Higher seminar: George Chinnery (1774 -1852) and the Robert Morrison (1782-1834) circle
Seminar
Date: Wednesday 17 December 2025
Time: 14.00 – 16.00
Location: Conference room, F6, Södra husen.
Speaker: Dr Uganda Sze Pui KWAN, director of Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation programme and associate professor at the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
"George Chinnery (1774 -1852) and the Robert Morrison (1782-1834) circle in South China Coast"
George Chinnery (1774-1852) was hailed as the pioneering and most celebrated Oriental artist on the South China Coast in the 19th century. He forged a distinguished career through his watercolor landscapes, pencil sketches and oil portraits of colonists and East India Company traders on the fringes of the British Empire. His legacy includes a rich collection of drawings that capture the picturesque scenes of Macau, the thriving city of Hong Kong, and the bustling Canton factories at the turn of the 19th century. No other portraitist of his time was as prolific or as vibrant a personality. His artistic journey was, in part, an escape from the stifling constraints of the British artistic establishment, particularly in London.
In The Canton Chinese (1849), American travel writer Osman Tiffany offered a scathing critique of the British inhabitants of Hong Kong. Victoria, Hong Kong, was filled with outcasts and scoundrels who could not survive in London—unsavory characters who lorded over the local population, often far more respectable than they could ever aspire to be.
Despite Chinnery’s undeniable talent, his work has long been marginalised in art history, a victim of the imperialist mindset that Osman’s account exemplifies and that continues to shape academic discourse—favoring the center over the periphery, text over image, city over village, and source over host.
This paper aims to address the polemical issues surrounding Chinnery work by examining firsthand archival records related to Rev. Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant translator of the Bible into Chinese. Chinnery proudly portrayed Morrison and his coterie of interpreters. By employing a deconstructionist approach to translation and interpreting studies, this paper argues that the power and politics of analysing Chinnery’s work lie in bridging historical gaps within interpreting studies and envisioning the unseen.
Dr Uganda Sze Pui KWAN is director of Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation programme and associate professor at the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She received her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of London. She was awarded a Monbukagakusho scholarship to study at the University of Tokyo and was subsequently appointed as Project Associate Professor.
Last updated: November 12, 2025
Source: Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies