This intimate landscape depicts the rural countryside and neighbourhood in bold brushwork. Thick solid branches frame the composition while a bridge leads toward a vast mountain view in the distance. With a nuanced palette of colours, Juping created a poetic and tranquil scene expressing his love for the countryside and nature. Kuo Juping (the name was taken after a water plant) was in the pioneering batch of students at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in Singapore but had to return a year before graduating to tend to his father’s import-export business, Sing Guan Thye & Co. He was a founding member of Thursday Art Group and Penang Chinese Art Club in 1936. He was one of the first artists to paint ordinary people and places such as rubber estates, oil palms / cocoa plantations, paddy fields, kampung and make-shift hawker centres. He was a mentor of Tan Choon Ghee (1930-2010) who became a legendary watercolourist.