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 Tow Siang Ling (Class of 1940) , who gave the school
three iconic artworks as a schoolboy has passed away, aged
85, on 26 September 2008.
Generations of ACSians will know the drawings and manuscript
writing of “The Knight’s Prayer”, “The Man at the
Gate of the Year” and “A Prayer of Strength”
originally published by the school in 1939, 1940 and 1941
respectively.
Every ACS boy received a copy of Tow’s picture of a youthful
knight on horseback, holding his sword aloft in prayer,
printed on parchment at a chapel service in 1939. It was a
gift from Yap Pheng Geck who spoke of the ideals of
knighthood in his chapel talk and asked ACS boys to take up
the “challenge to heroism and knightliness.”
Tow was born in China in 1923. He came to Singapore when he
was three years old and was enrolled in primary 1 of ACS in
1929. Badminton was his game and he came close to being
junior champion of Singapore schools. Besides playing for
ACS, he was also a member of the “Devonshire Badminton
Party” formed by boys living around Grange Road where he
lived.
He had a natural talent in art; he was a self-taught artist.
In the words of his cousin, Tow Siang Hwa, “He was
phenomenal. There was no other. He was a class of his own.”
 In 1939, at age 16, Tow Siang Ling held a one-man exhibition
of 64 works in school, comprising oils, watercolours and
drawings, including a pencil portrait of his neighbour at
Paterson Hill, the philanthropist Lim Boon Keng. Tow’s works
were consistently judged to be the best in school and
interschool art competitions so much so that Richard Walker,
then Art Superintendent Singapore Schools, gave Tow a
government scholarship to study Art in England with the view
that Tow would succeed him.
Tow did not did not go to England, but was matriculated in
Raffles College just before the Japanese Occupation which
disrupted his tertiary education. When World War II ended,
he was already married and had begun his career as a
businessman. Later, he was involved in the family bauxite
mining business.
Tow did not take up his paint brushes again till he was
encouraged to do so by his daughter, Eng, herself an artist,
in the 1980s.
In 1985, six of Tow’s works were included in a major
exhibition of historical views of Singapore from the 1800s
to 1941 organized by Arbour Fine Arts. The exhibition
catalogue acknowledged Tow as “one of the few Singaporeans
who made pictorial records of his environment in the 1930s
and early 40s.”
Tow spent the last years of his life designing hundreds of
monograms for family and friends. He is survived by four
sons: Theow-Huang, Thomas, Allan and Peter (all ACSians) and
three daughters, Eng, Julia and Ping.
Goh Eck Kheng
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