GEORGE CHINNERY | WATERFRONT BUILDINGS, MACAU; AND THE PRAYA GRANDE, MACAU

With Spink & Son, London, August 1987.

The peninsula of Macau has served as a sanctuary for Westerners ever since the Portuguese were allowed to settle there in the 1550s. They were excluded from the Chinese mainland by a wall built across the isthmus, but their settlement prospered, largely through trade with Japan and Manila. They built forts on the hills for use against the Dutch and English, which by the early 18th century had usurped Portugal's position as the leading Western traders in the East.

By the time of Chinnery's arrival in 1825, the Praya Grande was flanked by a shallow crescent of fine two-storied houses, often supplied with verandas and columns or colonnades and faced with the shell-based stucco known as chunam. Many of these were rented by foreign trading companies; for some years the East India Company occupied two of the most imposing structures, with pilasters and central pediments, which stood immediately to the south of the Governor's Palace. None of the buildings depicted by Chinnery on the Praya Grande survives today, and much of the bay itself has been reclaimed.