Twenty-Five Characters

Born in Panama and moved to Hong Kong in 1910, Luis Chan was a self-taught artist who painted in his spare time and received art education through a correspondence course from the Press Art School in London. Chan once mentioned in an interview that he was captivated by the television and would stay up at night watching it before starting to paint. The advent of colour television in the 1960s and the 1970s and early Hollywood motion pictures brought great inspiration and countless imaginations to Luis Chan. His paintings are also known for their fantastic colours and are teeming with childlike whimsy. The present lot, where Chan depicted a figure living inside a big fish, could be inspired by the biblical story of Jonah and the Fish or the late 19th-century figure James Bartley who allegedly stayed alive inside a whale for three days after being swallowed.