A View of the Hongs at Canton Qing Dynasty, Daoguang / Xianfeng Period, Circa 1850 | 清道光 / 咸豐 約1850年 廣州十三商館 油彩 裝框

Sotheby's New York, April 17th, 1985, lot 67
Charlotte Horstmann and Gerald Godfrey Ltd., Hong Kong, 1985

Europeans have established trading routes from the West to Canton (Guangdong), since the early 18th century, before the hongs (foreign factories) were built. Around 1750-60, the hongs were firmly established and several of the buildings were altered to reflect the presence of European trade in Canton, which later developed into the familiar waterfront depicted in China trade paintings of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Following the Great Fire of 1822 and subsequent rebuilding, blockade of factories in 1839, and the First Opium War (1839-42), the present work depicts the Canton waterfront one hundred years after its initial Westernization, and arguably one of the last moments of prosperity for Western trade in Canton.

The Protestant church in the center of the painting was completed in 1848, and has been a focal point of later hong paintings until it was burned down in the fire of December 1856. Compare a similar view of the hongs, illustrated in Patrick Conner, The Hongs of Canton: Western merchants in south China 1700-1900, as seen in Chinese export paintings, London, 2009, fig. 7.16. The author notes that the church is a significant symbol of Western settlement in Canton, and provided both Chinese and Western Christians a place of worship. Conner further discusses the architectural style of the church, which was more Italianate to match the appearance of the hongs, instead of the Gothic Revival style that was popular in mid-19th century Britain.