Series
Macau's face has been recorded, generation after generation, by cultural figures wielding brush and pen. From the Qing monk-painter Wu Li and the English painter George Chinnery, to the journalist-writer Lei Pang Chu, to the poets Luís de Camões and Camilo Pessanha who wrote Macau into Portuguese literature — this series gathers those who left the small city a coordinate through their art.
Macau was early a subject for painters of both East and West. Wu Li, one of the Qing "Six Masters," entered St. Paul's College in Macau and was later ordained a Jesuit priest; the nineteenth-century English painter lived for years in Macau, famed for his portraits and Pearl River scenes, influencing the local painter Lam Qua.
Wu Li
A master of early-Qing landscape painting — one of the "Six Masters" — who was also one of China's first Catholic poets and Jesuit priests. In 1681 he came to St Paul's College in Macau to study theology and Latin, and in 1688 was ordained at Nanjing as Simon-Xavier a Cunha, among the earliest Chinese Jesuit priests. His Macau years mark a distinctive chapter in the history of Chinese–Western cultural exchange.
George Chinnery
An English painter, born in London in 1774, who spent years in Madras and Calcutta before settling in Macau in 1825, where he lived until his death in 1852. He was the only Western painter resident in South China through the early-to-mid 19th century, recording Macau's streets, temples and the ordinary people of the Pearl River Delta in oils, watercolours and drawings. He is buried in Macau's Old Protestant Cemetery.
On the side of words, Lei Pang Chu long served as editor-in-chief of the Macao Daily News, chronicling the city through essays and cultural commentary; and earlier still, the Portuguese poets Luís de Camões and Camilo Pessanha wrote Macau and the East into the tradition of Portuguese-language literature.
This series places painters, journalists, and poets side by side, showing how "cultural figures" each used their own medium to leave Macau a coordinate that later generations can still recognise.
Luís de Camões
Portugal's national poet and author of the epic Os Lusíadas (rendered in Macau as 葡國魂), regarded as a founding figure of Portuguese-language literature. Camões Garden in Macau is named after him; the well-loved story that he composed part of the epic in a grotto there is a legend, not documented fact.
Camilo Pessanha
A Portuguese symbolist poet, born in Coimbra in 1867, who came to Macau in 1894 to teach, headed the property registry from 1900, and died in Macau in 1926. His collection Clepsidra is a landmark of Portuguese symbolism. Rua de Camilo Pessanha — formerly 爐石塘街 — was named after him in 1926.
