Page 134 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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the Tropenmuseum and the Rijksmuseum have
Canton ou de scènes d’intérieur: ce sont de 18:12 Pagina 5 Fig. 4.35. Quay of
tableaux d’un nouveau genre que les Européens such early paintings in an elongated format in Canton, anonymous,
achèteut en grand nombres. [...] Il n’est pas their possession. 66 (Figures 4.35. and 4.36.) As watercolour on silk,
d’Anglais qui, à son retour en Europe, ne the research of, among others, Kee Il Choi Jr. c. 1775, 100.8 × 303 cm,
rapporte une vue de Canton. 64 indicates, from 1760 – the year that the activity Tropenmuseum/
radius of Western traders was limited specifically Nationaal Museum van
In terms of concrete examples that formed the to Canton – the quay, with its flags and Western Wereldculturen,
basis of images of South Chinese harbours, often factory buildings, was increasingly the symbol of inv.no. TM-A-7525.
by anonymous Chinese painters and made on the historical China trade and the wharf itself
commission, we know that engravings and prints increasingly appeared on diverse expressions of
were found in Cantonese studios. Examples export art in various media, among them large
include copper engravings made from sketches porcelain bowls from the early 1760s. 67 (Figure
done by artists aboard Western East Indiamen 4.37.)
(ships of the European trading companies), such In general, there are a number of indications
as those by the Swedish captain and that date the depictions of these kinds of Fig. 4.36. View of the
draughtsman Carl Gustav Ekeberg (1716-1784), harbour views: the flags of the ships at Pearl River and the
who made twelve journeys to China between Whampoa, on the churches in Macao and in city of Canton,
1742 and 1777 and in 1773 published his front of the factories in Canton; the architectural anonymous,
Ostindiska Resa with images of Chinese port elements of depicted buildings; the fences on the watercolour on silk,
cities. 65 (Figures 4.34.a to 4.34.c.) quay and the accretion of land; the 1771, 95 x 368 cm,
In the 1760s, images of the quay at Canton establishment of the Protestant church on the Rijksmuseum
were part of the elongated scroll paintings quay at Canton in 1847; the rendition of the Amsterdam,
depicting the landscape of the Pearl River. Both skies; the types of ship and the number of inv.no. NG-1052.

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64 Lavollée 1853, 362. Translation: In the most illuminated part of the Lamqua studio, several young Chinese were
painting, in oil on canvas, views of Macao and Canton or interior scenes: they are paintings of a new genre that
Europeans are buying in large numbers. There is not an Englishman who, on his return to Europe, does not take back
a view of Canton.
65 Osbeck 1771. Choi Jr. 2003. Carl Gustav Ekeberg, 1773, engravings by Olof Jacobsson Årre (1731-1809).
66 Van Campen & Hartkamp 2001, 69-71. Rijksmuseum inv.no. NG-1052; Tropenmuseum inv.no. A-7525.
67 Choi Jr. 1998-a, 429, and 2003, 67.