Tan Peng Hooi is a Penang-born Malaysian painter known for evocative scenes of village life, harbour activity, festivals, wildlife, and the changing heritage landscape of Penang. A self-taught artist exhibiting since the 1960s, his works are held in public collections including the Penang State Art Gallery and Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery.
The colour and beauty of a Penang that was, kept in oil.
Reader's Digest, August 1981, page 40. The article opening, with a portrait of the artist. Reproduces Malacca River Bank, 1978, oil on canvas, 48 x 66 cm, Penang State Art Gallery.
Reproduces: Malacca River Bank (1978).
“I want to record a way of life that is disappearing.”
Tan Peng Hooi was born in Penang in 1942 and raised along the waterfront that fills so much of his work. He is largely self-taught as a painter, with an early grounding in drawing and commercial art, and began selling his oils as a young man.
He paints the countryside and the coast: fishermen and farmers, village and harbour life, festivals, birds, and the old heritage streets of the north. Water recurs throughout, worked with unusual patience; he composes in the studio from memory, using field studies only as a guide.
Running through all of it is a single purpose, recorded in his own words in 1981: to keep a way of life that was already disappearing.
From the 1981 feature
The feature that first framed him as the painter who preserves Malaysia’s past
In August 1981, a Reader’s Digest feature by Robert Kiener profiled Tan Peng Hooi and reproduced several of his paintings. The spreads are shown here as archival references while permission to publish the scans is arranged.
Reader's Digest, August 1981. A feature spread reproducing two paintings, with the article's account of his working method.
Reproduces: Feeding Ducks No. 1 (c.1981), Feeding Ducks No. 2 (c.1981).
Reader's Digest, August 1981. A feature spread reproducing three paintings.
Reproduces: Frolicking Pigeons (c.1981), Sampans (c.1981), The Tumbling Waves (c.1981).
Image permission pending
Featured work
Penang Scene
1970 · Oil · 91 x 147 cm
Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery
Among the most frequently cited harbour works; proposed as the site’s featured painting once image rights are cleared.
View in the catalogueThemes
The world he painted
Penang & harbour
Piers, boats, and the waterfront, old Penang in golden light. Includes the heritage architecture of temples and old towns.
ExploreFishing villages & rural
Fishermen, kampung and stilt houses, padi fields, farmers and buffaloes.
ExploreFestivals & community
Chingay, the lion dance, dancers and gatherings, with the warmth of families and figures.
ExploreBirds, flowers & nature
Sparrows, doves and cockerels, orchids and the flora of the countryside.
ExploreA life in dates
Timeline
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1942
Born in Penang.
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1966
First solo exhibition, Penang Library.
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1980
An established exhibiting painter, profiled by Reader’s Digest the following year.
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1998
Penang State Art Gallery retrospective honour.
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2009
Monograph, The works of Tan Peng Hooi.
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2024
Mutiara Utara, Bank Negara Malaysia.
The archive
An open record, offered for correction
This archive is a work in progress. Families, collectors, galleries and researchers are warmly invited to contribute records, correct details, or discuss image rights, so the account of his work grows more complete and more accurate over time.
Contribute or correct a record