The Bund, Shanghai

From the brush of the 'unrivalled master of Bund views', Chow Kwa's signed panorama of the Bund dates to around 1857, showing the recently completed (October 1856) Wills Bridge on the extreme right, crossing Soochow Creek, and the renovated Customs House, the red Chinese to the left of centre, occupied around 1857, and to the left, just before the French flag flying on the French Bund, the Yangjingbang Bridge, commissioned by the French Consul, Benoit Edan, and built in 1856. There is a greenhouse visible in Dent & Co's yard (in the centre of the Bund as portrayed here); Dent's factory moved next to the Customs in 1859. Chow Kwa's view spans the Bund, painting in fine detail the mile of buildings on the embanked quayside (none of which survive today), from the British Consulate by the creek on the right, to the bridge over the canal, just before the French Concession, at the extreme left. The crowded shipping on the river includes American and British steamers, craft, Chinese junks, tanka boats, sampans and barges.

Of Chow Kwa: 'Little is known of him. His name in pinyin was Su Zhaocheng ... . His studio was in Park Lane, and later in Hankow Road. He appears to have been active circa 1855-1867.' (E. Politzer, 'The Changing Face of the Shanghai Bund Circa 1849-1879', Arts of Asia, vol.35, no.2, March-April 2005, p.70).

There is a larger variant of this panorama in the Sze Yuan Tang Collection of Historic Paintings, for which see P. Conner, op. cit., p.51, no.38.