Chinese School

Pencil, watercolor and body color drawing heightened with white on paper and watermarked J. Whatman 1804 and 1805.

• Well executed and highly atmospheric watercolors capturing the importance of the river for trade in early 19th century China.
• Unusual and very attractive depictions of river life with the river in the foreground with a finely executed drawing of a native boat, the backgrounds showing landscape scenes interspersed with occasional architectural details.
• Framed and glazed.

The Pearl River is so named because of the pearl-colored shells that lie at the bottom of the river in the section that flows through the city of Guangzhou. Formerly often known as the Canton River, it is an extensive river system in southern China. The name "Pearl River" is also often used as a catchall for the watersheds of the Xi ("West"), Bei ("North") and Dong ("East") rivers of Guangdong. These rivers are all considered tributaries of the Pearl River because they share a common delta, the Pearl River Delta. Measured from the farthest of the Xi River, the Pearl River system is China's third-longest river, 2,400 kilometers, after the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, and second largest by volume, after the Yangtze.