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Lot Essay
Despite Singaporean artist Sun Yee’s relative obscurity, she is widely considered as a significant figure in the developments happening within Singapore’s early art history and the few female artists involved in the local modern art scene. Well versed in both the mediums of Chinese brush and Western oils, Sun Yee’s works are highly influenced by the French impressionists, which she no doubt encountered during her time overseas. Sun Yee was born in Zhejiang, China and received formal artistic training in China and Japan, after which she left for France to study under the tutelage of accomplished French modernist Fernand Léger. In 1954, the year after Sun Yee exhibited her works at the Salon des Beaux Arts, she settled in Singapore and set up the Singapore Academy of the Arts.
Puss Pussy (Lot 449) presents a woman in the nude sitting in a chair, casually fanning herself as a cat lays quietly asleep by her feet. It brings to mind French artist Édouard Manet’s Olympia, a progressive and important in which the artist depicted the female nude not as an allegory or symbol, but in a realistic manner much like Puss Pussy. However, unlike Manet’s Olympia , Sun Yee’s work is a whimsical depiction of the female nude, capturing the essence of her sitter’s femininity both in the elegant lines of her work and the symbolic playful presence of the white cat. Furthermore, the palette employed in this work is a relatively muted selection of umber, ochre, and malachite, emphasising the naturalism and realism of the figure. Puss Pussy is an excellent example of Sun Yee’s own localised visual vernacular that arises from her ability to translate Western notions into representations of distinctively Southeast Asian subjects, which was something which the artist had sought to advocate throughout her artistic career
Puss Pussy (Lot 449) presents a woman in the nude sitting in a chair, casually fanning herself as a cat lays quietly asleep by her feet. It brings to mind French artist Édouard Manet’s Olympia, a progressive and important in which the artist depicted the female nude not as an allegory or symbol, but in a realistic manner much like Puss Pussy. However, unlike Manet’s Olympia , Sun Yee’s work is a whimsical depiction of the female nude, capturing the essence of her sitter’s femininity both in the elegant lines of her work and the symbolic playful presence of the white cat. Furthermore, the palette employed in this work is a relatively muted selection of umber, ochre, and malachite, emphasising the naturalism and realism of the figure. Puss Pussy is an excellent example of Sun Yee’s own localised visual vernacular that arises from her ability to translate Western notions into representations of distinctively Southeast Asian subjects, which was something which the artist had sought to advocate throughout her artistic career