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HOME AND CHINA AFFAIRS.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT).
London, March 16th. EXHIBITION OF FAR EASTERN PICTURES.
At the galleries of the Fine Art Society in New Bond Street this week there has been a very attractive exhibition of the Far Eastern pictures by Mr. T. Hodgson Liddell. There are eighty-four of these pictures in water colours, varying in size, but all possess ing remarkable merit. They represent twelve months hard work in the East, and the artist has every reason to be proud of the quality of this large output in that time.
I had a little chat with Mr. Hodgson Liddell in the galleries and asked him whether he proposed to return to the East. He was not quite decided on that point, but spoke with pleasure of his tour of the main points of interest in China, and the friends he met in Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking and elsewhere.
In describing his exhibition he speaks of the stmospheric and climatic variations in the enormous territory of China. "The prevailing skies in Southern China are what I might call 'mackerel', but with a very strong white light; while in Northern China, in the Gulf of Pechili, and around Peking there is much intense blue and clear, sharp atmosphere. The landscape near the Treaty Ports, best known to foreigners, is usually flat and monotonous, but inland it is very beautiful. In my choice of subjects I was guided by a desire to convey, if possible, to those at home a pictorial idea of the most notable places in China; and therefore I was obliged to be somewhat topographical. I could with greater ease have found many artistically beautiful subjects, but they would not, to my mind, in a first exhibition at any rate have sufficiently conveyed a true sense of pictorial Chins.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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some notion of the buildings and methods of worship and in the Lama Temple I tried to suggest the gorgeous reds and yellows one sees there.
"With the failure to receive permission to go to Jehol, I was given to understand that any further attempt on my part to get within the Imperial Palaces would be practically hopeless, but my first failure did not deter me from further efforts in that direction and after many weeks of waiting, trying, and arguing, I was ultimately successful owing to the generous help of the British Minister and other members of the Legation, and the kindly aid of a Chinese gentleman who was instrumental in placing specimens of my work before the Grand Council, and thereby enabling them to approach the Throne with a complete knowledge of what I wished to do. By virtue of an Edict, dated 24th October, 1908. issued by the the Empress Grand Dowager, I was given permission to enter the Summer Palace, where rooms, attendants, food and all I could wish for were found for me, and I received the greatest kindness from the Mandaring and other officials who were delegated to attend on me during my stay there.
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But it was very late in the year, the cold weather had begun, as it does there, very sud- denly, and although I had brilliant sunshine there was a bitter wind, and at times I had great difficulty in keeping my brush at work.
With the finish of my drawings at the Palace it only remained for me to complete a replica of my main picture of the Palace for the Empress Grand Dowager, upon which I was engaged at the time of her death.
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"I must consider myself exceptionally favour- ed in obtaining admission to this place, which in its beauty is almost fairylike, especially now that for probably a space of fifteen years, during the minority of the young Emperor, the Palace will be closed."
The exhibition has been visited by numbers of old China hands and those who are or are to be concerned in British interests officially in the Far East.
"The Chinese, though an insensely artistic nation, are not accustomed to artists working among them from nature, and therefore I could not be surprised that when I arrived at a place and proceeded to fix my ease!, I was viewed with some suspicion as well as with wonder, but their good sense quickly showed them what I was trying to do, and they then assisted me as far as they understood how; nevertheless, I had often to work under very difficult circumstances and am afraid that my picture, in some cases, suffer-party. ed in consequence.
"In Hongkong the outstanding feature, and that which affected me most, was the grandeur of the towering Peak and the lovely Harbour.
In Shanghai, I restricted myself to the native City, full of dirt and artistic beauty, and, though within three minutes of the greatest foreign settlement in Ching, as Chinese as any place I have seen.
"In my landscapes of the West Lake, Hang- chow, I have endeavoured to show the purely sylvan beauty of the country, as also in the pictures of the Tahu and places north of Soochow. An old Chinese proverb says: There is Heaven above, and Soochow and Hangchow below. At Hangchow, in the month of June, I suffered, perhaps, most from the extreme heat, and the temperature averaging 95 in the shade it can be imagined that spending ten or eleven hours daily with only the shelter of a sketching umbrella, was trying.
"In Northern China my work was to a large extent restricted to Peking and the immediate neighbourhood. In the time at my disposal I felt that there I could get more of interest to the general public than by cutting up my time in visiting many places. My first intention was to proceed to Jehol with a view of painting the Imperial Palace, which was visited by Lord Macartney's mission; I therefore applied through our Legation for a passport and a special permit to allow me to work within the precincts of the Palace. The passport was granted but the permit absolutely refused; I would not therefore undertake this long journey. "Peking, is perhaps, more familiar now.a-days to foreigners generally than any other part of China, and justly so, for it is not only essentially Chinese and full of historic interest, but ex- tremely beautiful.
The Temple of Heaven is planned and laid out on a large and generous scale, situated within a beautiful Park, where are bred the black cattle used for sacrifices. Here I was again governed by the desire to convey
[April 17, 1909:
East, they could be heard recalling with infinite satisfaction their experiences as they were brought to mind by this extremely comprehensive and admirable collection of pictures.
CHINESE TURKESTAN:
Mr. George scartney, C.I.E., for twenty years British representative in Kashgar, whose lecture to the China Society I recently sent you, lectured this week to the Central Asian Society at their rooms in albemarle Street, with Lord Ronaldshay in the chair. As in the previous lecture he found much to praise in the Chinese officials. The guiding principles of the Chinese administrators are those of tolerance; control of the mass by win- ning over the gentry; personal responsibility on the part of the officials for all breaches of the peace in their jurisdiction, and prestige founded on the preservation in its fulness of Chinese in. dividually in an alien environment." Chinese rule at present satisfied the natives of Turkestan, but there were already vague rum- blings of an awakening movement among them that would have to be reckoned with in the future. Dr. A. M. Stein, the well known traveller, also spoke in praise of the Chinese
rule.
THE CANTON-HANKOW RAILWAY LOAN.
The
The news of negociations for a German loan for the Hankow-Canton Railway has caused a considerable amount of irritation here and in Paris, and in America there is great interest over this international struggle for financial influence in Chinese undertakings.
The excellent message sent home during the week by the Times correspondent in Peking as to the methods of Chinese construction have vastly amused the general reader, but they have not given much fun to the investor in Chinese railway securities. Market is extremely chary of handling Chinese stock nowadays, and several men hitherto interested in such en- terprises have assured me they will operate no more in that quarter till something more substantial than the exaggerated claims of the Chinese promoters are offered as security, Nothing less than efficient financial control While I was there I noticed the ex-Councillor and the nomination of European engineers to of the British Legation in Pekin, Mr. Luck, superintend the work, with real authority, will accompanied by his successor Mr. W. G. Max-satisfy British investors for the future. Still, Müller, M.V.O., who is shortly to go East after there is a feeling among some of the shrewdest a period as Secretary of the British Legation men of business here that these set-backs to in Christiania. Mrs. Müller was also of the British enterprise are but temporary, and the Chinese will be compelled by circumstances ere long to abandon their self-sufficient attitude, and again call for European help in engineering and financial control. The ultimate issue of the present duel of financial syndicates is being watched with remarkable interest, but Germany is so extremely anxious just now to get foreign footing in all branches of enterprise that it is probable the loan will be carried through in spite of previous official Chinese pledges to British financiers.
It is well to know that many of the pictures were labelled "sold," several of them being of Hongkong. There was a choice view of Hong- kong from Kowloon that was so marked, as well as "Chow-time, Hongkong," a view of Lotus Island, West Lake, Hangchow, the Old Tea House in the native city of Shanghai, a view of the British Church at Canton, another of the a Likin station at Canton, and a very pretty view of Hongkong on a smaller scale, more delicate and clearer in atmosphere. In all there were twelve views of Hongkong.
LORD CREWE`S PROMISE TO HONGKONG. The announcement that Lord Crewe will ask From an artistic point of view I believe the Parliament for a substantial contribution to experts fixed upon the large and brightly reduce the deficit caused in Hongkong by the coloured representation of the Sacrificial Altar opium restrictions, is not meeting with unani- of the Temple of Heaven, Peking, as the chef mous approval, as you may have anticipated, d'oeuvre, but the exhibition afforded examples It is another thorn in the boot of the Chan, of many different effects of shade and light and cellor of the Exchequer, who this year seems to colouring, and for a delicate treatment of a
have to find money for all sorts of odd things, subject I was greatly attracted to a small picture most of them far less reasonable than this. showing the West Lake, Hangchow, with Dr.ut Hongkong is a long way off, and you are Main's pagoda in the distance
The pictures of the Pai Lau in the Lama Temple, the Pavilion of the late Empress Grand Dowager in the Summer Palace, the open air worship at the Lama Temple, Peking, the marble junk on the lake of the Summer Palace and the Grand Pai Lau, of the Summer Palace, are dach admirable in their several ways, and parties visiting the ex- hibition usually spent considerable time in front of the excellent picture of the Summer Palace on a duplicate of which Mr. Hodgson Liddell was engaged for the Empress Grand Dowager when she died. Some of the works dealt with the more unusual subjects of Chinese life, as a widow's monument at Bingoo a choice study in greens and yellows, an itinerant blacksmith at work under a willow tree, an hotel sign at Shanhaikwan, pearl fishing boats near Canton, and cormorant fishing at Wong Dong. All these exhibits were most interesting and instructive to the visitor ignorant of China, and as for those who have answered the call of the
hot electors of any M.P in the House of Com- mons; so there is likely to be heard a good deal of girding at the contribution.
The Globe, in & not altogether ип- friendly editorial, says: "In other words the British taxpayer is to be mulcted because virtue, or what we call virtue, is enforced on the Chinese. We are in some doubt whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will welcome the prospect of still further fncreasing his deficit by sending solid cash to make up the deficiency of, Hongkong; and he may quite possibly be pre- pared to let the question of paying in England for stopping the opium traffic abroad, wait for a year or so, especially in such an unobtrusive place as the Chinese quarter of our most easterly possession."
THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
IN CHINA.
The Lord Mayor has called an important meeting for the promotion of the missionary scheme for medical training and other educa. tional work in China on Christian lines. The
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