Page 105 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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painting.” 190 By contrast, Westerners brought an unexamined assumption, just as its role as a
these specific paintings, along with tea, porcelain conduit for the entry of foreign ideas into
and silk, back from China to Europe and China has barely been researched. We must not
America in great numbers, following their trade overestimate the gulf between typically
missions. Western characteristics and Chinese aspects
While this genre of painting was definitely not of the various forms of painting, styles and
highly valued in China during the time it was subject matter in the historical discourse about
produced, current opinion about them has East-West interactions in relation to Chinese
changed considerably. In recent years, in the export paintings. Kristina Kleutghen is
region where the artworks were produced 200 convinced that in China “consumers along the
104 years ago, several important retrospectives of entire social spectrum enjoyed a diverse range
Chinese export (painting) art have been of domestically produced occidentalizing works
organised. 191 Furthermore, major auction of Chinese art.” 194 These were not the imported
houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s organise ‘ocean goods’ (洋 , yáng huò), as Western
many successful auctions in Hong Kong, imports were known, but rather innovative
Shanghai and Beijing every year, in which works of Chinese art, in which interpretations
Chinese export (reverse glass) paintings or and adaptions of Western ideas coincided with
albums of watercolours form part of the auction Chinese traditions. In bringing together different
listing. 192 As Cai states in the richly illustrated styles, subjects, materials, forms and techniques,
catalogue Chinese Export Fine Art in the Qing Chinese artists showed what they did and did
Dynasty from Guangdong Museum: “After not value in terms of Western art and objects.
several hundred years of vicissitudes, export The argument that Chinese export painting
paintings, once exported to foreign countries is an example of Chinese ‘occidenterie’ signifying
(mainly Europe and America) as handicrafts, are the West in order “to meet domestic consumer
now upgraded to works of art. Having turned demand for Western objects,” as Kleutghen
from the ‘vulgar’ to ‘elegance’, it can be called a explains in her article on Chinese occidenterie,
miracle in Guangzhou Port cultural history.” 193 is legitimate. 195 “The dual nature exemplifies
The road from two centuries of Chinese history, the possibilities for art produced in Guangzhou,
from ‘China trade’ to ‘China rise’ was bumpy, previously identified as export art,” as she states,
but it led to this renewed Chinese point of view. “to be reconsidered within the realm of
occidentery.” 196 The subjects of Chinese export
Local modernity paintings, the materials used – sometimes silk
As a category of material culture, this art is and porcelain – blended the familiar and the
usually understood in terms of the adaptation of foreign for both Chinese and Western viewers.
Chinese producers to the foreign market. At this We may assume that Chinese artists not only
point, the economic value of this category of art slavishly copied foreign pieces, but also
comes to the fore. In part, it was this adaption developed a style that was a unique synthesis
that made this art trade commercially successful. of Western and Chinese aesthetics. The Western
Yet, the identification of Chinese export painting origin of material and artistic techniques such
with the foreign market alone is little more than as oil paints, linear perspective and chiaroscuro

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190 Taoi 1988, 1-2, quoted in Lee Sai Chong 1996, 7.
191 In 2001, Guangzhou Museum in collaboration with Zhongshan University organised Views from the West –
Collection of nineteenth century pith paper watercolours donated by Mr. Ifan Williams to the City of Guangzhou.
The Guangzhou Museum of Art presented Souvenir from Canton – Chinese export paintings from the Victoria and
Albert Museum in 2003. In 2005, East meets West: Cultural relics from the Pearl River delta region could be seen
in het Hong Kong Museum of History, the Guangzhou Museum of Art and in the Macao Tower. Also in this context
are: Artistic inclusion of the East and West, an exhibition in the Hong Kong Museum of Art about Western painting
traditions in Chinese export painting in 2011 and Chinese export fine art in the Qing Dynasty from Guangdong
Museum in 2013 in the Guangdong Museum in Guangzhou.
192 See www.christies.com and www.sothebys.com.
193 Cai 2013, 17.
194 Kleutghen 2014, 117. Kristina Kleutghen is Assistant Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Washington
University in St. Louis. Her research centres on foreign contact in late Imperial Chinese art.
195 Kleutghen 2014, 119.
196 Ibid., 127.