Chinese Businesses in Art

Don Mee in Snow. Watercolour painting by Robert Amos, 1982.

Robert Amos’s paintings record a number of Chinese businesses on Fisgard Street, showing the variety of services available to neighbourhood residents. Some of these businesses, such as the Embassy Cafe, are no longer in operation, and some of the signs in “Neon on Fisgard” have since disappeared. Heritage buildings, such as the On Hing Building (1891) housing the Don Mee Seafood Restaurant, the three-storey original headquarters of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (1885), and the adjacent George Joe Building (1946) form a longer-standing backdrop to the changing commercial spaces that occupy them.

Neon on Fisgard. Watercolour painting by Robert Amos, 1982.

Embassy and Foo Hong. Watercolour painting by Robert Amos, 1992.

Jan K. Company. Acrylic painting by Robert Amos, 1995.