蜑家女子圖像是英國十九世紀畫家喬治‧錢納利(George Chinnery, 1774-1852)在澳門旅居時期(1825-1852)常見的入畫題材， 而傍水而居的蜑民亦可能是十九世紀歐洲人在中國最熟悉的地方族群之一。蜑家人逐水而居，時以載運旅人往返澳門與廣州水域，在十九世紀的中西交流史上扮演了西方人訪華的第一印象，也與西方勢力時有合作結好之關係，蜑家人圖像遂成為西方旅行者熟悉的中國文化符號。當時旅行於中國的西方畫家習以將所觀察到的異地風俗民情記錄下來以展現其「真實性」。無可避免地，錢納利作為旅居在中國的英國藝術家，以當時英國文化的意識形態及皇家藝術學院訓練下的審美標準來再現他的中國題材，因而觀者幾乎難以察覺錢納利作品中「中英文化」交流互動的跡象。錢納利的澳門時期作品可被視為英國文化下的視覺樣板和標準，提供藝術家的歐洲觀眾們有關於中國知識的文化印象。錢納利中國主題的作品中，多半展現其理想化且如畫的烏托邦中國形象，以蜑家女子的主題為例，錢納利所繪製的小型布本油畫或是速寫習作中，除了以貼近真實的觀察再現蜑家女子日常生活外，亦投射了十八世紀英國藝術學院對於理想美的創作概念，透過再 現蜑家女子於戶外生活及勞動形象傳遞的「東方女性」之美，建構其理想東方中國的想像。故，本文嘗試以圖像學、藝術社會史及文化史的方法論，探究錢納利所繪製的蜑家女性圖像中所傳達的異國情調及其文化意義。

Tanka women were a common subject in the works of George Chinnery (1774-1852), a British painter resident in Macau from 1825 to 1852. His Macau-era artworks offer insights into how British aesthetics formed their epistemology concerning Chinese society in the nineteenth century. Chinnery produced many images of Tanka women as souvenirs to be sold to those who travelled the south Chinese coast. The Tanka people, who lived on their boats, were likely one of the most familiar local ethnic groups Europeans encountered in 19th-century China. Living a water- dependent lifestyle, the Tanka people were often engaged in transporting travellers between the waters of Macau and Guangzhou, and served as a primary point of contact for Westerners visiting China. They also maintained cooperative relationships with Western powers, which further reinforced their prominence in the history of Sino-Western interactions during the 19th century; hence, representations of the Tanka people became familiar symbols in how China was culturally encoded for Western travellers. In Chinnery’s time, European painters travelling to China often documented their observations of local customs and daily life, aiming to represent foreign cultures with “authenticity”. Chinnery, as a British artist living in Macau, inevitably represented his Chinese subjects according to the prevailing British cultural ideology and aesthetic tastes trained by the Royal Academy. Yet, we see very few signs of ‘Anglo-Chinese cultural interactions’ in Chinnery's paintings of Chinese subjects. Instead,Chinnery's pictures of Tanka women were produced as visual examples and standards of British culture and aesthetic taste that provided a politically and culturally stereotyped body of knowledge of China and its subjects to the artist’s European patrons and audiences. In Chinnery’s Macau-era paintings, the artist simultaneously created visual impressions of an idealised and picturesque utopian China. Among these, Chinnery’s representations of Tanka women, including his small canvas oil paintings and sketches, reflect close, realistic observation of Tanka women’s daily lives while also projecting the 18th-century British Royal Academy’s concept of ideal beauty. His representations of Tanka women’s engaged in outdoor activities and labour convey an idealised vision of the Orient and of Oriental women. Chinnery’s depictions idealize both Tanka women – presented as girlish and innocent – and their family life, living conditions and environments, which became stereotypical icons of Macau and the South China coast― a peaceful, harmonious and eternal region. In 1844, one of Chinnery’s works of a Tanka woman Assor, was sent back to England and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This painting, now located in the HSBC Archive in Hong Kong, vividly represents the tradition of British ‘fancy pictures.’ This study, therefore, adopts an approach combining iconography, the social history of art, and cultural history to investigate the exoticism and cultural significance conveyed through the images of Tanka women’s in Chinnery’s paintings.