George Chinnery leaves lasting legacy of Macau

Visitors coming to Macau for the first time see a skyline worthy of Manhattan, with skyscrapers shimmering in the night sky and an incessant stream of vehicles crossing the bridges to Taipa.
It is a world away from the tranquil scene of fishing boats and low-rise buildings along the Praia Grande waterfront that the English artist George Chinnery would have seen when he arrived in Macau in 1825.
More than any other painter, he created the images that define in the popular imagination the city during the 27 years he lived here.
“His paintings are not only works of art but important historical items for the research of Macau culture and social change,” said Ung Vai Meng, President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau.
Chinnery (1774-1852) was pre-eminent amongst the Western painters of his day living in the Orient. Working as a portraitist and watercolour painter, he sympathetically recorded the ways of life of the ordinary people. As well as the rich and famous, he painted Tanka women, coolies, ear cleaners, boatmen and street urchins, with all of whom he empathized.
Chinnery was delighted by the scenery and architecture of Macau, particularly the churches and the seafront, and through his art he provided a crucial commentary of the time. He had many pupils and imitators and his influence endured long after his death. Nowadays, his works are highly prized by collectors, not least for their attention to detail.

Early life

Chinnery was born in London on 5 January 1774, the fifth son and sixth child of William and Elizabeth Chinnery. He spent his formative years at the family home in 4 Gough Square, just off Fleet Street, an area of the city famous for its lawyers and journalists. From an early age, his artistic prowess was apparent. He exhibited portraits at the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy while still a teenager, which was no mean feat.
Although rumor has it that Chinnery studied under the portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), first President of the Royal Academy, this seems unlikely, having regard to his own youth and the date of Reynolds’ demise. What is true is that he studied the works and techniques of Reynolds and honed his skills at the Royal Academy Schools, where his contemporaries included such future greats as JMW Turner (1775-1851) and Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).
Throughout his working life, Chinnery’s output was prodigious. His many oil paintings, watercolors and sketches are testament both to his energy and his resolve to record his impressions of every facet of life in Macau. But, even before coming to Macau, he had achieved considerable success away from home. Having made his mark as an oil portrait painter in Ireland in his early twenties, Chinnery left England for the east in 1802, aged 28, never to return.
He went to Calcutta, then the capital of British India. During his 23 years in India, his portraits of eminent personages, including his magnificent likeness of the Marquis of Hastings, the Governor-General from 1813 to 1823, and his vivid depictions of rural and urban scenery in Bengal and Madras, established him as one of England’s most significant artists of the age. Notwithstanding the demand for his services, Chinnery was, paradoxically, chronically short of money.
In later years, Chinnery was on bad terms with his wife, Marianne, whom he tried his best to avoid. He described her as “the ugliest woman” he had ever seen. It seems likely that his fear that she was about to join him, together with his indebtedness, prompted his decision to leave India for China in 1825. In later years, whenever rumors reached him that Marianne was on her way to join him in Macau, Chinnery would speedily decamp to Canton, from which, under what he called “an admirable arrangement”, foreign women were banned. In fact, Marianne never travelled as far as Macau, to Chinnery’s great relief.

Settles in Macau

Chinnery first set foot in Macau in September 1825, and stayed there for the rest of his days, apart from short visits to Canton and, latterly, after it became a British colony, to Hong Kong. His reputation had preceded him, and the great and the good were soon lining up at his door to have their likenesses immortalized for posterity. He painted the portraits of East India Company officials, military men, taipans and visiting dignitaries, as well as their family members.
One of his most famous portraits was that of Howqua, the English nickname of Wu Bingjian, who became one of the richest men in China in the 19th century, with assets estimated at USD 26 million. He made his fortune from the trade in Chinese silk and porcelain. Chinnery’s painting of Howqua in 1830, with a thin, gaunt face and rich, colorful clothes, has immortalized him.
Chinnery’s portrait of Dr Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, and his assistants, translating the Bible into Chinese was widely praised. It was much appreciated by Morrison himself, who called it “glorifying, as a work of art”. Chinnery also found that his fame ensured that there was a steady and lucrative demand for his own self-portraits.
He lived on the Macau peninsula, at 8 Rua Ignacio Baptista, where he also had his studio. He was good company, and as a famous personality he had many friends and acquaintances, who appreciated his jovial temper and his gifts as a raconteur. From the studio, Chinnery arranged commissions, sold paintings and taught pupils, some of whom later achieved prominence in their own right.
These pupils included Thomas Watson (1815-1860), William Prinsep (1794-1874), and Marciano Baptista (1826-1896). None, however, ever emulated the accomplishments of the master. After Chinnery’s death, a street near St Lawrence’s Church, in the area where he once lived, was re-named as Rua George Chinnery, a tribute he would greatly have appreciated.

Meticulous draftsman

Chinnery planned all his works with the greatest of care, and with an eye for detail. Every picture was preceded by preparatory drawings in his notebooks, sometimes in pen and ink over pencil, many of which have fortunately survived. Seated at his easel, with pen or pencil in hand, Chinnery was a familiar figure on the Praya Grande, in Leal Senado square, at Monte Fort, in Camoes Garden and at St Paul’s ruins. The scribbles he made on the edges of his drawings were a puzzling feature, but these were simply pencilled notations he made for future reference.
His scribbles were based on a shorthand system taught to him by his grandfather, William Chinnery, a calligrapher. The system was originally invented by Thomas Gurney, for the use of court reporters, journalists and others. Sometimes the scribbles indicated little more than that the drawing was complete, together with the date.
In Macau, he used to rise early in the morning and take his sketch book with him; he was always on the look-out for new themes and images. He wrote in his diary that he had “a fixed principle of adding seven new ideas every morning to his stock … it is proof of the advantage of even the slightest sketch”. One day, he noted that he had filled his sketchbook before nine in the morning, which he called “the effect of going to bed at eight”.
Chinnery continued to work until the very end of his life. The door of his studio was always open, particularly to young painters eager to learn from him and to visitors hoping to meet the great man. “I can never be wholly destitute,” he wrote. “My beautiful art will always secure me a livelihood and a name.” It was this passion for work that sustained him in good times and bad.

Final years

While still in India, Chinnery was active in the Star in the East, the oldest lodge for freemasons in Bengal, and some of his portraits were of fellow freemasons. It may be more than just coincidence that Chinnery made his only visit to Hong Kong in 1846, the year that Hong Kong’s lodge was established. Although he stayed for six months, his sojourn in the new colony was less than happy, and he was ill for much of the time. Although he had what he called “the power of doing but very little”, Chinnery managed to produce some fifteen views of Hong Kong, to satisfy local demand, including an oil painting of Victoria Peak.
Chinnery died of a stroke at his home on 30 May 1852. He did not leave a will, and nobody claimed his belongings, which included cases full of paintings and sketches, which were sold by judicial order. In late July that year, a grand auction of the contents of his studio was held in Macau, attended by the cream of Hong Kong society. A regatta and a ball were held at the same time.
Chinnery was buried in the tranquility of the Old Protestant Cemetery, close to where Robert Morrison and other friends and sitters lay in rest.
Some years later, after funds had been collected, a granite memorial was erected to him in the graveyard, next to the wall of the Camoes Garden at the north end of the avenue.
In 1974, on the bicentennial anniversary of Chinnery’s birth, a plaque was unveiled at the memorial by the Governor of Macau, General Jose Nobre De Carvalho. The plaque bears a dedication: “For the life of one who, journeying far from the land of his fathers, found in this city a haven of refuge from the besetting tribulations and worldly cares of his earlier years.”  By I Grenville Cross, Exclusive MDT/MacauHub

I Grenville Cross is a lawyer and academic, whose interests
include historical research and writing.