The harbour, Macao; and San Lorenzo, Macau

Chinnery had arrived in Macao from India in September 1825. With excursions to Canton in the early years after his arrival and one six-month visit to Hong Kong in 1846, Macao became Chinnery's home (he lived just behind the Sao Lourenço Church, towards the end of the peninsula, at 8 rua de Ignacia Baptista) until his death, aged 78, in 1852. Living in a very small community of non-Chinese on the China Coast, he only survived through the generous patronage of the businessmen William Jardine and James Matheson, and the support of a handful of traders, tea tasters, doctors, missionaries and their families. For a rare intact Macao sketchbook (1836-37 and including over 200 sketches), from the collection of John Russell Reeves (1804-1877), East India Company Assistant Inspector of Teas at Canton, see Christie's, 13 July 2006, lot 100 (£332,800.)
'As James Orange wrote, "Chinnery's heart was in sketching from nature", and in doing so almost every morning in Macau, he has left an unique record of the city's buildings, scenery, groups of Chinese people, boats and animals.' Geoffrey Bonsall, George Chinnery's Views of Macau, in Arts of Asia, Jan.-Feb. 1986, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp.89-92).