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Provenance: John Russell Reeves (1804-1877), East India Company Assistant Inspector of Teas at Canton (appointed 1827), and thence by descent to the present owner.
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Notes: 'But you know what my Sketch Books are -- all full - but many in each volume, with the embryo of design -- many filled in partially -- and many in their completed state of pen and sepia... it will be the Sketch Book of a Painter and some 50 years hence may be interesting -- here and there I'll leave one in an unfinished state that G.C. may be seen more clearly, when it may come under the eye of a brother of the pencil.' (Chinnery to James Matheson, 1 Dec. 1838)
THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
The present album, a rare survival, with so many of Chinnery's sketchbooks broken over the years, was presumably given to John Russell Reeves by the artist. Chinnery knew both John Russell and his father John in Macao (John retired and returned to England in 1831) and painted their portraits -- a portrait of the father is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and there are portraits by Chinnery of both father and son still in the collection of Reeves's descendants.
John Reeves (1774-1856) arrived in Canton as Assistant Inspector of Tea for the Honourable East India Company in 1812, working in Canton during the tea season and residing at Macao at other times. He served three tours in China, interspersed with periods of leave, between 1812 and 1831, rising to become Chief Inspector of Tea. Encouraged by his employer, he devoted his free time to accumulating information on the botany and natural history of China. Reeves shipped the first Chinese azaleas, camellias, peonies, chrysanthemums and roses, as well as hundreds of dried plant specimens, and specially commissioned paintings by Chinese artists of Chinese plants, fishes and animals. He corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks and published papers on Chinese medicine, astronomy and horticulture. He was mourned as 'amongst the Nestors of Horticulture' in his obituary notice in the Gardener's Chronicle in 1856 (p.212). His eldest son, John Russell, joined him in China in 1827 and his career closely mirrored that of his father. He was appointed Assistant Inspector of Teas in Canton and similarly collected plants for introduction to English gardens, collected fish specimens and commissioned Chinese artists to paint hundreds of zoological studies. The Reeves collections, including both specimens and albums of Chinese drawings, were bequeathed to the British Museum (Natural History) in the 19th century. For these, and brief biographical notes on both father and son, see P.J.P. Whitehead, The Reeves Collection of Chinese Fish Drawings in Bulletin of The British Museum (Natural History), London, 1967, Historical Series, Vol. 3, No. 7, pp.191-233.
Chinnery had arrived in Macao from India in September 1825. With excursions to Canton in the early years after his arrival and one six-month visit to Hong Kong in 1846, Macao became Chinnery's home (he lived just behind the Sao Lourenço Church, towards the end of the peninsula, at 8 rua de Ignacia Baptista) until his death, aged 78, in 1852. Living in a very small community of non-Chinese on the China Coast, he only survived through the generous patronage of the businessmen William Jardine and James Matheson, and the support of a handful of traders, tea tasters, doctors, missionaries and their families.
George Chinnery's whole artistic repertoire, whether in oils or watercolours, portraits or landscapes, was firmly founded on his assiduous sketching. 'Nothing', he repeatedly insisted in the shorthand on his sketches, 'can supply the want of outline'.
George Chinnery used his sketchbooks in many ways: for his own reference as working drawings and templates for later works; for his clients to make selections and to commission finished watercolours or oils; for friends and pupils to trace or copy; to sell or to give as presents and even, when he left India, as partial payment for some of his debts. They also show his concern for detail, correctness, and his search for just the right 'sentiment' as he called it. Above all, they confirm his talent as an outstanding draughtsman.
Chinnery dated, in a mixture of shorthand and longhand, nearly all of his sketches, and in this book the dates are written very clearly. If he corrected and later went over the drawings again, 'at home', so that they were 'filled up with pen', he then added the same or a later date. The majority of these drawings have been completed by filling up with pen.
Apart from only a few drawings that are dated April, May or December 1836, most of them are dated from August to October 1837, plus a few from March and June 1837. Several are for consecutive days.
The shorthand annotations, other than the dates, are usually notes of some special features to remember, colours, shadows, elements to be changed or improved and, quite often, the comment 'this would make a picture at any time', or 'fully to be depended upon'.
Not very often there are more personal comments that have some special reference to a particular date and, in this sketchbook, there are just two of these. Beside a sketch dated June 19th 1837, there is the comment: 'For Peter Robertson'. Next to another drawing dated September 27th 1837, there is the note: 'My daughter married 18 years today'. This is a reference to his daughter Matilda. Chinnery signed the marriage register to her marriage in St John's Cathedral, Calcutta on 27th September 1819 to James Cowley Brown of the Bengal Civil Service. James died in 1852 and Matilda in 1879.
The Reeves album includes one integral full-page [8 x 10 3/4 in. (20.3 x 27.3cm.)] watercolour of old houses in Macao and a further four watercolours mounted on the album leaves [Fisherfolk on a shoreline, 3 x 7 1/8in (7.6 x 18.1cm.), Sao Francisco Fort, 5 5/16 x 6 7/8in. (13.5 x 17.4cm.), A sampan and fisherfolk on a shoreline, 3 1/4 x 6 1/4 in. (8.3 x 15.8cm.) and The A-Ma (or Ma-Kok) temple, Macao, 5 5/8 x 7 3/4 in. (14.4 x 19.7cm.), these latter four watercolours the 'added... few sketches in water colour' mentioned by Chinnery on the front pastedown. The subjects of the pen and grey wash and 'completed' sepia washed sheets are Sao Francisco Fort, a double page view of Sao Francisco Fort, a coastal landscape with goats in the shadow of a bamboo grove, the A-Ma temple, and a street scene with Sao Domingos Church.
The present album, with works ranging from pencil sketches to completed drawings and watercolours, displays the full repertoire of Chinnery's drawing and so allows us to observe the 'process' of the artist, as described by Geoffrey Bonsall when discussing the Chinnery sketchbooks and sketches from the Toyo Bunko, Tokyo and Geographical Society, Lisbon collections exhibited at the Luis de Camoes Museum in Macao in 1985 : 'In the "pencil drawing" process, the first stage calls for a "very soft pencil"; the next is "CO (Correct Outline) hard pencil", with a note that the first design in sift pencil is then "removed by bread wholly"... Then comes "C" (Completion), which calls for a "Walters pencil or a good Burgess", and the final stage is "Congee". This rather surprising finish implies that in Macau at least, Chinnery used the liquid from Chinese congee, or rice gruel, when hot, to "fix" his pencil sketches, rather than the glaze from beaten egg-white which he recommended while in India.... Other sketches show how Chinnery has gone over them with strong pencil lines, correcting, improving, shading, and hatching. Many others are done over with pen, sometines with additional shorthand notes to indicate when this was done and the addition of the sign 0 to show that they have been "filled up". A few are apparently done with pen from the start, with an amazing confidence of line and action, though one expects that a faint pencil original may have been "removed by bread wholly".
'Chinnery also worked on his sketches at home, and the shorthand sign for this often occurs with a later date than the one given for the original sketch from nature. The final completed state of "pen and sepia" is only attained in a few of the drawings, but the result is startling in the way that Chinnery does things with light and shade that explores the greatest possibilities of this medium. A few examples reveal some of the range and great variety of his techniques and draughtsmanship in the progress from "the embryo of design" to "pen and sepia"'.
'As James Orange wrote, "Chinnery's heart was in sketching from nature", and in doing so almost every morning in Macau, he has left an unique record of the city's buildings, scenery, groups fo Chinese people, boats and animals.' Geoffrey Bonsall, George Chinnery's Views of Macau, in Arts of Asia, Jan.-Feb. 1986, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp.89-92).
For a detailed discussion of Chinnery's shorthand annotations on his drawings see G. Bonsall, 'Extracting the Poetry from the Prose: On reading Chinnery's Shorthand' in the exhibition catalogue Impressions of the East: The Art of George Chinnery, Hong Kong Museum of History and Hong Kong Museum of Art, June-August 2005, pp.22-35.
We are grateful to Geoffrey Bonsall for his help in preparing the present catalogue note.
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