Lam Qua
Encyclopedia
Guangdong
Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
province in Ch'ing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
China, who specialized in Western-style portraits intended largely for Western clients. Lam Qua was the first Chinese portrait painter to be exhibited in the West. He is known for his medical portraiture, and for his portraits of Western and Chinese merchants in Canton
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
and Macau. He had a workshop in 'New China Street' among the Thirteen Factories
Thirteen Factories
The Thirteen Factories was an area of Canton , China, where the first foreign trade was allowed in the 18th century since the hai jin ban on maritime activities...
in Canton
Guangzhou
Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...
.
In the 1820s, Lam Qua is said by some contemporaries to have studied with George Chinnery
George Chinnery
George Chinnery was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.- Early life :Chinnery was born in London, where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools...
, the first English painter to settle in China - although Chinnery himself denied this. Lam Qua became well-known and skilled in Chinnery's style of portraiture. He developed a following among the international community, and undercut Chinnery's prices.
From 1836 to 1855, Lam Qua produced a series of medical portraits of patients under treatment with physician Peter Parker
Peter Parker (physician)
Peter Parker was an American physician and a missionary who introduced Western medical techniques into Qing Dynasty China. It was said that Parker "opened China to the gospel at the point of a lancet."- Early life :...
, a medical missionary from the United States. Parker commissioned Lam Qua to paint pre-operative portraits of patients who had large tumors or other major deformities. Some of the paintings are now part of a collection of Lam Qua's work held by the Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in the Peter Parker Collection at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library; others are in the Gordon Museum, Guy's Hospital, London.
External links
- Peter Parker's Lam Qua Paintings Collection at Yale University
- Gilman, S. Lam Qua and the development of a westernized medical iconography in China J. Medical Hist. (1986)
- Chang, J. A reconstructive surgeon's taste in art: Dr Peter Parker and the Lam Qua oil paintings Ann Plast Surg. (1993)
- Hume, Edward Peter Parker and the Introduction of Anesthesia into China Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1946)