| Bust of a Chinese Gentleman | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | William George Stirling |
| Type | Bust |
| Medium | Bronze sculpture |
| Location | National Museum of Singapore, Singapore |
The Bust of a Chinese Gentleman is a bust of a Chinese man donated to the National Museum of Singapore by William George Stirling in 1939.
The bust was sculpted by sculptor and then assistant protectorate of the Chinese in Singapore William George Stirling and donated to the Raffles Museum, now known as the National Museum of Singapore, in 1939. [1] [2] The bust did not depict any particular person, as it was Stirling's idea of a typical Chinese merchant. [3] The bust was initially placed in the lawn in front of the museum, behind Raffles' Bust. [4] [5] [6] In 1985, the bust was temporarily moved from its spot so that a time capsule could be placed in the spot. [7] The bust was put into storage in 2003 while the museum underwent renovations, and was later placed in the Singapore History Gallery exhibit in 2013. [7]
Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian and author of some 60 books, the most famous of which was his best-seller Parkinson's Law (1957), in which Parkinson advanced Parkinson's law, stating that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", an insight which led him to be regarded as an important scholar in public administration and management.
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was a British colonial official who served as Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816 and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. Raffles was heavily involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. It was subsequently returned under the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1814. He also wrote The History of Java in 1817, describing the history of the island from ancient times.
The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a 164-year-old tropical garden located at the fringe of the Orchard Road shopping district in Singapore. It is one of three gardens, and the only tropical garden, to be honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Botanic Gardens has been ranked Asia's top park attraction since 2013, by TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards. It was declared the inaugural Garden of the Year by the International Garden Tourism Awards in 2012.
Raffles Institution (RI) is an independent educational institution in Singapore. Founded in 1823, it is the oldest school in the country. It provides secondary education for boys only from Year 1 to Year 4, and pre-university education for both boys and girls in Year 5 and Year 6. Since 2007, RI and its affiliated school Raffles Girls' School have been offering the six-year Raffles Programme, which allows students to skip the Singapore-Cambridge GCE O-Level examinations and proceed to take the Singapore-Cambridge GCE A-Level examinations at the end of Year 6.
City Hall MRT station is an underground Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station on the North–South line (NSL) and East–West line (EWL). Situated in the Downtown Core district, it is underneath Stamford Road near the road junctions with North Bridge Road and St Andrew's Road. The station is near landmarks such as the former City Hall, Raffles City, the Padang, St Andrew's Cathedral and the Cenotaph.
Raffles Place MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station on the North South Line (NSL) and East West Line (EWL) in Singapore. Located in the Downtown Core, the station is underneath Raffles Place south of the Singapore River. The station serves various landmarks including Merlion Park and the Asian Civilisations Museum and various commercial buildings such as One Raffles Place and OCBC Centre.
The Jackson Plan or Raffles Town Plan, an urban plan of 1822 titled "Plan of the Town of Singapore", is a proposed scheme for Singapore drawn up to maintain some order in the urban development of the fledgling but thriving colony founded just three years earlier. It was named after Lieutenant Philip Jackson, the colony's engineer and land surveyor tasked to oversee its physical development in accordance with the vision of Stamford Raffles for Singapore, hence it is also commonly called Raffles Town Plan. Raffles gave his instructions in November 1822, the plan was then drawn up in late 1822 or early 1823 and published in 1828. It is the earliest extant plan for the town of Singapore, but not an actual street map of Singapore as it existed in 1822 or 1827 since the plan is an idealised scheme of how Singapore may be organised that was not fully realised. Nevertheless, it served as a guide for the development of Singapore in its early days, and the effect of the general layout of the plan is still observable to this day.
The Singapore Stone is a fragment of a large sandstone slab which originally stood at the mouth of the Singapore River. The large slab, which is believed to date back to at least the 13th century and possibly as early as the 10th or 11th century, bore an undeciphered inscription. Recent theories suggest that the inscription is either in Old Javanese or in Sanskrit, which suggested a possibility that the island was an extension of the Majapahit civilization in the past.
Kwa Geok Choo was a Singaporean lawyer.
Lim Boon Keng was a Peranakan physician who advocated social and educational reforms in Singapore in the early 20th-century. He also served as the president of Xiamen University in China between 1921 and 1937.
The Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, referred to locally as the Armenian Church, is the oldest Christian church in Singapore, located at Hill Street in the Museum Planning Area, within the Central Area. The church was completed in 1835 and consecrated the next year. Originally a parish of the Armenian Apostolic Church, an Oriental Orthodox denomination, the last Armenian parish priest left in the late 1930s as Armenian population in Singapore dwindled. It was designated as a national monument in 1973. Armenian and Oriental Orthodox services are now regularly held at the church.
The history of the modern state of Singapore dates back to its founding in the early 19th century; however, evidence suggests that a significant trading settlement existed on the island in the 14th century. The last ruler of the Kingdom of Singapura, Parameswara, was expelled by the Majapahit or the Siamese before he founded Malacca. Singapore then came under the Malacca Sultanate and subsequently the Johor Sultanate. In 1819, British statesman Stamford Raffles negotiated a treaty whereby Johor would allow the British to locate a trading port on the island, ultimately leading to the establishment of the Crown colony of Singapore in 1867. Important reasons for the rise of Singapore were its nodal position at the tip of the Malay Peninsula flanked by the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the presence of a natural sheltered harbour, as well as its status as a free port.
Singapore in the Straits Settlements refers to a period in the history of Singapore between 1826 and 1942, during which Singapore was part of the Straits Settlements together with Penang and Malacca. Singapore was the capital and the seat of government of the Straits Settlement after it was moved from George Town in 1832.
The National Museum of Singapore is a public museum dedicated to Singaporean art, culture and history. Located within the country's Civic District at the Downtown Core area, it is the oldest museum in the country. It is one of the largest museums in Asia.
The Revere Bell was a gift to Singapore by Mrs. Maria Revere Balestier, the daughter of Paul Revere and wife of the first American Consul to Singapore, Joseph Balestier. Cast by the Revere Copper Company in Boston, Massachusetts, it is the only Revere bell outside the United States. The bell is 81 centimetres (32 in) in height and 89 centimetres (35 in) in diameter with a clapper underneath. Maria Revere presented the bell to the first Church of St. Andrew in 1843 on condition that it be used to sound a curfew for five minutes at 8:00 pm every night. The curfew bell rang until 1855 when the church was demolished, and was resumed when the second church was constructed in its place in 1861 until it was permanently discontinued in 1874.
Chua Ek Kay was a Singaporean artist hailed as the "bridge between Asian and Western art" with a unique painting style using Chinese ink on paper that demonstrated an ingenious blend of traditional Chinese painting forms with Western art theories and techniques. Most of his works were themed of Chinatown street scenes, lotuses, and abstract works inspired by Australian aboriginal cave paintings.
The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings consists of 477 watercolour botanical drawings of plants and animals of Malacca and Singapore by unknown Chinese artists that were commissioned between 1819 and 1823 by William Farquhar. The paintings were meant to be of scientific value with very detailed drawings, except for those of the birds which have text going beyond their original purpose. For each drawing, the scientific and/or common name of the specimen in Malay, and, occasionally, in English, was written in pencil. A translator also penned the Malay names in Jawi using ink. The paper used was normally European paper framed by a blue frame while some have no frames at all suggesting there are two artist.
The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum is a museum of natural history at the Kent Ridge Campus of the National University of Singapore. It is named after Lee Kong Chian, a prominent Chinese businessman and philanthropist active in Malaya and Singapore between the 1930s and the 1960s. It was officially opened on 18 April 2015.
Tan Jiak Kim CMG was a Peranakan merchant, political activist and philanthropist from Singapore. He co-founded the Straits Chinese British Association along with Lim Boon Keng, Seah Liang Seah and Song Ong Siang.
William George Stirling, was an Assistant Protector of Chinese in Singapore, an artist, a sculptor, and a criminologist.
 | This Singapore-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |