There is nothing like painting from life, even if one has mastered the technique and could do it blindfolded. Such was the case when Tew Nai Tong revisited Paris, the City of Lovers, several times from 1999 to 2002. There, besides visiting all the old haunts – the pont, the landmark buildings, the parks and cobbled streets, he retrained his hand-eye coordination on painting nudes indoor, undisturbed by the autumnal breeze. Also, it is difficult to get live nude models in Malaysia, with the changing values and increasingly religious strictures in public. Here rendered in watercolours, is a pair of nudes in two basic poses, one standing with boobs and full genitalia shown and the other seated with a leg slightly crossed and the face shown. Nai Tong is known for his Nanyang Style figures with doleful eyes and elongated limbs. He followed the typical route of students trained at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA) in Singapore (1957-1958), in furthering his studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts (1967-68). On his return, he taught at several academies namely the Malaysian Institute of Art (1969-1980), Central Academy of Art (1982-1985), and the Saito Academy of Art (1986-1988), before he became a fulltime artist in 1992. His first exhibition was at the British Council in Kuala Lumpur in 1964. His career culminated in a survey exhibition called Odyssey at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 2007. In 2009, he won the Asia Art Award in Seoul, South Korea.