George Chinnery was born in London on 7 January 1774. He was the son of the writing master and amateur painter William Chinnery, Jr. His grandfather, the calligrapher William Chinnery, Sr, was the author of Writing and Drawing Made Easy, Amusing and Instructive. In his early youth George demonstrated a precocious artistic talent for art. His parents and grandfather encouraged him and upon leaving school, he devoted himself wholly to painting. George entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1792 (but had exhibited his first miniature portrait of his father at the RA exhibition the year before). Pasquin, in his A Liberal Critique of the Exhibition for 1794, wrote: ‘Mr Chinnery has some fine portraits, which highly pleased me; among the budding candidates for fame this rising young artist is the most prominent. His progress has been rapid almost beyond example; he has rather adopted a new style of painting, somewhat after the manner of Cosway.’ By 1795, Chinnery had exhibited some 20 portraits at the RA. His father owned several trading ships and his elder brother, William Chinnery, owned what is now Gilwell Park. George was a close friend of the artist, William Armfield Hobday. In 1797 Chinnery was invited to Ireland, to paint the portraits of Sir Broderick Chinnery and his family. His progress in Dublin was rapid and in 1800, he assisted in organising the exhibition in Allen’s Rooms, Dame Street, of the newly-formed Society of Artists of Ireland, of which he became secretary. To that exhibition, he sent his Satan’s Arrival on the Confines of Light, eight portraits in oils and three in crayons. The following year saw eleven portraits and landscapes from his brush at the exhibition in Parliament House. In 1799 he married his landlord’s daughter, Marianne Vigne. Chinnery’s time in Dublin represents something of a high point in both his professional and personal fortunes. However,  he soon ran into debt and as a solution to his problems, in June 1802 he sailed for India, via England, having obtained permission from the Honourable East India Company at Leadenhall Street in the City of London to work there as a painter. He first joined his civil servant brother in Madras. Five years later, he removed to Calcutta, where he had a commission to paint Sir Henry Russell, Chief Justice of Bengal. He then spent 20 years in Calcutta, with occasional visits to the courts of native princes. During that period, he painted portraits of the Earl of Moira, the Earl of Minto, Sir Francis MacNaughton and Sir George Nugent, in addition to many portraits of native princes and soldiers, officials and merchants. Besides these, he produced a quantity of watercolours and sketches of Indian life and scenery. Chinnery was also an expert draughtsman and produced many pen and ink sketches annotated with the Gurney shorthand system as an aide-mémoire for the production of finished works.  He had two illegitimate sons with an Indian woman in 1812-13, but between 1817 and 1822 he was joined in Calcutta by his daughter, then his wife, and finally their son.  He seems to have provided artistic instruction to a number of amateurs, and his letters to Mrs Maria Browne offer an insight into his ideas about the theory and practice of painting (British Library). Increasingly, Chinnery fell into debt and in 1825, he abandoned India and his wife and set sail for China. There, he worked with a Chinese copyist named Lam Qua, who produced copies of Chinnery’s portraits for sitters to send home to their families in England. (Lam Qua was clearly a man of some initiative, for he submitted his own Head of an Old Man to the RA exhibition in 1833). Chinnery travelled the area between the Portuguese enclave of Macau and Canton, recording the life of common people and landscape of the Pearl River Delta. He is also known to have visited Hong Kong after that colony was established by the British. He died at Macau on 30 May 1852. Other than for their artistic value, Chinnery’s paintings are a valuable source of knowledge for historians, as he was the only Western painter working in South China between the early and mid-19th century. However, difficulties of attribution have arisen, because Chinnery seldom signed his paintings. His Portrait of Catherine Sherson, born Taylor (c,1802) may be found in the collection of the V&A in London.  The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation owns a collection of Chinnery’s works. They, jointly with the Hong Kong Museum of History and Hong Kong Museum of Art held an exhibition of his work in 2005.