Hong Kong Museum of Art

The premise behind this exhibition was to show, through surviving artworks, how Hong Kong looked from roughly the founding of the colony up to World War I. Being completely unfamiliar with modern Hong Kong, the sense of developing history and contrast with modern times that I get looking at old photos and other art of Bath was completely absent. Hence I had little choice but to take the images at face value. The text is dual Chinese and English.

Most are prints, the originals not having survived. A couple of oil paintings from the more recent end of the time range show heavy craquelure. A small number of watercolours from the same time are also included.

There's a lot of stylistic variation within the limits of Western realism and I liked a high number of the images. I gained a sense of just how mountainous the island is and learned that significant areas of developed coastal Hong Kong are reclaimed land. This process of reclamation started well before the 20th Century.… (meer)