Page 110 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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historic value, more than just an art historical By contrast, the Chinese did not judge this
one. 221 Over time, these paintings have become reproduction process in such categorical negative
rare and valuable documents in the investigation terms. 225 Since module and mass production is
of both Chinese-Western exchange and the common practice in Chinese language, literature
subjects of the images themselves. As Crossman and architecture, philosophy and social
states, they also fulfilled a need of Western organisations, the Chinese have no problem
merchants and travellers to show those at home with working with templates as part of an
where they had been or had sometimes lived for assembly line in executing their paintings. On
years. 222 Words often failed to describe Chinese the contrary, as Ledderose states: “it helps them
lives back in the West. The paintings, with their to organize their production process and allows
visual richness, played an important role in them to attract customers of different economic 109
revealing all aspects of Chinese life, and means. A workshop specializing in paintings [...]
currently they are increasingly coming to the that can offer a choice of sets in different sizes
fore in social- and cultural historic research. and with more (or fewer) figures and motifs will
Around the world, there are quite a number be able to appeal to a wide range of clients.” 226
of people who classify only a select number of In no other area of Chinese export art are the
paintings as meeting a relatively high artistic differences between these aesthetic value systems
standard and consider the paintings referred to more fundamental, and the compromises which
in this research as rather stiff, painted by, as follow from the confrontation between the
Wang et al. unelegantly call them, “jobbing individual cultural particularities more
painters in workshops based on the same master interesting, than in painting. A painting
copy, and of no great artistic merit.” 223 (whatever genre) always depicts a three-
Although the value of Chinese export paintings dimensional thing, both human and/or
is not about a relatively high artistic standard inanimate, on its canvas. 227 The elegance of
and the fairly conservative level of content and Chinese export painting can be found in the
form in most of the images per se, we must integration of different painting conventions,
recognise their uniqueness in terms of fitting into mediated into a new and mixed painting style in
two aesthetic value systems. For instance, the its own right. Moreover, the large repertoire in
combination of Western painting conventions subject matter and media used for an export
such as plasticity, linear-perspective, painting of everyone‘s choice and ditto budget,
foreshortening of figures, composition and the the specific cultural production arena with its
use of colour and shadow, with a more Chinese own traits (commercial trading market with
‘hand’ in the representation of rocks, trees and commodities, blended, interweaving ideas about
mountains with meticulous brushwork, esthetics, the use of integrated and shared
sometimes clearly done with multi-headed concepts in design and execution of art, which
brushes, the lavish colours and the Chinese resulted in EurAsian art), makes Chinese export
subject matter. The traits of this genre certainly painting a shared material culture between all
meant it was highly attractive to its Western trading nationalities and international manners
buyers. Another striking feature of the dialogue and mechanisms at work in the eighteenth- and
between the ideas on aesthetics is the difference nineteenth-century Pearl River delta.
in attitude towards authenticity and copying.
Although, on the one hand, the mass production 3.5.
established an enduring image of the historical Conclusion
China trade, it is known that the reproduction of This chapter has adressed four connected issues
artworks made by division of labour and to map the phenomenon of Chinese export
separation of tasks traditionally had a pejorative painting: the Dutch trade with China in the
connotation in the Western art value system. 224 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the

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221 Cai & Blussé 2004, 55.
222 Crossman 1991, 183, 202.
223 Wang et al. 2011, 29.
224 Ledderose 2000, 7.
225 Ibid. Recent research has uncovered that in the arts of the European Middle Ages reproduction could indeed
be used as a means to define an artistic tradition and even to reinforce the impact of specific works. See also: Hans
Belting, Likeness and Presence (1994).
226 Ledderose 2000, 6.
227 Coltman 2015, 17.