O Rio de Janeiro de Sunqua: Traço britânico, pintura cantonesa

This article analyzes Panorama do Rio de Janeiro (c. 1830), which depicts the Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, by the Cantonese artist Sunqua, part of the Casa Geyer/Museu Imperial art collection. In order to understand such work, we turn to Panorama da Baía de Guanabara (1826-29), part of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo collection. It was made by the British artist Emeric Essex Vidal, who visited the city in the first half of the 19th century and served as the basis for the copy made by Sunqua, a painter belonging to the so-called “Cantonese export painting system,” who produced artistic objects for European audiences in the 18th and 19th centuries in the city of Canton, now Guangzhou, in China.