Before 1803

The Factories of Canton, China

Artist/maker unknown

Beginning in 1784, many Philadelphia merchants engaged with the China trade, and proudly owned paintings of their establishment in Canton (Guangzhou), the only port that admitted foreigners. The international community was restricted to a narrow strip of land along the Pearl River, where “hongs” were rented by the different trading nations, represented by the Danish, Austrian, American, Swedish, British, and Dutch flags that line Respondentia Walk in this painting. These buildings included storerooms, offices, a bank vault, and dwelling space for the foreign work force and their Chinese servants.

This unusually large and detailed image by an unknown Chinese painter (who probably specialized in this kind of souvenir) descended in the family of Anthony Morris Buckley (1777-1845), who went to China in 1799. Although his ship was captured by privateers, Buckley returned safely to Philadelphia in the summer of 1800. It is not clear how he got this image home; perhaps he ordered the painting when he was in Canton, and it was delivered later on another vessel. The patronage of the image seems clear from the central placement of the American flag, immediately above a Chinese junk that bears an eagle on its stern boards. Such vessels ferried goods to the ocean-going ships harbored at Whampoa, further south on the river, closer to the sea.