Golden Sunrise over Fishing Village is spare in detail but saturated in colour. The village in the distance is weighted under the golden glow of the sun, its inhabitant sleeping as it rises. The body of water has just a single fishing boat in view as the flattened perspective becomes more abstract the further the scene moves towards the foreground. The huts and trees along the near riverbank are geometrically abstract, while the nearest, earthy stretch of land fixes the tonal contrast to focus attention on the top two-thirds of the painting.

There is no date inscribed, but stylistically it would fit the early 1970s. In the 1970s, Soo Pieng worked in many styles and mediums, moving between abstraction and figuration.

Compositionally, the tripartite division of a landscape proportioned like a hanging scroll is something that can be seen in Soo Pieng's work in a group of paintings from the mid-1960s. The "crab-claw" style of the tree branches, deriving from Northern Sung brushwork, can be seen in both this landscape and others at that time, such as Kampong Life, 1967 (Masterpiece Fine Art Auction, 11 April 2015, sold for SGD 40,260. US $29,551 premium-inclusive). However, the acidity of the colours and the more abstract division of the three planes from foreground to background suggest a later date. This is most likely prior to 1975/76 – at which point his late figurative style was dominant or his landscapes were generally executed in softer colours.


Viv Lawes
Art Historian, Sotheby's Institute of Art
University of the Arts London, Imperial College
Consultant, Larasati Auctioneers and One East Asia