Page 102 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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ink lines on the front of the glass plate. 169 These frame Chinese export painting further in order
ink lines once formed part of the draft of the to allocate ‘shared cultural visual repertoire’ as
image that was subsequently painted and then an appropriate and relevant denomination for
coloured in on the reverse side of the same sheet this painting genre.
of glass. Figure 3.26. is such a painting and
shows small lines in black ink along the edge of 3.4.
the painting, where there was once a frame. 170 A shared cultural visual repertoire
Probably, the ink sketch on Rice harvest had To map the Chinese export painting
been working as a kind of ‘colour plate’, but it is phenomenon more precisely, Made for Trade
not known whether the painter added new needs to find out what the main actors in the
compositional elements after the ink drawing Chinese export painting arena thought about the 101
had been set up. I argue, in tandem with the artistry of this art genre. To answer this question,
ideas of Van Dongen and on the basis of this section will treat different views on Chinese
research by Mary McGinn, Winterthur Museum art in general and this type of art in particular.
painting restorer, that the black lines were added The final paragraph ‘shared material culture’, is
after the glass had been originally framed. 171 preceded with reflections on art from China, the
Scholar Crossman asserts too that reverse glass Chinese view on this export painting genre, the
paintings were painted at least in part after they topic ‘local modernity’, the Western perception
were fitted in the frames. 172 A framed sheet of and representation of Chinese subject matter,
glass could be placed on a table, front-side up, and the idea that this art genre can be conceived
without causing any harm to the glass. In as emblematic of the historical China trade.
addition to this advantage of framing before
painting the glass, the edges of the frame served Art from China
as support for the flat piece of wood used by the What precisely is to be considered as art from
painter to paint the image (see Figure 3.19.). China? This question has been variously
After the painting was finished, the painter only answered throughout the course of time. Clunas
needed to wipe away the ink lines from the argues that depending on who was making the
front. It is quite possible that, in doing so, some distinction, objects, written documents,
lines remained, especially along the edges of the paintings and sculptures, were, or were not,
frame. included within the category of ‘art’ or ‘labelled
To frame the characteristic Chinese export as art’. 173 For example, the Chinese elite
painting phenomenon, so far I have sketched its regarded calligraphy and ink painting as the
modus operandi and brought together its (im-) highest artistic expressions possible, while in
material features, many of which I assume are Europe these forms of Chinese art were barely
known to specialists in the field. I compose this noticed. On the other hand, in Europe, Chinese
framework through, amongst other things, sculpture and (studio-produced) ceramics were
written observations of contemporary seen much more as art forms than paintings on
(subjective) eyewitnesses, the art works paper or on canvas. It was in Europe that the
themselves, archival documents and secondary term ‘Chinese art’ was introduced in the
literature concerning this topic. Building further nineteenth century. Presently, when going
on the analyses of the theoretical concepts through auction or exhibition catalogues and
‘transcultural’ and ‘cultural translation’ monographs of various museum objects of
discussed in Chapter 2, this chapter continues to Chinese art, this term includes calligraphy, scroll

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169 Van Dongen 2001, 31. Mr M. de Keijzer of the Physics department of the Central Research Laboratory for
Objects of Art and Science, Amsterdam, has carried out technical research on the used binding agents, paint
samples (indigo and ochre mixed with silicon for the colours blue and green/yellow) and pigments. During his
research he also discovered remnants of tiny black ink lines. Besides this painting, two more copies of the same set
in Museum Volkenkunde show such ink lines: inv.nos. 360-1120 and 360-1121.
170 The original wooden frames of all paintings of the set of 19 have disappeared, for unknown reasons. In 2001,
before these paintings were exhibited in the Sikkens Schildermuseum in Sassenheim and in Museum Volkenkunde,
new frames have replaced the original ones. These new frames approximate to the forms of the traditional Chinese
framing which probably surrounded the paintings in former times.
171 Van Dongen 2001, http://volkenkunde.nl/sites/ default/files/attachements/sensitive_plates.pdf. McGinn 2010, 282.
172 Crossman 1991, 208.
173 Clunas 1997, 9-13.