Song Ong Siang

In 1936, Song Ong Siang was knighted, the highest British honour a Straits Chinese had received to that date. In commemoration, a life-size portrait of Song was commissioned by the Straits Chinese Consultative Committee, with funds from the Straits Chinese British Association.

The German artist Julius Wentscher painted Song in Singapore in 1936. Wentscher and his wife, Tina Wentscher (1887–1974), who was associated with the Berlin Secession, travelled throughout Asia from 1931, living in Malaya from 1936 to 1940. Because they were Jewish, they could not return to Germany. With the outbreak of World War II, they were interned in Australia and later settled in Melbourne. Wentscher’s portrait is one of the most powerful ever created in Singapore. Its strong, spare lines – the black chair legs set against simple columns – are derived from German Modernist art and focus on the intensity of Song’s gaze. The portrait was displayed in Victoria Memorial Hall next to other images of Singaporean dignitaries, until this gallery of notables was dismantled in 1959.