Chinese School Chinese Rice Field Workers

Chinese Watercolours Pith Paintings & Herbarium: Minnie Wright 1858

This painting forms part of a beautiful collection of Chinese works that were preserved in a mid-19th-century album belonging to a Minnie Wright of Newhaven. Little is known about Minnie Wright, but she was evidently English and her address is 'Newhaven' in 1858. Annotations accompanying the collection indicate that her grandson was called Philip Orford.

She was likely connected to the British community living in China around the main trade ports of the Yangtze Delta after the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. As well as beautiful examples of Chinese paintings on pith and floral watercolours, the collection includes a watercolour of a Chinese schoolmaster, inscribed 'Morton sends to Minnie', and there are a number of herbarium specimens collected at locations around the 'Great Canal' and Hangzhou, the southern terminus of the Grand Canal, between 1859 and 1862. There are also two specimens collected at 'Hogg Farm, England' in 1863. As a whole, the collection is a fascinating record of the history, activities and socio-cultural exchanges taking place between China and the West in the 19th century.