XIV.
THE ARTS.
The most important artistic event of the year was the exhibition of the surviving pictures of the Chater Collection, held in October under the joint auspices of the Government and the British Council at the Council's Centre in Gloucester Building. The Chater Collection is the bequest of the late Sir Catchick Paul Chater, C.M.G., to the Government of Hong Kong. Chater, an Armenian born in Calcutta in 1846, first came to Hong Kong in 1864 as a bank assistant, but later resigned and started business on his own as an exchange and bill broker, in which occupation he amassed a considerable fortune. In 1886 he was appointed an unofficial member of the Legislative Council and subsequently served on the Executive Council.
He was knighted in 1902, and after a life of constant activity aimed at the improvement of Hong Kong and the welfare of its population, died in 1926. Soon after his first arrival he developed an interest in the historical aspect of Chinese relations with the Western nations, particularly the British, and from this interest grew the extensive collection of porcelain, paintings, lithographs and prints which formerly adorned his house and which at his death was presented to the Government. Before the war the pictures were housed in Government House, the Secretariat, the University and other Gov- ernment buildings, but in 1941 the greater part of the pictures and all the porcelain were lost partly by looting and partly by seizure by the Japanese. A few pictures were salvaged from Government House by one of the Chinese contractors engaged by the Japanese to carry out renovations there in 1942, and others were bought from various small antique shops in the Central district of Victoria by a Portuguese resident who had a good knowledge of the Collection and was able to recognize pictures from it. These, together with a few more recovered from the University and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, as well as from private individuals, formed the 1950 Exhibition-a total of seventy pictures in all. Careful cleaning, restoration and reframing had been carried out, and the Collection was attractively presented. Although many of the most valuable pictures have been lost what remains is sufficient to give an authentic pictorial impression of Canton, Macao and Hong Kong in the first half of the XIX century. The exhibition attracted considerable publicity, and was attended by over 2,000 people in four days.
Earlier in the year the Government announced that it had purchased 165 pieces of porcelain, bronze and pottery from the collection of Mr. Henry Yeung, a resident of Kowloon, a part of whose collection was exhibited at the Fung Ping Shan Library in
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