George Chinnery

George Chinnery spent most of his life in Asia and painted the people and places of India, Macau and the Pearl River Delta. His portraits of merchants, sea captains and families are lively and warm, and his sketches and watercolours of street life in Macau are full of observed detail.

He was born in London in 1774 and studied at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1802 he sailed to India and worked in Madras and Calcutta for over twenty years, painting the British community. In 1825 he moved to Macau, where he lived until his death in 1852, visiting Canton and Hong Kong. He painted the Hong merchant Howqua and the traders William Jardine and James Matheson. The Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum and the Hong Kong Museum of Art hold his work.

Portrait of a Eurasian Girl Against a Chinese River Landscape shows his habit of setting a figure against local scenery.