Page 54 - Christie's London China Trade Paintings Kelton Collection

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CHINESE SCHOOL, CIRCA 1822
The Great Fire, Canton, 1822
oil on canvas
18 x 23¬in. (45.7 x 60cm.)
£20,000-30,000 US$25,000-37,000
€23,000-34,000
PROVENANCE:
Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Hong Kong, 13 Nov. 1975, lot 10.
Anon. sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Hong Kong, 23 Nov. 1976, lot 5.
Anon. sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 10 April 1986, lot 66.
The picture shows the fre approaching its height, having reached the hongs, with Hog Lane already ablaze just to the side of the
grand Palladian frontage of the English factory. All along the hongs, stores are being evacuated to the quayside, where sampans and
lighters are being loaded.

'The frst fre to be commemorated in Chinese 'export' paintings, it seems, was the disastrous fre of 1-2 November 1822, which was
believed to have left 50,000 people homeless. The fre began in a cake shop in the suburbs a mile and a half north of the factories.
At 9.30 in the evening of 1 November, news reached the factories that a major fre was spreading. The British factory sent out its
fre engines to lend assistance, but no water could be obtained. At about midnight the wind shifted from north-east to north, and
it became apparent that the factories were in danger. A message was sent to Whampoa ordering up sailors from the Western
ships; frst to arrive, at 7 a.m. on 2 November, were the Americans, whose anchorage lay nearest to Canton. The British arrived
half an hour later. The fre raged all that day, and continued into the following night. The ruins were still smouldering the following
morning, when armed boats were sent to protect such valuables as remained ... A large part of the western suburbs of Canton was
devastated by this outbreak. Thousands of Chinese shops were destroyed, together with the warehouses of the hong merchants, of
whom Mowqua and Puiqua sufered most heavily. Twenty-two people were reported to have been killed, either in the fre or in the
rush to escape the fames. Within a week of the outbreak, the British had resumed trade, having moved most of their factory into a
warehouse belonging to the hong merchant Consequa.' (P. Conner, The Hongs of Canton, Western Merchants in South China 1700-
1900, as seen in Chinese export paintings, London, 2009, pp.90-91).