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Lot Essay
Houqua (1769-1843) became the most powerful - and wealthy - of the Chinese merchants who made up the Co-Hong in Canton. D.S. Howard writes (New York and the China Trade) that Houqua "developed a reputation of almost legendary proportions (by) his retirement in 1834, (when his) wealth was estimated at $26 million". Forbes, Kernan & Wilkins (Chinese Export Silver, p.29) note that "the style of life of the wealthiest Hong merchants, such as...Houqua, involved a degree of luxury...scarcely imagined except in the greatest houses of England and the Continent." Many journals of China traders record the lavish entertaining and generous gifts of Houqua, who was apparently as well-liked as he was respected for his business acumen.
Portraits of Houqua became treasured acquisitions for leading Western visitors to the China coast in the first decades of the 19th century, and in Western collections became almost iconic images of the China trade. Lamqua (b. 1801) was the portrait artist of choice.
John Kearsley Mitchell was an important Philadelphia doctor who made three voyages to China as a ship's surgeon. His account of medical anomalies he encountered there was published in 1821 in The Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences. His son, Silas Weir Mitchell, was also a leading physician in Philadelphia, known for his pioneering work on the nervous system and sometimes called the father of psychiatry.
Portraits of Houqua became treasured acquisitions for leading Western visitors to the China coast in the first decades of the 19th century, and in Western collections became almost iconic images of the China trade. Lamqua (b. 1801) was the portrait artist of choice.
John Kearsley Mitchell was an important Philadelphia doctor who made three voyages to China as a ship's surgeon. His account of medical anomalies he encountered there was published in 1821 in The Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences. His son, Silas Weir Mitchell, was also a leading physician in Philadelphia, known for his pioneering work on the nervous system and sometimes called the father of psychiatry.