A pair of Chinese gouache and watercolour paintings on paper (and framed in bamboo), c.1856. Pearl River village scenes

A pair of Chinese gouache and watercolour paintings on paper (and framed in bamboo), c.1856. Pearl River village scenes – fishermen families and their boats; flowering branches being sorted, with a figure smoking a pipe seated beside a staircase in the foreground. The pair come from an album of 49 leaves painted in 1856 1856. The album, sent as a gift to family in Dortmund, came with a German inscription which stated it was from Loo Ling Hong, Shanghai, March 1861 (Loo Ling was the Hong name for Dircks & Co., Commission Merchants). Dircks was originally a Swatow (Shantou) based firm from the 1860s founded by H. A. Dircks and Louis Ortmann.