Image: Jane Staunton with her son, by John Hoppner

Description: John Hoppner, Portrait of Lady Jane Staunton with her son George Thomas Staunton and a Chinese boy. The painting shows George Thomas Staunton (1781-1859), accompanied by a Chinese boy, returning to his mother Jane after taking part in the first British embassy to China led by Lord Macartney. 1 The scene depicted in the painting took place in the winter of 1794, though the painting was probably made some time after that. George Leonard Staunton (1737-1801), usually known as Sir George Staunton (a name and title his son confusingly inherited) husband to Jane and father to George Thomas, is absent from the picture probably because he had suffered from a stroke earlier that winter. 2 However, he presumably commissioned the painting and he was certainly the driving force behind it. George Leonard was born to a downwardly mobile Catholic family in Galway, studied medicine in France, then went out to the West Indies where he became a plantation owner in Grenada. During his time there he married Jane, daughter of Benjamin Collins of Salisbury, publisher and banker. He also became friends with Sir George Macartney (later Lord Macartney) the island’s governor and when Grenada was taken by the French, Staunton accompanied Macartney to his next posting as governor of Madras during the 2 nd Anglo- Mysore War, and after this on the embassy to China. George Leonard Staunton was an enthusiast for Enlightenment ideas and the sciences and raised his son as an educational project, including deciding that at the age of eleven he should go on the embassy to China and learn Chinese. 3 Jane Staunton was terrified to let her only child make such a dangerous journey, so perhaps the painting was a gift to her showing that her son had indeed come back safely. 4 She is shown dressed in voluminous fine white muslin, a hugely expensive fabric made only in India and presumably brought back from Madras by her husband as a gift. She holds a letter, perhaps intended as one that her husband or son has written to her. George Thomas steps forward to grasp his mother’s hand. He had studied Chinese from one of the Chinese priests accompanying them on the ship out to China and learned enough to be able to speak when he arrived in China. 5 Although George Leonard was paralysed after his return, his mind was unaffected and he was able to write his famous account of the embassy which was published in a magnificent edition in 1797. 6 In this book he emphasized that his son could actually speak Chinese and had even spoken directly to the Qianlong emperor. He gave copies to influential aristocrats and urged them to get his son a valuable position working for the East India Company in China and thus to make the family fortune. 7 This is probably why the painting shows a Chinese boy standing behind George Thomas, to remind the original viewers, that George Thomas was continuing to learn Chinese. This is probably Ahiue, a Chinese boy who George Leonard contracted to return to England with the family and speak Mandarin Chinese to George Thomas. He is referred to as a ‘servant’, but his role in the family was closer to that of a child living with the family as a language exchange. English ideas of social status were stricter than those in China and Jane Staunton did not like this arrangement, but Ahiue seems to have had a good time. When George Thomas went to Winterslow, a village outside Salisbury, to stay with his cousins the Brodies, he wrote to his parents that Ahiue liked being there very much had driven into Salisbury to see the city with Thomas. This was probably Thomas Denman, later Lord Chief Justice, a cousin who also spent summers with the Brodies. Later George Thomas reported that Ahiue had made a kite with William, the oldest of the Brodie brothers. 8 Denman and William Brodie were a bit older than George Thomas and the younger Brodie brothers who were his closest friends, so presumably Ahiue was too. In his hands Ahiue holds a box with characters in Chinese calligraphy saying ‘Sketched on a winter’s day in Salisbury’ (冬日偶書於仙來翠力). This is a puzzle as Ahiue was illiterate and George Thomas’ Chinese handwriting was never elegant like this, so the characters here must have been written by someone else, possibly Assing, an educated Cantonese who also came back with the family but returned to China shortly afterwards. Despite considerable opposition from the directors, who usually kept these positions for their own sons, George Thomas Staunton did get a junior position as a ‘writer’ in the East India Company’s Canton factory and returned to China. 9 There he won fame as the translator of the Chinese legal code into English under the title Ta Tsing Leu Lee being the Fundamental Laws and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes of the Penal Code of China (1810). 10 This was the first book to be translated directly from Chinese into English. He also made a personal fortune mainly by taking advantage of the fact that interest rates were higher in China than in England. His mother bought silver for him in London, insured it, and shipped it out to China, where he lent it out, probably through the Chinese merchant, Pan Youdu, who was his patro. 11 After his return from China George Thomas Staunton bought an estate near Portsmouth, and became a member of parliament. 12 He kept this painting hanging in the dining room of the London house he inherited from his father. 1 For the Macartney Embassy Alain Peyrefitte, The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China in 1792-4 (trans Jon Rothschild) (London: Harvill, 1993); James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995); Henrietta Harrison, The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021). 2 George Thomas Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton, Bart. (London: L. Booth, 1856), 200. 3 George Thomas Staunton, Memoir of the Life and Family of the Late Sir George Leonard Staunton Bart. (Havant Press, 1823). 4 G.T. Staunton, Memoir of the Life and Family, 341. 5 Duke University, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, George Thomas Staunton Papers, Diary 13 Jan. 1793; George. L. Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (London: W. Bulmer, 1797), 1:489. 6 Staunton, Authentic Account. 7 Duke University Library, George Thomas Staunton Papers, letters from Duke of Portland, Lord Mornington, Duke of Clarence, Lord Mountmorres etc July-Aug 1797; Staunton, Memoir of the Life and Family, 373. 8 Duke University Library, George Thomas Staunton Papers, G.T. Staunton to G.L. Staunton 5 Aug. 1796, 7 Oct. 1796, G.T. Staunton to Jane Staunton, 5 Oct. 1801. 9 Baring Archive, London, Northbrook Papers C22.11 George Leonard Staunton to Francis Baring 16 Mar. 1796. 10 G. T. Staunton (trans.) Ta Tsing Leu Lee being the Fundamental Laws and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes of the Penal Code of China (London: T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1810). See also Li Chen, Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice and Transcultural Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 11 Duke University Library, George Thomas Staunton Papers, G.T. Staunton to G.L. Staunton 18 Aug. 1800, 26 Feb. 1801, G.T. Staunton to Jane Staunton 30 Dec. 1805, 8 Feb. 1806, 26 Feb. 1806; Coutts Bank Archive. London, Ledgers S 1805-1817. See also H.V. Bowen, “Privilege and Profit: Commanders of East Indiamen as Private Traders, Entrepreneurs and Smugglers, 1760-1813” International Journal of Maritime History 19.2 (2007): 43-88; Harrison, Perils of Interpreting, 168-74. 12 Stephen Farrell, “Staunton, Sir George Thomas, 2nd bt. (1781-1859), of Leigh Park, Hants and 17 Devonshire Street, Portland Place, Mdx” in D.R. Fisher ed. The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) (History of Parliament Online); Steve Jones, “Timeline of Leigh Park History” Borough of Havant History Booklet, 97. 13 G.T. Staunton, Notices of the Leigh Park Estate near Havant 1836 (London: Edmund Lloyd 1836), 44. oil on canvas 148.5 x 165.5 cm circa 1792
Title: Jane Staunton with her son, by John Hoppner
Credit: Sotheby's
Author: John Hoppner
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No