Rare 250-year-old Guangzhou port painting unveiled at Hong Kong Maritime Museum
Alexander Hume’s ‘13 Hongs Foreign Factories’ shows the vibrant foreign trade scene before the British arrived in Hong Kong
A rare 18th century scroll painting which shows the bustling foreign trade port in Guangzhou has been unveiled at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.
The giant panorama – 13 Hongs Foreign Factories – was bought by Alexander Hume, a captain in the East India Company, as a souvenir before he sailed home in 1774.
The masterpiece, believed to have been created by an unknown Chinese artist, has been dubbed a Sino-Western fusion because it combines a Western landscape with the Chinese scroll format.
It is one of the earliest depictions of foreign factories in Canton, as Guangzhou was then known, and is described as the museum’s most significant historical collection item to date.
During the 1750s, Emperor Qianlong closed all trading ports in the country except Guangzhou. Some of its business premises (hongs) are pictured with their corresponding flags on the northern bank of the Pearl River.