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The article argues that George Chinnery's arrival in Macao (1825–1852) is not to be explained primarily by commercial motivations or by the search for "new subject matter" for a European audience, but rather by a personal need to escape his creditors in India. Paradoxically, this decision afforded the artist the consolidation of a "second homeland" in which he found a visual repertoire capable of corresponding to his skills and aesthetic conceptions. Drawing on a comparative analysis of drawings, watercolours, and albums circulating in the art market, the text reconstructs the evolution of his manner of drawing, articulating earlier phases (London and his academic training, Madras and his consolidation as a master of line) with his Macanese production. The study identifies, in particular, the persistence of notions of the "Picturesque" — the valorization of the irregular, the decayed, and the quaint — as the interpretive key to Chinnery's gaze upon urban landscapes, buildings, and human types. It concludes that Chinnery's iconographic legacy in Macao constitutes a rare document of the daily life and culture of the period, while simultaneously revealing the transformation of a European aesthetic of travel into a mode of observation deeply rooted in a local context.
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Professional artists from the West had scarcely any access to China until the latter years of the 18th century. But in December 1793 three professional artists from Britain – William Alexander, Thomas Daniell and William Daniell – found themselves together in Canton (Guangzhou). Alexander, ‘draughtsman’ to the first British embassy to China, was returning from the embassy’s audience with the Qianlong Emperor; the Daniells, after seven years in India, were seeking a passage home in convoy from Canton.
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English artist George Chinnery spent the last 27 years of his life in Macao. His death in 1852 coincided with the initiation in London of what became known as the Victoria and Albert Museum or V&A. Today the V&A holds perhaps the largest public collection of Chinnery’s drawings. The artist’s reputation reached its apogee in the 1920s. Subsequently the V&A’s collection of his drawings — which largely depict the inhabitants and locations of Macao, as well as scenes of India and Canton — has received little exposure or publicity. Its range and scope are illustrated and discussed here, as are differences in Chinnery’s approach to drawing and to watercolour, and the appreciation of his art in recent times.
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