hai Hui Gallery in May 2016, about five months before his death, from colon cancer.