Art critic Laura Gascoigne portrays the connections between British colonial and cultural opportunism, through George Chinnery’s 1840s Self-Portrait, of the Artist in Macau.
George Chinnery (1774-1852) was no oil painting. Escaping piling debts and parental duties, he pursued lucrative portrait markets in India and on the China coast. The Bengali and Macanese landscapes tucked within his final self-portrait hint at his remarkably transnational tale. But beneath Chinnery’s mischievous surface lie the less picturesque realities - of opium, orientalism, and overt exploitation of local populations. As British colonialism offered opportunities to those couldn't make it at home, so too did it often depend on such adventurers and rejects for its very survival.
PRESENTER: Laura Gascoigne, art critic and commentator, and member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
ART: Self-Portrait of the Artist in Macau, George Chinnery (c. 1844).
IMAGE: ‘George Chinnery’.
SOUNDS: Albert Glasser.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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