Images of Macao - works of arts that focused on the landscapes of Macao

For nearly four and a half centuries the small enclave of Macao (also known as Macau, Makou, Au-mun, and Amaquoa) has served as a fulcrum of trade between China and the West. A rocky, foot-shaped peninsula on the coast of southern China, it was settled by Portuguese merchants in the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth it developed into a cosmopolitan community of Western traders and their families. It has been overshadowed by Hong Kong in recent times, but has retained its special shams as a Portuguese overseas territory, which is to end on December 20, when sovereignty will formally be returned to the Republic of China.

As far as can be established, the Portuguese first settled in Macao in the winter of 1556-1557 by means of an amicable and informal agreement with the officials of nearby Canton (now called Guangzhou). The Portuguese position was consolidated by their superior cannons and unrivaled seafaring experience, which they used to assist the Chinese in keeping the local pirates at bay. Trade and ta on of the developing settlement profited the Chinese government. The Portuguese merchants, in turn, took care not to antagonize their Chinese hosts for, as an observer wrote in 1635, "they have only to stop our food supplies to min our City, since there is no other place nor means of obtaining any."(1)

In the seventeenth century, the Portuguese influence on the colony declined, to be superseded largely by the Dutch and then the British. In the eighteenth century Western trade with China increased steadily through the port of Canton some ninety miles up the Pearl River, and, although Macao no longer played a pivotal role in that trade, it served as a base camp for Westerners trading at Canton. This resulted from the Chinese government's ruling that foreigners might reside in Canton only for a four-month winter trading season. When the time came to leave, they could either make the long voyage home (and back) or spend a long summer in Macao. Moreover, wives and children, who were not allowed in Canton at any time, remained in Macao year-round. After initial resistance on the part of the governor and the bishop of Macao, this system was formally instituted in 1757.

Of all the China coast sites depicted by artists painting for export, Macao was the most Western in appearance. When the artists Thomas (1749-1840) and William Daniell (1769-1837) arrived there in 1785 on their circuitous journey to India, they described Macao as "a handsome Portuguese town, with a considerable majority of Chinese inhabitants. It is built in the European style, with the singularity of having the laminae of oyster shells instead of panes of glass in the windows."(2) Most occidental of all, in a Chinese context, were the Portuguese churches whose towers and pediments, many of them in a flamboyantly baroque idiom, rose dramatically above the city.

It was about this time - in the third quarter of the eighteenth century - that paintings of Macao (and of Canton) made for export began to appear. As a rule, the early views depict the Inner Harbour, where the ships of the East India Company dropped anchor. The sandy fishing beach known as the Praya Grande had not yet developed into the grand crescent composed of colonial style mansions that was so much admired in the early nineteenth century.(3)

The gouache paintings shown in Plates III and VI are particularly interesting examples in that, although both were apparently painted for the Western market, neither follows Western pictorial conventions in more than a partial fashion. In Plate VI the city nestles in a Chinese landscape of dramatized hills and rocks. Western ships lie in the Inner Harbour, their topmasts lowered as was customary in port, while blue-coated Western figures can be seen ashore. ln Plate III the ships themselves are the focal point, framed within a bay of exaggerated concavity and an intriguingly erratic horizon. At the left in each picture is the Ilha Verde (Green Island), picturesquely wooded. In the nineteenth century it became the site of a cement plant, Macao's first venture into heavy industry, and the "island" is now joined to the peninsula. Both views do justice to the rich profusion of churches, of which a visitor in 1794 counted thirteen.(4) About that number is represented in Plate VI, with their late baroque and rococo decoration indicated by rows of pinnacles on undulating rooflines. Conspicuous on the left is the great Jesuit foundation of Sao Paulo, with its tiered facade above a broad flight of steps and other parts of the complex behind. These buildings were largely destroyed in a fire in 1835, leaving only the extraordinary facade intact.

The view in Plate V, again depicting the peninsula from the Inner Harbour, is painted in gold on black lacquer on a wood panel that was no doubt originally the lid of a chest. ln conception it has something in common width the gouache in Plate VI, but the panel is probably earlier, for a very similar lacquered chest lid in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon is inscribed "Macao Anno de 1746."(5) Visible at the left in Plate V are the gate and barrier the Chinese built in 1573 to bar the entry of the barbarians from the west. A number of forts, all menacingly out of scale, can be identified by the rows and semicircles of cannons that project over their parapets. The central fortress of Sao Paulo do Monte is visible just above the facade of the Sao Paulo church; the fortress of Sao Tiago da Barra at the far right covers the entrance to the Inner Harbour; and three forts protect the Praya Grande, the cove at the upper right.