A lovely painting with a dominantly red background, it may well have been influenced by Henri Matisse’s (1869-1954) The Red Studio (1911). This painting represents, to some art critics, the best of Yu Chian’s oeuvre. The shade of the makeshift stall and even the ‘cooling’ suggestion of the ice-scraper provide little if at all relief from the ‘heat’ emanated by the red colour. Done in the year of Malaya’s independence and before Yu Chian’s formal studies in Paris, the painting is likely to be a bold study of colour relationship with red.