Kuo Juping’s landscapes are often centred on houses, streetscapes, and village dwellings that portray the living conditions of the people. This scene was sketched quickly using economical lines and colours, showing the peaceful countryside. It is an intimate scene of a lady dressed in sari, beside her lovely home, surrounded by lush tropical palms and roosters. Kuo Juping (the name was taken after a water plant) was in the pioneering batch of students at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) 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, padi-fields, kampung and make-shift hawker centres. He was a mentor of Tan Choon Ghee (1930-2010) who became a legendary watercolourist. Kuo died of a stroke in March 1966.