Date and Artistic Context
Chinatown is a watercolour on paper measuring 52 × 72 cm, signed and dated ’83 at the lower left. The year 1983 was significant in Ong Kim Seng’s artistic career: he received the Paul B. Remmy Memorial Award from the American Watercolour Society for a different work, Heart of Kathmandu. This recognition provides useful context for his growing standing as a watercolourist.[3] Ong subsequently became the first Asian artist outside the United States to be admitted as a member of the American Watercolour Society in 1990, and received Singapore’s Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in the same year.[4]
Ong’s practice is particularly associated with the observation of light, shadow and colour in both natural and urban environments. The STPI artist biography describes how his early engagement with British watercolour traditions developed through continued experimentation, including influences from American West Coast watercolour. It also notes that his depictions of Singapore streetscapes trace the city’s urban transformation and often carry a sense of transience and nostalgia.[5] These characteristics are pertinent to the present work, where architectural structure, everyday activity and the effects of strong tropical light are brought together.
Visual Analysis: Composition and Spatial Structure
The composition is organised around a strong contrast between the substantial masonry pillar in the foreground, just right of centre, and the long building façade that recedes diagonally from the upper left towards the middle distance. The pillar forms a commanding vertical element, partially interrupting the view into the street. Its position gives the foreground considerable weight, while the receding façade opens a route into the scene and establishes the principal diagonal recession.
The arrangement is asymmetrical but carefully balanced. The pillar’s broad, upright mass is countered by the extended rhythm of the building on the left, with its repeated arched openings and dark green shutters. On the right, the sloping awnings, rooflines and recessed structures create a further sequence of planes. These elements frame the central street activity without enclosing it completely. The eye moves between the pillar, the row of arches and the group of figures gathered around the market stalls, producing a sense of depth within a relatively compact street space.
The picture also establishes depth through overlapping architectural and human forms. The broad paved foreground is relatively open, allowing the viewer to register the distance between the viewpoint and the crowd. The figures and stalls occupy the middle ground, while the receding buildings and pale sky extend the space beyond them. The foreground pillar acts almost as a screen at the edge of the scene: it brings the viewer close to the architecture while directing attention around it towards the activity beyond. This partial obstruction introduces a sense of visual discovery. Rather than presenting the street as a fully exposed vista, Ong allows the viewer to glimpse its activity around the foreground structure, lending the composition a sense of immediacy, as though the scene is encountered from within the street itself.
Architecture, Market Activity and Human Presence
The architecture is not treated as a neutral backdrop. The repeated arches, shutters, projecting roofs and awnings give the street its distinctive architectural rhythm. Their closely spaced arrangement conveys the density of Chinatown’s older urban fabric, while the interplay of projecting and recessed structures creates a succession of illuminated and shaded surfaces. The buildings are rendered with enough definition to distinguish their structural features, yet their surfaces remain responsive to the surrounding light. The broad wall planes and recessed openings create a sequence of warm and cool tonal contrasts that helps articulate the depth of the street.
The market activity is concentrated in the middle ground. Small figures gather beneath and around the awnings, their bodies and clothing indicated with economical touches of colour. Individual faces are not described in detail; instead, posture, spacing and the varied placement of the figures suggest people moving, pausing and engaging with the street. Their scale is important. They animate the architectural setting and provide a measure against which the height of the buildings and the breadth of the open paving can be understood.
The human presence is therefore neither incidental nor dominant. The figures give the scene its everyday purpose, while the architecture remains the principal organising structure. Their scattered accents of white, red, orange and blue enliven the central area and prevent the warm earth-coloured buildings from becoming visually uniform. Their relatively small scale also accentuates the substantial proportions of the surrounding architecture, establishing a human reference point against which the height of the buildings and breadth of the street can be appreciated.
Colour, Tone and the Treatment of Light
The palette is built predominantly from warm, subdued earth colours: golden ochres, yellow-browns, sienna tones, muted greens and pale creams. These tones give the architecture a sun-warmed appearance and unify the different buildings across the composition. Against them, cooler blue-grey and grey-violet passages appear in the shaded areas, especially beneath the awnings and within the deeper recesses. The contrast between warm illuminated surfaces and cooler shadows gives the scene much of its spatial clarity.
Light is central to the painting’s organisation. The open paving and selected wall surfaces are left relatively pale, while the undersides of roofs, doorways and recessed architectural spaces are built up with darker washes. This alternation between illuminated planes and shaded intervals describes the forms without depending on heavy outlines. The bright central area also creates a visual passage through the composition, drawing the eye from the foreground towards the figures and the more distant street.
The sky is left as a pale, relatively open expanse above the buildings. Its relative brightness contrasts with the denser architectural forms below and helps prevent the upper part of the composition from becoming visually heavy. Rather than describing every surface with equal intensity, Ong varies the degree of definition: some edges are clear, while others soften into adjacent washes. This selective treatment gives the scene an atmospheric coherence and preserves the freshness associated with watercolour.
Watercolour Technique and Brushwork
The painting demonstrates the medium’s capacity to combine broad areas of transparent colour with more concentrated, descriptive marks. The larger architectural planes and the pale sky are established through washes that allow the paper to contribute to the overall luminosity. Darker passages are layered into openings, roof recesses and shaded areas, creating contrast without making the image uniformly dense.
An interesting aspect of the painting is the way watercolour’s inherent transparency is used to describe the solidity of the built environment. The architectural forms possess considerable visual weight, yet their surfaces are not rendered as uniformly opaque masses. Instead, variations in pigment concentration, overlapping washes and exposed areas of paper preserve a sense of light within the structures. Ong thus conveys architectural solidity without sacrificing the luminosity and fluidity of the medium.
More deliberate marks appear in the architectural details. The arched windows and shutters on the left are articulated through repeated vertical and curved strokes, while the pillar is built from irregular patches and broken marks that suggest its weathered, uneven surface. The contrast between these firmer details and the looser treatment of awnings, distant structures and figures is important: the painting shifts between precision and abbreviation according to the visual role of each element. This variation in finish establishes a hierarchy of visual attention, giving greater definition to selected architectural features while allowing less prominent elements to remain suggestive.
The pillar is especially effective as a demonstration of textural handling. Its surface is not defined by a continuous outline or a single flat colour. Instead, variations of ochre, brown, grey and darker accents create an irregular pattern that suggests age and roughness. Beside its base, two large woven baskets are rendered through overlapping washes and brushstrokes, with variations in tone suggesting their woven construction. Together, these elements create a richly textured foreground that grounds the composition and contrasts with the airy lightness of the street beyond.
The handling of the figures is more abbreviated. Small touches of pigment establish clothing and movement without attempting portrait-like description. The awnings and market structures are also suggested economically, through broad shapes and selective edges. This variation in brushwork allows the artist to maintain the architectural solidity of the scene while retaining the fluidity and immediacy of watercolour.
In a 2012 interview, Ong identified French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna as two colours he considered indispensable to his palette, and emphasised the importance of keeping watercolour transparent and clean.[6] This statement offers useful background to his approach to colour and tonal control. It does not, however, establish the precise pigments used in this particular painting; the palette described above is based on the visible appearance of the work.
Chinatown in 1983: A Neighbourhood in Transition
The date gives the painting a particular historical context. In October 1983, approximately 300 street hawkers from the surrounding streets were resettled in the newly completed Kreta Ayer Complex. The relocation allowed the wooden stalls and shelters that had occupied the streets to be dismantled. The complex had been built in 1981 and was renamed Chinatown Complex in 1984.[1] The resettlement was a significant change to the traditional street life of Chinatown, where hawkers had long formed part of the district’s social and commercial character.
The painting should not, however, be assigned a more exact position in this sequence than its date allows. Although it is dated 1983, the month in which it was painted is not established by the available documentation. It is therefore not possible to say whether the scene was recorded before or after the October resettlement. What can be said is that the work belongs to the same year as this major reorganisation of Chinatown’s street-hawking activity.
Chinatown was formally gazetted as a conservation area on 7 July 1989, when Singapore designated ten historic areas for conservation.[7] Seen in this wider chronology, Ong’s painting preserves a view of the district’s built environment and street activity during a period of urban change. Its value as a visual record does not depend on identifying the precise street or claiming that every feature shown disappeared soon afterwards. Rather, the painting offers an atmospheric account of the older streetscape: its closely spaced buildings, shaded market spaces, open paving and everyday human activity. Beyond recording the district’s physical appearance, the painting evokes a lived environment in which commercial activity and everyday social interaction were closely interwoven. Its significance as a historical image therefore lies as much in the character of the street life it conveys as in the architectural features it depicts.
Interpretive Assessment
Chinatown brings together architectural observation and the expressive possibilities of watercolour. The foreground pillar anchors the composition, while the diagonal façade draws the eye towards the activity beyond. The contrast between substantial architectural forms and the transparency of the medium is particularly effective: buildings, awnings and market structures retain their solidity while remaining responsive to light.
The painting’s strength lies in its evocation of a lived urban environment. Its architecture provides the structural framework, while the figures and market stalls convey the rhythms of everyday activity. Through selective definition, fluid brushwork and a restrained palette of warm earth tones, Ong captures not only the appearance of the streetscape but also its atmosphere and character.
Dated 1983, Chinatown belongs to an important period in Ong’s artistic development and international recognition. It also offers a visual record of traditional Chinatown in the year of a significant reorganisation of its street-hawking activity. Although its precise position within that transition remains uncertain, its significance lies in the way it transforms a particular streetscape into a account of Chinatown's architectural character and everyday life.
Bibliography
- National Heritage Board, Roots, “Chinatown Complex Market and Food Centre”. History of Kreta Ayer Complex and the October 1983 resettlement of approximately 300 street hawkers.
- Chinatown Singapore, “History of Chinatown”. Background on Chinatown’s development and the housing of street hawkers at Kreta Ayer Complex.
- Esplanade, “A Tribute to Ong Kim Seng”. Career chronology, including the 1983 Paul B. Remmy AWS Memorial Award for Heart of Kathmandu.
- Ong Kim Seng, “My Biodata”. Artist biography and professional distinctions, including AWS membership and the Cultural Medallion.
- STPI, “Ong Kim Seng”. Artist biography discussing his watercolour influences, treatment of light, shadow and colour, plein-air practice, and depictions of Singapore’s changing streetscapes.
- Konstantin Sterkhov, “Art of Watercolor: Ong Kim Seng. Interview” (2 April 2012). Artist’s comments on French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna and the transparency of watercolour.
- Urban Redevelopment Authority, “URA Conservation Programme”. Records the gazetting of Chinatown and other historic areas for conservation on 7 July 1989.