Page 152 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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roos boek 129-192 d

date from circa the 1790s and their provenance
goes back to the Richard Stettiner (1865-1927)
collection in Hamburg, Germany.
The different stages of tea production in
imaginative and idealised surroundings are
beautifully rendered in a set with watercolours
on paper in the Rotterdam Maritime Museum. 137
The 32 images, with a red seal on each painting
detailing the name of the artists’ workshop and
with brief descriptions inscribed in black ink,
present the massive commercial endeavour that
was the tea trade – which engaged hundreds, if
not thousands of workers as tea planters and
pluckers, tasters and stevedores – as calm and
well-organised. See Figures 4.68.a. to 4.68.d.
We can assume that the reality of this
industrious trade practice was rather different
than these images lead us to believe. Rendering
these tea production images with a ‘romantic’
flavour encouraged people back home to believe
Fig. 4.67. Image with
that their relative in ‘the East’ had a good time
plumes of smoke
in this colourful and peaceful environment. This
from some kilns,
relative, in turn, liked to remember this ‘exotic’
(from set of 12),
atmosphere, more than the harsh times he,
anonymous, gouache
without doubt, experienced during his tea trade
on paper, c. 1790,
mission. At a global level, this set is stylistically
35.5 x 44 cm,
and compositionally comparable with other Figs. 4.68.a. to 4.68.d. 31 x 30 cm,
Ceramics Museum
famous sets with this subject matter (or those on Images of the tea Maritime Museum
Princessehof,
the porcelain production process) that are production process Rotterdam, inv.nos.
inv.nos. NO 5524.
currently sought after at auctions and art (from set of 32), clockwise:
galleries. signed with two red P4423-04, P4423-21,
The diverse activities in these vivid and often seals, watercolour on P4423-28 and
fanciful and detailed sets, depicting the main paper, 19th century, P4423-29.
Chinese export production goods, were
sometimes composed of more or less identical
figure groups and show remarkable similarities
(but always with variation in details and colour
rendering). Thus, in the set about tea production
in the Maritime Museum Rotterdam there are
several almost identical images to those found in
a set about the production of porcelain in a
private collection in London. 138 The Figures
4.69.a. and 4.69.b. show one image of both sets.
Although images in a set suggest ‘truthfulness’
in respect of the sequential and chronological
steps in the different production processes, the
use value of such sets lays not so much in their
use as a reliable historical source, but especially
in their commodity/export and artistic values.
The function of this distortion was clear: an
attractive looking set of exotic prints sold better.

Landscapes (winter views and river scenes)
As we know of from the research of Shang, a
specialist in China trade paintings of the South
China coast, and the scholarly contributions of
Wang on the Sino-European flow of prints in
multiple directions and the highly