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BOOK REVIEWS
today. This information negates the subsequent statement "The only specifically recorded Lamqua portrait in an American collection is that of Dr. Peter Parker
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A bibliography omitting nearly 50% of the last published bibliography will startle any serious scholar. It may be possible to write about Chinnery without consulting E. W. Bovil's articles in Notes and Queries and about the Opium War without using Maurice Collis' Foreign Mud with its Chinnery illustrations, but it is not recommended practice. W. C. Hunter, partner in Russell & Co., is quoted in the text, but both of his books The Fan-Kwae in Canton before Treaty Days 1825-1844 and Bits of Old China with its chapter on Chinnery, are omitted from the list. Any modern researcher will want to check the Jardine-Matheson papers in Cambridge, England. They are not mentioned here. There is a list of plates, but no general index.
In the China section of photographs, there are 57 oils, water-colors, and drawings captioned as by Chinnery, also 10 so-called "School of Chinnery", 28 port scenes, all called "School", and 2 miscellaneous. Authentication of any artist's work, particularly if unsigned, is a matter of opinion. When in doubt, it is far sounder to "attribute" and the best museums follow this custom. In recent months, a world expert on Chinnery and your reviewer considered together these 57 pictures and questioned or denied 21 of them, a substantial percentage.
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In 1953 the statement was made, and remains unchallenged, it is obvious that the Hong Kong Chinnery is the only portrait of Howqua that may be said to have been painted in a truly accomplished Western manner such as one would expect from the brush of Chinnery. The other portraits of Howqua, in spite of their long-standing attribution to Chinnery, almost without exception speak of Western art with a strong Cantonese accent". There is no photograph of the Chinnery portrait of Howqua in Hong Kong in this book a significant omission. However, there are three portraits of Howqua11- all obviously by Chinese
* Page 39.
9 Arts Council Catalogue 1957.
10 Albert Ten Eyck Gardner-The Art Quarterly, Winter 1953
11 Plate 39 top and bottom, Plate 40 top.
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