Page 151 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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Fig. 4.66. Image of an
idyllic, peaceful and
rural surrounding of
Jingdezhen,
anonymous, gouache
on paper, 18th century,
45 x 55 cm,
Museum Volkenkunde/
Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen,
inv.no. RV-4796-4.

Emperor Qianlong commissioned this set of
Fig. 4.69. Westerners ink, watercolour on b. From set of 34
paintings to glorify the work, not to inform the
rowing up the Yangtze paper, late- images of the
viewer about how porcelain was made exactly.
River from Whampoa eighteenth century porcelain production
Idealisation of the visual content, then, was
anchorage to Canton, a. From set of 32 process, 30.5 x 29.2
legitimate. That said, the sets were sometimes
signed with two red images of the tea cm, Martyn Gregory
described as instances of ‘industrial espionage’,
seals of the artists’ production process, Gallery, London.
and, as we can read in From China to the West,
workshop and 31 x 30 cm, Maritime
the 2012 catalogue from the Martyn Gregory
description inscribed Museum Rotterdam,
Gallery, “some of them did indeed find their way
in characters of black inv.no. P4423
to the Sèvres works and to other European
manufacturing centres.” 136
The only image in the Dutch collections that
shows some of the plumes of smoke from the
hundreds of porcelain kilns hang above the
town, is shown in Figure 4.67. This gouache,
entitled ‘Aardewerkoven in Steenbaai’ (ceramic
oven in Stone bay), is part of a beautiful late
eighteenth-century set of twelve images of the
Chinese porcelain production process. In 1931,
Nanne Ottema, former director of Ceramics
Museum Princessehof, purchased this set at the
Hiersemann auction in Leipzig. The paintings

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136 Gregory 2012, 5.
137 Inv.no. P4423. Conveyance from Wereldmuseum Rotterdam per 1 January 2014.
138 Gregory 2012, 68, says that comparable series illustrating the production of porcelain have been recorded.
One is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (inv.no. Oe. 104 Res), and another was sold at auction in
2002.