George Chinnery

With Spink & Son, London, August 1987.

By the time of Chinnery's arrival in Macau 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.