Cattle Resting in a Mountainous Landscape - George Chinnery - c 1812 - Vintage Orientalist Painting of India

"Cattle Resting in a Mountainous Landscape in c 1812 is a Vintage Orientalist Painting of India by George Chinnery" Chinnery left London for India to seek portrait commissions. After landing in Madras, he moved on to Calcutta and then to Dacca in southeast Bengal (now Dhaka, Bangladesh), where the British East India Company had established a station. Arriving in 1808, Chinnery stayed with his friend Sir Charles D’Oyly, the company’s representative. When not painting portraits, the artist sketched the local scenery and gave watercolor lessons to his host, who became the first owner of the present drawing. Chinnery must have traveled inland to find this mountain subject. Cattle rest before peaks defined by golden washes, and the middle ground is punctuated by a glowing point of fire and drifting smoke.

George Chinnery was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China. Chinnery returned to London in 1801 without his wife and two infant children. In 1802 he sailed to Madras (Chennai) on the ship Gilwell. He established himself as a painter there and then in Calcutta (Kolkata), where he became the leading artist of the British community in India. Other than artistic value, his paintings are historically valuable as he was the only western painter resident in South China between the early and mid 19th century. He vividly depicted the life of ordinary people and the landscape of the Pearl River Delta at that period.