Chinese Restaurant

In 1880, upon his return to his native San Francisco after training abroad, Wores began to sketch and paint in the city’s Chinatown. The colorful, picturesque scenes he produced of the area’s people, markets, and architecture countered perceptions held by most San Franciscans that the area was unsavory, and even unsafe, for non-Chinese visitors.

Wores loved what he perceived to be exotic people and locales. Over the course of his long career, in addition to scenes of California, he depicted Japan, England, Hawaii, Samoa, and Spain. He painted this work when he was just twenty-four years old.