The Medical Historical Library is pleased to share that 3 recently conserved portraits from our collection of Lam Qua paintings are on display in the new exhibit, “Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850” at the Yale Center for British Art through June 21. Lam Qua was a Western-trained portrait painter in early 19th-century Canton, China. Many of his oil paintings, produced in the 1830s, were commissioned by or gifted to Peter Parker, a Yale-trained physician, diplomat, and medical missionary to China. The three portraits in the exhibition are of woman with a large neck growth (“No. 13, Tan Shi”), a man with an arm tumor (“No. 31, Po Ashing”) and a follow-up painting after the amputation of his arm (“No. 32, Po Ashing”).
Their display marks the first major exhibition of these works in several decades, although the Lam Qua paintings are part of classroom teaching at Yale and studied by researchers. The restored portraits represent the culmination of a multi-year conservation initiative led by conservator Laura O’Brien Miller, Assistant Head of Rare Books and Manuscripts Conservation, Yale University Library in collaboration with Kathy Hebb, Paintings Conservator, Shoreline Paintings Conservation. Other collaborators include Anikó Bezur, Director, and Richard Hark, Senior Conservation Scientist, Heritage Science Research Lab, Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage; Thomas Philips, senior materials assistant and Jason DeBlock, Director of Collections,Yale University Art Gallery; and Melissa Grafe, Head of the Medical Historical Library.
Read more about the conservation effort for the Lam Qua paintings through this Yale Library News article, “After library conservation work, rare Lam Qua paintings are on view in new YCBA exhibit.“