After library conservation work, rare Lam Qua paintings are on view in new YCBA exhibit

Thanks to a team of conservation experts—led by Laura O’Brien-Miller, assistant head of Rare Books and Manuscript Conservation—three rare and important paintings by 19th-century Cantonese artist Lam Qua are again available to scholars and the general public.

The restored paintings are on display in the exhibition “Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850” at the Yale Center for British Art through June 21. The exhibition—which features influential artists from India, Britain, and China during the era of the powerful British East India Company—is the first presentation of these works  to the general public in decades. Their inclusion in this exhibition attests not only to the historical significance of these works but also to the successful conservation work that made their display possible.

The paintings

Lam Qua was one of the most famous portrait painters in early 19th-century Canton. Hundreds of his oil paintings, produced in the 1830s—believed to be commissioned by Peter Parker, a Yale-trained physician, diplomat, and medical missionary to China—are portraits of patients at Canton Hospital disfigured by large tumor growths. 

Parker specialized in eye diseases but also performed surgical operations, including the removal of tumors. The three artfully rendered portraits in the exhibition are of woman with a large neck growth (“No. 13, Tan Shi”), a man with a tumor on his left arm (“No. 31, Po Ashing”), and the same man after treatment by amputation (“No. 32, Po Ashing”). The latter two are a rare example of the before-and-after-treatment pairings believed to have been displayed on the walls of the hospital.

These paintings and 83 others, which Parker gave to Yale Medical School, are in the historical medical collections of the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library. Also on display in the exhibition is the Yale Center for British Art’s “Portrait of a Woman,” attributed to the workshop of Lam Qua, which is typical of the artist’s more formal portraits of prominent Cantonese men and women.

The conservation challenge

Due to cracked and brittle boards, unstable paint layers, degradation, and discoloration, these historically and medically valuable works were restricted for study and only available in the library’s online collection. In collaboration with independent art conservator Kathy Hebb, Miller conducted a comprehensive condition survey. They identified problems ranging from “Emergency” to “Minor Adjustments,” which led a multiyear conservation project with a cross-departmental team.

Team members from Yale Library’s Preservation and Conservation Department, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, and the Medical Historical Library devised an innovative, new technology to reduce treatment time and ensure safety throughout the process.

Early in their history, the canvases had been cut from their original stretchers and adhered to rigid boards. Standard methods for separating the boards from the canvases would have required hundreds of staff hours and posed risks to the fragile paint layers. Instead, the team took a new, innovative approach, which established a new protocol for treating similar conservation challenges in the future.

Working with Computer Numerical Control (CNC) technology, team members were able to digitally control the precise removal of the backing boards. Laser-mapping allowed them to accurately measure and map the board’s surface. With computerized precision milling, they were able to remove the layers of backing material, which saved staff hundreds of hours of manual labor.

Thomas Philips, senior materials assistant at Yale University Art Gallery, who had previous experience with the technology, helped implement this approach. Colleagues from the Heritage Science Research Lab at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage—Aniko Bazur, director, and Richard Hark, senior conservation scientist–-helped to develop and refine the treatment protocol.

The remaining 83 paintings were all mounted in the same way, requiring similar treatment to preserve the structural integrity of the portraits.

View digital images of 80 of the 86 portraits by Lam Qua or members of his workshop in the library’s Digital Collections.

View in person the three fully restored paintings in the Yale Center for British Art exhibition through June 21.

Learn more about preservation and conservation at Yale Library.

Learn more about the library’s historical medical collections.

—Deborah Cannarella

Installation image from “Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850,” an exhibition on view at the Yale Center for British Art, from January 8 to June 21, 2026. Photo by Richard Caspole, Yale Center for British Art