THE HONAN CANAL NEAR CANTON (GUANGZHOU), PRC

Painter of Sydney street scenes and documented interior views of exhibition spaces at the Art Gallery of New South Wales during the 1880’s; theatre and film designer and art teacher at the Sydney Technical College and at Sale, Victoria.

Alfred Tischbauer was born in Paris, France, in 1853, to Mathias Alexandre Tischbauer (a Moravian emigré) and Marie Julie née Favaud. He had trained as a scene painter and designer and worked at the Paris Opera before becoming involved in the Paris Communes of 1871, resulting in him being transported to New Caledonia. From there he came to Sydney, where he was active as a painter and an art teacher in the 1880s painting street scenes and landscapes. He later moved to Melbourne. Tischbauer taught at the Sydney Technical College and at Sale, Victoria. Around 1900 he went to the USA and became successful as a scenic artist in New York.

Guangzhou, aso known as Canton and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about 120 km (75 miles) north-northwest of Hong Kong and 145 km (90 miles) north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the maritime Silk Road; it continues to serve as a major port and transportation hub as well as being one of China’s three largest cities.
For a long time, the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders, Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, but continued to serve as a major transshipment port. Due to a high urban population and large volumes of port traffic, Guangzhou is classified as a Large-Port Megacity, the largest type of port-city in the world. Guangzhou is at the heart of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, the most-populous built-up metropolitan area in the world, which extends into the neighboring cities of Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Shenzhen and part of Jiangmen, Huizhou, Zhuhai and Macau, forming the largest urban agglomeration on Earth with approximately 65,594,622 residents and part of the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone. Administratively, the city holds subprovincial status and is one of China’s nine National Central Cities.