Chapter 8 - Conclusion

Summary

In 2012 the renowned painter John Wonnacott was commissioned by Jardine Matheson to make a group portrait of the then current senior directors of the company. The family's idea was that it would be a modern-day version of Chinnery's On Dent's Veranda of the early 1840s, discussed in Chapter 6 above (Fig. 6.1). The resulting picture, Taipans on the 48th Floor (Fig. 8.1), was the culmination of a series of portraits of senior figures at Jardine Matheson that formed an exhibition in New York in 2014, and which included individual depictions of Sir Henry Keswick, Simon Keswick, Lord Leach of Fairford and Robert Kwok, the four figures shown in the group portrait. Also included in the exhibition were two landscape paintings of urban Hong Kong that Wonnacott painted from his hotel room while on the island to make studies for the portraits. Aside from the requirement to base his group portrait of the senior directors on Chinnery's composition, Wonnacott was given completely free rein to determine the format and structure of his own work, though he consistently referred to the latter as Chinnery's picture. He had been unaware of Chinnery's painting, which since its production has remained in private hands, until introduced to it at the monographic survey exhibition devoted to the artist held at Asia House, London, from November 2011 to January 2012. Wonnacott's own series of paintings, including ‘Chinnery's picture’, are also now in private ownership.

His response to Chinnery's group portrait was to make a free adaptation of it, rather than a literal substitution of a group of modern company directors for the Victorian traders, and instead of being a straightforward imitation, it takes the form of a dialogue with Chinnery's picture, and is similarly populated with witty in-jokes and private references. So, the tartan carpet alludes to the firm's Scottish ancestry; the framed picture of the parrot behind Robert Kwok's head is a private reference to him (and is also included in the portrait study of the sitter); while the piece of carved red jade on the table to the far right is placed there as part of the feng-shui of the room.