In the 1990s, Tan Choon Ghee was commissioned by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to paint sceneries of Amsterdam, receiving all expense-paid trips to Holland. This set of watercolour paintings was conceived during this excursion, illustrating the beauty of boats and buildings along possibly one of the three main canals, Herengracht, Prinsengracht, and Keizersgrach. Tan Choon Ghee completed his secondary education from Chung Ling high school in 1948 and graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in Singapore in 1951. He then attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1957 to 1959. He had received a German government painting scholarship and an Australian government television set design scholarship. He had worked for TV Singapore and TV Broadcast Ltd in Hong Kong prior to becoming a fulltime artist. He had held numerous one man shows with his first in 1956 at the Hooi Ann Association, Penang followed by in 1958, 1962 and 1963 organised by the British Council, Penang; National Library in Singapore (1962 and 1970); Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur (1983 and 1993) among others. Tan had also been honoured with two retrospective exhibitions in 1996 and 2000; a tribute show in Kuala Lumpur (2009) and a recent posthumous solo exhibition titled A Lifetime of Drawings showcasing his sketchbooks and paper works at the Penang State Art Gallery (2014).