George Chinnery (1774-1852) Fisherman with Wet Weather Coat c. 1838 Pencil Drawing. Professionally Framed and Matted by the Wattis Fine Art Gallery. The Wattis Fine Art opened on Hollywood Road, Hong Kong in 1988 and has built up a reputation as the foremost gallery in Asia specializing in historical pictures, antique maps and travel books of East Asia. Jonathan Wattis, who joined Christie’s in London in 1977, has drawn on his wide experience of the international art market, as well as painstaking research. PROVENANCE: A Paris, France and Charleston SC. George Chinnery (1774-1852) is now acknowledged as one of the foremost European artists based in Asia in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was nothing if not versatile, producing during the course of a long career spent largely in India and southern China a range of portraits, landscapes and street scenes in oil, watercolor and pencil. Londoner by birth, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools but moved to Ireland when in his early twenties, marrying in Dublin in 1799. His elder brother William also left his native country, but in his case he fled to Sweden to avoid imprisonment for fraud. Leaving his wife and two infant children in Europe, in 1802 George Chinnery set out for Madras on the Gilwell, later transferring to the centre of British power in the sub-continent, Calcutta. His establishing himself among the British community and gaining patrons and commissions may have been assisted by his membership of the 'Star in the East' Masonic Lodge, but nevertheless he fell heavily into debt and left India altogether in 1825 to go to Macao. Apart from regular visits to Canton and a stint in Hong Kong he spent the rest of his life in this small Portuguese colony, being buried in the Old Protestant cemetery there. Ref: George Chinnery, 1774-1852 Artist of India and the China Coast by Patrick Connor; The British Library; Christies, Sale 5688, Lot 119, King Street London

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