Portrait of Huang Ya Dong by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1776. He was a Chinese page in the household of Jo
Portrait of Huang Ya Dong by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1776. He was a Chinese page in the household of John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745-1799) and that he attended Sevenoaks School. The boy had been brought to England from Guangzhou (Canton) by the Duke’s old schoolfriend John Bradby Blake (1745-1773), who worked for the East India Company. Blake was a keen naturalist, and he had brought the boy to England because of his knowledge of the propagation and use of Chinese plants. Huang became a minor celebrity, advising Mrs Delaney and the Duchess of Portland on Chinese plants, Josiah Wedgewood on porcelain manufacture and the physician Andrew Duncan on acupuncture. The painting by Reynolds is possibly the first naturalistic depiction of a Chinese-British subject in art.Here is a later portrait by Huang Ya Dong by George Dance the Younger:(source, source) -- source link
#art#portrait#joshua reynolds#george dance#chinese british