Charming and atmospheric watercolour of the Guangzhou area, depciting the Pearl River at sundown, looking towards old Canton, with the Chigang Pagoda and the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees seen in the distance. The German painter Eduard Hildebrandt had studied in Berlin and Paris and was a friend of scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Under Humboldt's influence he took a voyage around the world in 1862-64, making watercolour views of the many places he visited. "Fantasies in red, yellow and opal, sunset, sunrise and moonshine, distances of hundreds of miles like those of the Andes and the Himalaya, narrow streets in the bazaars of Cairo or Suez, panoramas as seen from mast-heads, wide cities like Bombay or Pekin, narrow strips of desert with measure-less expanses of sky all alike display his quality of bravura" (Wikipedia).

Charming and atmospheric watercolour of the Guangzhou area, depciting the Pearl River at sundown, looking towards old Canton, with the Chigang Pagoda and the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees seen in the distance. The German painter Eduard Hildebrandt had studied in Berlin and Paris and was a friend of scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Under Humboldt's influence he took a voyage around the world in 1862-64, making watercolour views of the many places he visited. "Fantasies in red, yellow and opal, sunset, sunrise and moonshine, distances of hundreds of miles like those of the Andes and the Himalaya, narrow streets in the bazaars of Cairo or Suez, panoramas as seen from mast-heads, wide cities like Bombay or Pekin, narrow strips of desert with measure-less expanses of sky all alike display his quality of bravura" (Wikipedia).

A note on the verso explains that the drawing's title was written on the old passepartout mount.