Seven Chinese drawings: 'Sort of Plantin in Mr Robuck's garden E[nglish]. Factory - Canton'; 'Paac Sha Sum(?)'; '92 near Ji..ira Dungeon(?)'; 'N.54 Half way Pagoda - near Canton River'; 'near Watering Place 2nd Bar'; 'Watering Place 2nd Bar China'; and [Fortifications on the Canton River]

Thomas and William Daniell visited China twice: on their way to India in 1785, and on their return to England from India in 1793. The first leg of their passage to Calcutta in 1785 was made on the Indiaman Atlas which left them at Whampoa in August that year. Here they were famously charmed by the 'sweet romantic scenery' of the Canton river. They remained in China, visiting Macao and Canton, before taking a coasting vessel to Calcutta in the spring of 1786. They returned to China, after their famous tour of India, in 1793, seeking a safe passage home to England during the war with France and were recorded in Canton from September 1793 until March the following year, joining the convoy of Lord Macartney, and returning to England with his embassy in 1794. The Daniells both worked up Chinese subjects from their bundles of Chinese drawings in the years following their return to England. Their Chinese pictures, preceded only by John Webber's few Chinese coastal views taken on Cook's third voyage (1779-80), form the earliest pictorial record of China by professional western artists. Their Picturesque Voyage to India by Way of China published in 1810 included twenty-four Chinese plates and there are Chinese drawings by the Daniells in the British Library (India Office Library). A collection of their Chinese drawings ('water-colour and sepia views of the Second Bar Pagoda at Canton and surrounding district', T. Sutton, The Daniells, Artists and Travellers, London, 1954, p.85) was with Gooden & Fox in 1952.