Looking East From Glenealy

Great picture. You can see the Bishop's House with its turret, Government House and St John's Cathedral. I wonder about the prominent French flag

Possibly the French Consulate? I think Government House is the more distant of the two big houses in the middle. I've seen the closer one in old photos but never worked out exactly what it is. It was situated just to the east and downhill a little from what is now Martin House/Church Guesthouse. Pedder St Clock tower is just visible on the far left, too.

this photo helps illustrate the buildings we're looking at. RC Cathedral being built. I wonder if the artist could have been painting from around the little matshed above the large house with a garden. The house with the garden then would be in the foregound. And yep Govt house is in the distance in the painting

http://gwulo.com/node/5458

It's difficult to judge. I do wonder though if the two figures on the roof in the painting are in fact themselves "Looking East from Glenealy". I'm pretty confident they are, but less so of them being the intended subject of the painting's title. If that is Glenealy then CGC might have put them in as a nod to her hosts.

Another interesting detail in the picture is just to the right of the Pedder St Clock tower, you can see the octagonal rooftop observatory of the Hongkong Hotel, which was accessed by a spiral staircase from the 4th floor.

Copied from the posted image:

Ocean's SS/
Town clock tower/
German Club, - http://gwulo.com/node/6118
SS City of Tokio/
Hong Kong Hotel/
French Hotel/
French Consulate/
Northern Fort; 
HMS Victor Emmanuel/
St. Paul's College/
Bishop's Palace;
HMS IRon Duke/
HMS Vigilante;
Sugar Refinery/
East Point (Jardine, Matheson)/
City Hall/
Bar Room of/
Theatre(near):
Naval Yard[along angled rodge of roof at centre]
Morrison Hill/
Murray Barracks/
Head Quarter's House/
St. John's Cathedral;
[to the right of the foreground tree] Government House/
74th on the march;

S Burdon, Bishop/
D J Bur... /
John Henderson;
P Ester Burdon;

[beneath title and signature]
Annie Loftus Lowcock;
HB GIbb;
H Lowcock

I think the large building just to the right of the St. John's Cathedral spire is Central Government Offices - http://gwulo.com/node/6051

This was painted well before the Catholic Cathedral was built.  I think that what is shown is the smoke from the chimneys  - not construction dust.

Hi Annelise - I think the large building to the right of St John's was, as Adam has mentioned, located around the site of today's Martin House on Upper Albert Road. From Glenealy, Govt House is closer then the Central Government Offices.

You can see the building in between the house with the garden and the Bishop's House here: http://gwulo.com/node/5458

Constance Gordon-Cumming was in Hong Kong from December 25, 1878 to February 20, 1879, so it was painted sometime during this period. She was in Canton for most of January however, but stayed at Glenealy early that month. So it was probably done either in early January or February 1879. (or both...it's a very detailed painting.)

The 74th Highlanders arrived Jan 28th 1878 to relieve the 28th regiment.

HMS Iron Duke arrived Jan 4th 1879 to become the new China station flagship, replacing HMS Audacious.

The Highlanders left Hong Kong March 10, 1879

http://ebook.lib.hku.hk/CADAL/B38633991.pdf

Thanks for the detective work on this one (and thanks to Jaberu for posting the picture). I've added the captions in their columns under the painting above, which helps a bit with linking them to the painting. I've set the date to 1879 too.

Another useful view of the area is the 1887 panorama.

HF, yes, I'll delete the above photo when you post the 3-photo version. I like Hugin for stitching old photos together. Here's an example of the results. It's free software - you can download it here.

3 separate photos from an album taken in ca. 1875.

hfsiu has a photo from the 1870s of the Upper Albert Road side - See http://gwulo.com/node/5084

(David I tried to add hfsiu's photo with the camera icon, but it was impossible to find quickly.)

Annelise - noted, thanks. If the image is in a gallery, or has any tags, I use them to find it quickly. But if the photo doesn't have either, it's just about impossible to find. I'll add this to the to-do list.

by 1879 the Club Germania had moved downhill on Wyndham Street (http://gwulo.com/node/6118) - and so I wonder who was leasing this sweet building (extreme lower left) when Cummings visited.

Thanks to Patrick Conner from The Martyn Gregory Gallery for the following. He sends us a clearer copy of the full painting:

And detail of three sections:

He writes:

Attached to this and the following message are some images of that pair of detailed 1879 watercolours by Constance Gordon Cumming, which we were kindly lent back for our exhibition in Exchange Square last November (see our 2014 catalogue) - in case your readers should be interested.  The images of the whole watercolours are based on 25-year-old transparencies, and the colour is wrong, but I took the close-ups recently.