s The Hongs at Canton - Hull Museums Collections

The Hongs at Canton

Chinnery was born in London in 1774. He exhibited a miniature at the Royal Academy at the age of seventeen and subsequently enrolled at the Academy Schools. In 1796 he moved to Ireland where a branch of his family had lived since the 17th century. A successful career followed which included many portrait commissions and landscapes. Chinnery was elected a Director of the Royal Dublin Society and, in 1800, Secretary of the Society of Artists in Ireland. Following the breakdown of his marriage, he later returned to London en route to Madras. He was to spend the rest of his life in the East. Despite initial success he was bad at managing his money and by 1825 he fled his debts and settled in Macao, a trading post on the Chinese coast. This small painting, probably by one of Chinnery’s Chinese followers in its meticulous style, shows the flags of all the different nations that had trading rights in Canton. The whole complex depicted here was destroyed by fire in 1822.