Lam Qua (Canton, 1801 - 1860) "United States Trade Delegation (Hong) in Canton", "Whampoa Bay", "Scene on the Pearl River?" and "Canton Harbour". Set of four oil paintings on canvas. Signed. On the back titled. 33 x 57 cm. each. Lam Qua was a Chinese artist who specialised in Western portraits in Canton province during the Qing dynasty. He was the son of Guan Zuolin, and brother of Tingqua, also painters. He gained recognition among the foreign community and was the first Chinese portraitist to exhibit in the West. In the 1820s he studied and specialised in the portrait style of George Chinnery, a renowned English painter living in China. Between 1836 and 1855, Peter Parker, an American medical missionary, commissioned Lam Qua to paint over one hundred pre-operative portraits of patients with tumours and significant deformities of the most exceptional cases that came to his practice, in order to attract young missionary doctors and raise funds to continue his work. Among many other achievements, Dr. Peter Parker was the first doctor to perform a lithotomy and introduce the use of anaesthesia in China. This collection of portraits, which is a unique combination of art and medicine, is now housed at the Yale University Library. It is also, without doubt, an unprecedented medical historical document.