Peking Opera Figures, 19th C

Peking Opera Figures

"Album of 100 Portraits of Personages from Chinese Opera"

Period: Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
Date: late 19th–early 20th century
Culture: China
Medium: Album of fifty leaves; ink, color, and gold on silk
Artist: Unidentified

"In the opera boom of the late nineteenth century, albums were turned to a new purpose: documenting the variety and vibrancy of stage culture in all its multicolored splendor. This album records in detail the makeup and costume of one hundred characters drawn from nine plays. Each character is identified with an accompanying inscription, and the plays are named at the top right of nine of the leaves in slightly larger script."

• 'One Hundred Portraits of Peking Opera Characters' is available online via the Metropolitan Museum website (click on 'Additional Images' below [L] of the picture on that page. The down arrow - bottom [R] - of each image allows for downloading)
• This opera figure series is one of the items on view at *The Art of the Chinese Album* exhibition, running at the museum between September 2014 and March 2015.

Chinese Empire illustrated, 19th C

Pavilion of the Star of Hope, Tong Chow (?).

Thomas Allom, from China vol. 2, by George Newenham Wright, London, circa 1843.

George Newenham Wright (c. 1794–1877) was an Irish writer and Anglican clergyman. He was born in Dublin; his father, John Thomas Wright was a Doctor. He graduated B.A. from Trinity College in 1814 and M.A. in 1817. He held several curacies in Ireland before moving to St Mary Woolnoth, London.

By 1851, he was a teacher of classics, resident in Windsor with his wife. In 1861 he noted having a number of pupils boarding with him at Frome. By 1863 he was master of Tewkesbury Grammar School

From the 1820s to the 1840s some minor topographical works and schoolbooks on subjects ranging from the Greek language to biography and philosophy by Wright were published. 

List of works

·         Historical Guide to Ancient and Modern Dublin (Petrie, George, illustrator).

·         AGuide to the Lakes of Killarney

·         AGuide to the County of Wicklow

·         Ireland Illustrated

·         Scenes in North Wales. London: T. T. & J. Tegg; reissued: ISBN 978-0-217-54512-9

·         China (Allom, Thomas, illustrator) London: Fisher, Son & Co.

·         The Chinese Empire illustrated. London : London Printing & Publishing Co., [1858, 59.]

Boudoir and bed-chamber of a lady of rank.

An itinerant doctor at Tien-Sing (Tianjin).

Showroom of a lantern merchant at Beijing.