“May you live in interesting times”, often referred to as the Chinese curse, is the purported translation of an ancient Chinese proverb. George Chinnery certainly did so, as did Dr. Thomas Boswell Watson. Both lived in Macau, at a time when that Portuguese colony was at its historic meridian, and both witnessed, experienced and even recorded the embryonic beginnings of Hong Kong.
Wrote Dr. Watson from Macau, in October 1850, to a relative back in Scotland. ‘The climate begins to tell on me rather severely, I feel, and if I could manage to get back say for a couple of years it would be a very great matter . . . to leave a stranger in charge of the position would never do . . . the folks in this quarter are, I would not say, exactly difficult to please but still are in many aspects a strange lot and it is not easy pleasing them all.’
Some of his patients were straining Dr. Watson’s patience. In November 1856 he was driven to reprimand a certain B.J. Fernandes who was objecting to his bill: “I was much surprised to receive your letter with reference to the bill which had been included for Medicines and Medical attendance and need scarcely say that I expected you would have written in an entirely different strain. It is surely unnecessary for me to recall to your remembrance the long attendance I have had upon various members of your family from time to time during my residence in Macau, for attendance on one of whom at least you could not very well say you were not responsible and yet forsooth although I have charged you only the paltry sum of $50 for attendance during a period of many years you write me a letter which is a disgrace to anyone who has the slightest spark of gratitude.”
While his medical practice may not have lived up to the high expectations that had brought him out East – in 1847 it yielded $3104, in 1848 just $2780 and in 1849 $3312 – Dr. Watson sought solace with brush and pen, following in the footsteps of his mentor, the celebrated but notoriously irascible artist George Chinnery. How the two would have got on is a question open to speculation, for unlike Chinnery, who had arrived in Macau to escape his creditors and his wife, Watson was by all accounts a mild-mannered and devoted family man, aroused to anger only when seeking just settlement for his attendance upon recalcitrant clients.
When Chinnery was in need of Watson’s professional services as a doctor of medicine, it is likely he paid for these with his own drawings and watercolours, for Chinnery was habitually reluctant to settle his bills in cash. This arrangement contributed to Watson’s acquisition of a substantial collection of Chinneries which he clearly valued, and which influenced his own style. While their coexistence in Macau spanned the period from Watson’s arrival in 1845 to Chinnery’s death in 1852, scant record survives as to how closely their friendship was entwined, though Watson admitted to having received ‘many valuable hints’ from Chinnery.
Chinnery was treated by Watson during his last illness, to which he succumbed still in debt to the doctor, who recorded in his visiting book his friend’s death ‘of apoplexy on the 30th May 1852’. Watson performed the autopsy before helping to sort through Chinnery’s books, papers and trunks. No will was found, and the effects and contents of the studio were sold by auction on 28th July. Watson was probably the major purchaser and set about rounding up stray works sent out for approval, including a sketchbook on loan to George Morrison in Hong Kong.
Judging by the great body of his later work, Watson was clearly Chinnery’s acolyte, pursuing the subject matter, the style and the form of a man he clearly admired and sought to emulate. Indeed Watson’s Macau sketches, in particular, can sometimes be mistaken, at first glance, for Chinnery’s. Yet if we look at the work that preceded Watson’s arrival in Macau we see why his latent talents would so readily conform to the Chinnery manner, for his sketches of Scottish moors, lochs and castles bear the same delicate imprint as any by Chinnery, while his architectural structures and perspectives are fully up to Chinnery’s standards. There is, however, a more studied manner in Watson’s drawings and paintings. His outlines do not flow as readily as Chinnery’s and the figures portrayed seem less relaxed and more contrived.
Both were witnesses to history in the making. Chinnery was in Macau, fearing for his life, when British traders were banished in 1839 from their factories near Shameen Island in the Pearl River and mounting hostilities led to the First Opium War. Watson was residing in Hong Kong whence he wrote to his friend Dr. Bell, on 29th December 1856, concerning incidents that would culminate in the Second Opium War: ‘Probably, as ere this reaches you, you will have heard of the burning of the Factories at Canton which occurred on the 14th. Only one house (Wardly & Co) beside the Chinese left standing! Mr. Lane, nephew of Sir D. Bowring, was killed by the falling of a wall. The little ‘Thistle’ was fired into in coming down the river on the 23rd and three Chinamen were killed and five wounded, two I believe have since died. Mr. Couper, father of the shipbuilder at Whampoa, was kidnapped by Chinese and has not since been heard of . . . all is quiet with us but since the burning of the Factoeries we are in some apprehension of something of the same kind happening here’.
During the two and a half years that he lived in Hong Kong, marking the culmination of his Far Eastern experience, Dr. Watson established the most successful practice in a highly competitive community, also acquiring two dispensaries, one of which would form the kernel of what has since become A.S. Watson & Company Ltd., among the world’s leading and fastest-growing retail groups, operating more than 7,500 stores worldwide.
> Peter Moss is the author of “Chinnery in China”. The letter fragment mentioned in this article was first published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Drawings by Thomas Boswell Watson” at Martin Gregory Gallery in London in 1985.
The exhibition “Impressões de Macau, China: An Unpublished Album by Thomas Boswell Watson (1815-1860)”, being held as a part of The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival presents a collection of about 60 works recently acquired by local private collectors. The estate includes a self-portrait of the author, disciple, friend and physician of the painter George Chinnery. The show is a unique opportunity to revisit the work of Thomas Boswell Watson and to wander through 19th century Macau, in a lively dialogue between the artist’s work and his era.
Impressões de Macau, China
An Unpublished Album by Thomas Boswell Watson
(1815-1860)
Clube Militar
25 / 3 / 2014 | 6pm
