The panorama of Macau’s Praya Grande drew him back, time and again, to capture its sweeping scimitar of promenade, bathed in early morning sunlight or etched in evening shadows. Typically, he would populate the foreground with a lone fisherman stalking the strand or boatmen pushing their sampan out into the placid bay.
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As if in retreat from his own habitual extravagance, as much as from the creditors who had indulged it, Chinnery employed his time at Serampore in sketching and painting scenes of utmost simplicity, along river banks and in native villages where life was pursued at its most basic level.
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In this portrait, ostensibly of Charles Marjoribanks and his family, Chinnery lavished as much attention on the Chinese amah as on her employers. One might almost imagine she joined the group at his suggestion.
Harriett’s admiration of Chinnery’s artistic skills had begun the moment she first visited his “studio” on December 7, 1829: “I forgot to say that I went to Chinnery the portrait painter’s room yesterday. He has some fine likenesses. He is remarkably successful. How I wished that I had a little of the needful that I could put into the man’s hand that he might take my beautiful phiz that I might transport it across the great waters into your hands, for I flatter myself you would like it. But there, what’s the use of wishing.” Doubtless determined to make himself as conspicuous as possible, in the hopes of attracting whatever patronage he could, Chinnery had turned his tiny studio residence into an open house, where virtually anyone could drop in unannounced whenever the fancy might seize them. It frequently seized Harriett: “May 30, 1831. This morning did not feel like studying. Jumped into my chair and called for Mrs. Allport and went to Chinnery’s room to see his new paintings. Has just finished a new family picture of the Grants, the parents and 3 children and a Chinese Ayah, very handsomely grouped and good likenesses.” 66
THE MONSTROUS EPICURE
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“I might be begging, but not for my portrait� he seems to say, as he turns to look elsewhere. The same was true of the others adding their reluctant contributions to the crowded pages of his sketchbooks, each marked with his little cross of correctitude to indicate he was satisfied with them, even if the sentiment was not reciprocated.
the middle distance. It is the figures that spring to life, not their general setting. And how carefully Chinnery has studied those figures! In India it is the native bearers of the palanquin, not its dignified passenger, over whom his pen and brush have lingered. Just as in Macau it is the boatmen and the sampan girls who take on a distinct identity and existence of their own, while the marine prospect they occupy seems almost unfinished by comparison. For Chinnery, then, it is clearly the ethnicity of the inhabitants, rather than the orientalism of their surroundings, that represents the more truly exotic ingredient. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he provides a social commentary on the native way of life. And with the exception of the everobliging Tanka boatgirls, who so frequently posed for him, with their engaging smiles, that some were rumoured to have formed romantic attachments to the artist, most of his subjects appear oblivious of his scrutiny. They simply carry on doing whatever it is they are engaged upon, rather than cast an eye in his direction or pose for the convenience of his composition. They cannot have been easy subjects to portray. Indian peasants, inured to feudal authority through long years of subjugation, might have been more accommodating and compliant, but their Chinese equivalents were 90
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As members of a floating population, beyond the reach of terrestrial officials and mores, Tanka women were spared the social obligation to bind their feet and wear their hair in pigtails.
suspicious and resentful of the ‘foreign devils’ who had invaded their soil. To them Chinnery must, at least at first, have seemed especially intrusive and irritating as he loitered in their vicinity with his strange paraphernalia. Only when he became an inescapably familiar figure, constantly prowling the streets, public squares and esplanades of Macau, would they learn to tolerate his presence. But at best, most would probably have ignored him, as if he simply wasn’t there. Which is why in many of his sketches we see their backs turned to him as they plod down to the water’s edge with their casting nets, heave yoked watering cans over their shoulders to irrigate their vegetable plots, crouch at street stalls to consume their bowls of daily rice or squat over their games of cards and fantan. “May the gods spare us the importunities of tax collectors, revenue agents, imperial edicts and crazy gwailo artists,” they seem to mutter under their breaths. “We will simply pretend he doesn’t exist, and maybe in time he will go away.” But Chinnery didn’t go away. He kept returning, day after d a y, w h e n e v e r t h e p o r t r a i t commissions permitted his absence from the studio, to indulge his true 92
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passion by observing and recording the natives of Macau and the manner of their existence. In the end they became so accustomed to his face that he really, to all intents and purposes, did cease to exist. Because he no longer registered in their consciousness. Until that day finally came when his removal from the scene would trigger the same aching awareness as a missing tooth or an unaccountably absent landmark. 95
In contrast to this crowded street market outside the SĂŁo Domingos church, Chinnery was repeatedly drawn to the isolation of the blacksmith at his forge.
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The floating world of the boat dwellers became briefly land-bound when ebbing tides stranded them on the beach, affording him the chance to approach at closer quarters, even though they might turn their backs on him to pointedly gaze at distant plumes of smoke in preference to his grizzled visage.
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The fleeting moment was ever his constant concern; the player in the act of reaching for a crucial card, the fisherman casting a swift, sidelong glance in his direction before returning his attention to his tangled net.
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G
eorge Chinnery was that providential and all-too-rare
combination of the right man in the right place at the right
time. But for him, our vision of the China coast in the early
years of the nineteenth century would remain deficient, our understanding of Macau less secure and our grasp of its humanity lacking in intimacy. His was the faithful record not only of the greater panoramas in his oils and watercolours but of every lovingly-captured particular in his sometimes minute pencil sketches. Chinnery in China presents a portrait of the artist as an old and crotchety but immensely gifted man, just the way Chinnery would have wanted it.
ISBN 988-98269-7-6