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Lot Essay
Nathaniel Kinsman (1798-1847) was an American shipping merchant and China trader from Salem who went into partnership with the firm of Wetmore and Company, a New York-based merchant house, and went out to China with his family in June 1843 to set up a new house for the firm in Canton. He settled the family in Macao (where westerners could live year round), his Quaker wife Rebecca Chase serving as Secretary and official business hostess for the company. The family resided in Macao for three and a half years, Nathaniel dying shortly before their planned departure for Salem on 30 April 1847 (information from the Nathaniel Kinsman papers in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts).
The Kinsman house lay at the southern end of the Praya Grande and overlooked the outer harbour, the view through the columns looking towards the Praya Grande beach, the convent and fort of Nossa Senhora da Guia on the top of Guia Hill, and the convent of Sao Francisco with the Portuguese flag flying from the fort at the point of the bay. Rebecca described their house in her journals: 'It is situated on the "Praya Grande", with a pretty garden in front, a yard at the sides and in the rear, with fine trees, and the whole surrounded by a high wall - over which creep in many places luxuriant vines. To give you some idea of its size, the house is 120 feet front, with a veranda 18 feet wide, supported by massive columns, running the whole length - it extends back 70 feet, exclusive of the veranda. The parlour is 36 feet wide and high.' (quoted in J.M. Downes, op.cit., p.51)
'The Macao that the Kinsmans inhabited in the 1840s was not China. That is, the place that they knew as China was a global city that had been colonized 300 years earlier ... by the Portuguese. Its population was primarily Chinese, but included Dutch, Spanish, French, British, Armenian, and Parsee merchants, lascar sailors, and a host of other peoples who wafted through. It brought together a remarkable range of humanity. Similarly, the architecture of this most cosmopolitan of places was a creole pastiche, blending European and Asian symbols, styles, and textures. ... Clearly the happiest times Rebecca spent during her time in Macao are those when the entire family was gathered on the verandah, clad in white: Nathaniel playing with the children, talking among family or visitors, engaging in board games, reading or scanning the horizon for familiar vessels (especially those from Salem) with the looking glass ... over the Praya Grande and to the harbor. The footprint of the spacious six columned house far exceeded their Salem townhouse: "Nathaniel was pacing the parlor last evening, and he remarked that the whole floor of our Summer Street house might easily be put in that room, parlours, entries, closet and all." ' (K.S. Alexander, 'Rebecca Kinsman and the Architecture of Macao, 1843-1847' World History Connected, vol 11, No.1, Forum: Architecture and World History source online at https://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/11.1/forum_alexander.html)
For another similar view of the Kinsman verandah, see K. Il Choi, The China Trade: Romance and Reality (De Cordova Museum exhibition catalogue), Lincoln, 1979, p.44.
The Kinsman house lay at the southern end of the Praya Grande and overlooked the outer harbour, the view through the columns looking towards the Praya Grande beach, the convent and fort of Nossa Senhora da Guia on the top of Guia Hill, and the convent of Sao Francisco with the Portuguese flag flying from the fort at the point of the bay. Rebecca described their house in her journals: 'It is situated on the "Praya Grande", with a pretty garden in front, a yard at the sides and in the rear, with fine trees, and the whole surrounded by a high wall - over which creep in many places luxuriant vines. To give you some idea of its size, the house is 120 feet front, with a veranda 18 feet wide, supported by massive columns, running the whole length - it extends back 70 feet, exclusive of the veranda. The parlour is 36 feet wide and high.' (quoted in J.M. Downes, op.cit., p.51)
'The Macao that the Kinsmans inhabited in the 1840s was not China. That is, the place that they knew as China was a global city that had been colonized 300 years earlier ... by the Portuguese. Its population was primarily Chinese, but included Dutch, Spanish, French, British, Armenian, and Parsee merchants, lascar sailors, and a host of other peoples who wafted through. It brought together a remarkable range of humanity. Similarly, the architecture of this most cosmopolitan of places was a creole pastiche, blending European and Asian symbols, styles, and textures. ... Clearly the happiest times Rebecca spent during her time in Macao are those when the entire family was gathered on the verandah, clad in white: Nathaniel playing with the children, talking among family or visitors, engaging in board games, reading or scanning the horizon for familiar vessels (especially those from Salem) with the looking glass ... over the Praya Grande and to the harbor. The footprint of the spacious six columned house far exceeded their Salem townhouse: "Nathaniel was pacing the parlor last evening, and he remarked that the whole floor of our Summer Street house might easily be put in that room, parlours, entries, closet and all." ' (K.S. Alexander, 'Rebecca Kinsman and the Architecture of Macao, 1843-1847' World History Connected, vol 11, No.1, Forum: Architecture and World History source online at https://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/11.1/forum_alexander.html)
For another similar view of the Kinsman verandah, see K. Il Choi, The China Trade: Romance and Reality (De Cordova Museum exhibition catalogue), Lincoln, 1979, p.44.