Precious menagerie

The William Farquhar collection of rare watercolours have finally found a permanent home
deepika shetty Straits Times 9 Sep 11;

The 477 rare and exquisite watercolour drawings of South-east Asian plants and animals that make up the William Farquhar collection have done some travelling in their 200 years.

They have gone from Malacca, where they were commissioned, to Britain, and more recently, popped up at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1993, which led to a full circuit back home to South-east Asia, and Singapore.

The journey home began thanks to cultural philanthropist Goh Geok Khim, the 80-year-old founder of local brokerage firm GK Goh, who bought the William Farquhar collection of natural history drawings for $3 million in 1993.

But the full story of the journey of the collection - which can be seen in a new light at the National Museum from next week - has only just emerged.

For two years, they stayed with the auction house as Mr Goh did not know how to store them.

When he finally did bring them to Singapore to donate to the National Museum, it was in remarkable style.

Mr Goh hand-carried the collection on a Singapore Airlines flight from London.

His only condition for his generous donation was to have a permanent space for the watercolours of animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and plants, which were commissioned by Farquhar - the first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore from 1819 to 1823 - when he was based in Malacca.

The drawings were exhibited here in 2007 in a show called The Empire Of Nature, but now Mr Goh's wish is finally being fulfilled on Tuesday with the National Museum's re-opening of The Goh Seng Choo Gallery. It is named after his father, who was interested in nature, especially botany.

The 76 sq m gallery on the second floor of the museum will feature a rotating selection of about 70 works at any one time, in keeping with conservation guidelines.

The collection almost did not make it to Singapore, reveals a chatty Mr Goh in an interview at his 33rd floor office in the Singapore Land Tower.

Someone else had out-bid him in the first round, but for the collection to leave the UK, it needed the approval of the Royal Heritage Board.

In the time it took to get the clearance, the successful bidder lost interest and it was offered to MrGoh. He recalls that it was on the insistence of his art- and heritage-savvy son, Yew Lin, that he became interested in the collection in the first place.

'When my son told me about this collection, my question was: Why do I want to buy this? To which he responded, you can buy it, keep it and make a lot of money on it someday or give it all away,' he says.

It is worth $11 million today, but Mr Goh clearly has no regrets about donating it to the museum when he explains why he purchased the entire collection: 'I was reluctant to see the collection broken up and sold as separate drawings because the collection as a whole has much historical value.

'I made the decision to acquire the whole collection to keep it intact and make it available for future generations.'

On why he kept it at Sotheby's for two years, he says: 'I had not seen the entire collection but I knew I could not bring it back immediately due to the humidity here.'

That was a decision that was well worthwhile.

Museum director Lee Chor Lin says: 'We are highly aware that these early 19th-century watercolour paintings retained their brilliance because they had not been exposed to light for nearly two centuries before they became part of the National Museum collection in 1995.

'It is important, as the custodian of the collection, that we ensure the longevity of these works and their quality will outlast us for centuries to come, for the greater good of future Singapore. To do this, we must calibrate the exhibiting schedule carefully so as not to overexpose them to light and temperature unnecessarily.'

The show's curator, Mr Daniel Tham, estimates that each work which goes on display needs to be 'rested' for a few years before being displayed again.

On the significance of this collection, museum director Lee says: 'As we do not have a comparable set of paintings specifically about Singapore's flora and fauna, Farquhar's collection will be the nearest evidence of Singapore's natural habitat around 1819.'

Pre-dating the era of photography, the detailed watercolours offer a rare look at the rich bio-diversity of the Malayan Peninsula in the 19th century.

To do justice to the meticulously documented works, Mr Tham has presented the first exhibit through four main sections. These show Farquhar's fascination with natural history.

Says Mr Tham, 30: 'The works document Farquhar's exploratory journeys in search of new discoveries, the animals and birds in his zoo, experimental gardening as well the artists' struggles to accommodate Farquhar's demands for scientific realism in natural history artworks.'

Says Ms Yvonne Choo, a public relations professional in her 40s: 'When the collection was first exhibited in the 1990s, I visited it frequently and enjoyed examining the details of the flora and fauna of our part of the world depicted by different artists.

'I am glad it is returning as a permanent exhibition as I remember it as a must-see, unique collection. It also made me appreciate all those unknown and unnamed commissioned artists who created these fascinating works.'

200-year-old treasure

The William Farquhar collection of natural history drawings comprises 477 watercolour drawings of animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and flora and fauna.

Rendered by Chinese, Indian and Malay artists, the paintings were commissioned by Singapore's First Resident and Commandant, Major-General William Farquhar, when he was based in Malacca.

Farquhar was with Sir Stamford Raffles when he founded Singapore in 1819. He was left to manage the colony for four years after Raffles left. He died in Perth, Scotland, in 1839 at the age of 65.

The collection was acquired for $3 million by Mr Goh Geok Khim, the 80-year-old founder of brokerage firm GK Goh, at a Sotheby's auction in London and donated to the museum in 1995.

The 200-year-old collection is now worth at least $11 million. It has great historical importance. The only other similar collection, which belonged to Raffles, was destroyed in a ship fire when the founder of Singapore returned to England in 1824.

Where: The Goh Seng Choo Gallery, Level 2, National Museum, 93 Stamford Road
When: Opens next Tuesday, 10am to 8pm daily
Admission: Free
Info: Call 6332-3659/5642 or go to www.nationalmuseum.sg

Farquhar feted at last
Cheah Ui-Hoon Business Times 16 Sep 11;

HE spent four years in Singapore, with the monumental task of laying out the foundations of a new British settlement. In contrast, his superior who signed the deal which obtained the island from Johor, was in Singapore for only a few months.

As founder, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles's name lives on in abounding posterity here though, while Singapore's First Resident William Farquhar only got a street named after him, and that too was wiped off Singapore's map years ago because of development.

The ill-remembered Farquhar finally gets some due acknowledgement in a petite-sized gallery at the National Museum which will showcase - not his achievements in Singapore's early administration - but in Natural History. This is thanks to the donation to the museum by local brokerage firm owner Goh Geok Khim, who had purchased the collection from the Royal Asiatic Society in 1993.

The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings is a tangible record of his interest in the topic dating back to the time he was Resident of Malacca. It was Farquhar who mentored Raffles in natural history studies and 'its documentation through art', according to a British Library publication on Raffles'own Natural History drawing collection.

For this first unveiling of the collection, 72 drawings have been put up in low light and the works will be rotated every year, drawn from the 477 drawings in Farquhar's collection. For the first exhibition, curator Daniel Tham picked drawings and grouped them under four sections to show the context of the 19th-century colonial mindset at the time.

In the first, the Spirit of Exploration records Farquhar's journeys to make new botanical discoveries. The wild nutmeg (gymacranthera farquhariana) is the only species today named after Farquhar. Under Experimental Gardening, drawings of the nutmeg, pepper, gambier and durian reflect Farquhar's enthusiasm for valuable crops - as under his supervision, cloves and nutmeg were planted at the foot of Government Hill, or Fort Canning.

In Art and Science of Natural History: Artistic Influence, the selection highlights the style of unnamed Chinese artists whom Farquhar commissioned, such as the blue wash behind white objects, to accentuate the outline. Drawings of birds are also the most lifelike, owing possibly to the artist's background in traditional Chinese art.

Farquhar's zoological contributions are showcased in the centre of the gallery, reflecting how zoology was his foremost interest. Farquhar was involved in the discovery and identification of several indigenous species, such as the Malayan tapir (above). He had not only submitted a description to the Asiatic Society of Bengal but raised one as a pet, but in the race to be published, Farquhar lost out to a French zoologist. Not that he was unduly concerned, notes Mr Tham.

For those who can't wait to see the whole collection- seeing that it will take a while for the drawings to be rotated, the museum has a publication containing Farquhar's entire collection published last year, entitled Natural History Drawings: The Complete William Farquhar Collection. It is available at major bookstores and the museum's shop. There is also an older catalogue self-published by GK Goh, in a limited-edition run,also available at the Museum Shop.

The National Museum's Goh Seng Choo Gallery (the former Balcony space on the upper Rotunda) and sixth permanent gallery is open daily from 10am to 8pm and admission is free. The museum is located at 93 Stamford Road, its website is www.nationalmuseum.sg