Peter Harris had done copious sketches of the local people when he was art superintendent in the Federation of Malaya from 1951 to December 1960. He scoured the rural areas and towns and found the ordinary people, whether at work and at rest, exotic and a fascinating study. His preferred medium was pastels, as it suited his spontaneity while brighter colours were used for the clothes or backdrops. It was a habit he repeated when teaching at the Sabah Teachers Training College (later Gaya College) from 1962-1967, in the then Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), though works from this phase were less available. While concentrating on the flesh tones of the faces, he usually set the headdress/shawl or clothes in brighter colours for contrast and to convey a mood of alacrity opposed to the usually laborious jobs of his subject. Here, an elderly woman in shawl with sunken cheeks and droopy eyebrows, is bedecked in a head shawl with pinkish stripes. The other is of a pug-nosed man who looks darker, despite the conical straw hat to shield himself from the sun. He has a wide grin, and is probably a farmer. In these portrait vignettes, Peter Harris strove to convey the contentment and simplicity of the rural people. Dubbed the ‘White Tiger’, Peter Harris had helped send several talented artists to study in England. But he was better known for his setting up the art coterie, Wednesday Art Group (WAG), which was active between 1952 to 1960. In 1996, Galeri Wan organised a WAG – Then and Now reunion exhibition. He was given a retrospective in October-November 1997 – his second after his 1960 Retrospective given by the National Art Gallery. In 2001, The Art Gallery Penang organised a large Tribute exhibition for him. Peter Harris studied at the West of England College of Art in 1939, and taught at the Arts and Crafts Faculty in the College Art School in Swindon in 1947. Back in England, he was head of the Creative Arts Faculty at the Sheldon School in Chippenham until 1976, and was awarded a MBE by Queen Elizabeth II. He recovered from cancer in 1993 after a three-month treatment.