Lam Qua's medical portraits

Lam Qua (1801–1860) was a Chinese painter who specialized in Western-style portraits intended largely for Western clients. Lam Qua was the first Chinese portrait painter to be exhibited in the West. He is known for his medical portraiture. From 1836 to 1855, Lam Qua produced a series of medical portraits of patients under treatment with physician Peter Parker, a medical missionary from the United States. Parker commissioned Lam Qua to paint pre-operative portraits of patients who had large tumors or other major deformities. Some of the paintings are now part of a collection of Lam Qua's work held by the Yale University in the Peter Parker Collection at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library; others are in the Gordon Museum, Guy's Hospital, London.