Yong Mun Sen (10January 18961962) was a

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

n artist and one of the founder of

Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA); (Standard Chinese: 南洋艺术学院; ms, Akademi Seni Halus Nanyang; ta, நன்யாங் அகாடமி ஆஃப் ஃபைன் ஆர்ட்ஸ்) is a publicly-funded post-secondary ar ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, then

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

. Born Yong Yen Lang in

Kuching Kuching (), officially the City of Kuching, is the capital and the most populous city in the States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Sarawak in Malaysia. It is also the capital of Kuching Division. The city is on the Sarawak River ...

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the M ...

, he changed his name to Yong Mun Sen in 1922.

Biography

Born in Kuching, Sarawak where his father ran a coconut estate, in 1901 Sen went to

Dabu County Dabu County () is a county in Meizhou City, in the east of Guangdong Province, China. A center of Hakka culture, it has a population of 375,000. Famous natives This is the ancestral hometown of 1st Guyana President Arthur Chung even though the ...

in Meizhou City, Kwangtung (now Guangdong) Province in China for schooling in brush use and calligraphy and returned to Kuching in 1910. Sen always spoke of how seeing a Japanese artist painting with watercolors had made an indelible impression on him. He is widely known as the Father of Malaysian Painting. Although trained in formal Chinese brush painting and calligraphy in China, as an artist he was drawn to watercolours and later oils. Sen returned to China in 1914. His paintings during this visit were marked by a grandiose theme. He painted lions and tigers, images that were hugely popular with the warlords of the time. He married Lam Sek Foong in 1916, and returned to Sarawak in 1917. He settled in Penang in 1922, where he had his own art studios on Penang Road and later Northam Road. Mun Sen is noted for his watercolour landscape paintings, which incorporate influences from Chinese art resulting in more airy and generalised compositions rather than in more detailed or factual depictions. Since his death in 1962, his works have retained an important and honoured place in Malaysian art. Two of his children would follow in his footsteps, ChengWah and KhengWah. Both are well-established artists in their own media.

References

External links

1896 births 1962 deaths 20th-century Malaysian painters Malaysian painters Malaysian people of Chinese descent Malaysian people of Hakka descent People from Dabu People from Kuching {{Malaysia-artist-stub