picturing hong kong - HKU Libraries

cap, and rise to find that we have been photographed by a Chinaman.
A-hung vanishes into the darkroom, and from a small window pronounces
the plate "number one."
We will now have a look at our friends the limners. There is an
old man in this establishment, or, rather, a man who looks twenty years
older than he ought—he of sallow, deep-lined visage in the corner. He
is a miniature painter on ivory, whose work is held in high estimation
for its delicacy, careful drawing, and beauty of colouring. This individual
is never able to work more than from two to three hours a day, the
rest of his time being occupied with the opium pipe and siestas.
Opium has been the curse of his life. As his occupation is a profitable
one in his skillful hands, he can always command time and money for
the excessive indulgence of the vice.
There is a degree of refinement and beauty about his miniatures
which is rare and surprising when one considers his most inartistic
surroundings. His work is done chiefly from photographs. If the subject
has to be enlarged he places over the photograph a piece of glass
marked with small squares. Corresponding squares of larger size are
then pencilled on the ivory and filled in from the photograph. This
device is adopted by the painters in oil, but with much less success, as
their productions are always out of drawing, and are distressing caricatures
of humanity. They are done in this way:—A master hand paints
in the head, an inferior the hands, and an apprentice the costume and
jewellery, the latter being generally profuse, as it costs nothing.
It would be difficult to describe wherein these painters fail in
rendering the human face. I shall be best understood by saying that,
like the figures in a wax-work exhibition, in their delineation they
come so near the object intended to be represented, and yet want the
divine modelling and soul of the original so utterly as to render the
picture perfectly hideous.
The cost of a painting measuring about eighteen inches by one
foot is about thirty shillings. They are the delight of the foreign sailors
frequenting the harbour, who invest their savings in these mementos of
dear or dead friends. There is the traveller now going off on his morning
rounds to visit the ships in the harbour, with his portable collection
of samples. We will descend with him to the street. A-hung is
busy with new customers, who are engrossing his attention. Mark the
polite parting salutation of this photographer of the Flowery Land as
we bid him adieu.
J.T.
Reprinted from The British Journal of Photography 20, no. 656 (29
November 1872), p. 569; and no. 658 (13 December 1872), p. 591.
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