For a smaller version of the same subject by Alexander see the watercolour in the Collection of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (G.H.R. Tillotson, Fan Kwae Pictures etc., London 1987, illustrated in colour p. 111, no. 125).

Alexander was an official artist with Lord Macartney's Embassy to China in 1791. The Embassy landed at Tonkin and proceeded to Canton and Peking. Upon his return to England, Alexander's drawings were used to illustrate Staunton's Account of the Embassy (1797), and Barrow's Travels in China (1804), and Voyage to Cochin-China. A large group of his drawings is in the Maidstone Museum, the town of his birth