Page 153 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

18-10-2016 15:45 Pagina 24
64 pag:Opmaak 1
roos boek 129-192 d

commoditificated Suzhou prints, it seems that accompanying the Special Exhibition of Winter
for centuries the Cantonese studios were Landscapes (Dongjing Shanshui hua te
supplied with Western-style engravings or Zhantulu) at the Palace Museum in Taipei in
landscape prints, which painters then copied for 1989 explains that:
these types of representations. As we learn from
Shang’s article in Arts of Asia and Wang’s article [f]or the Chinese artist, snow is an important
in The Art Bulletin, the characteristic European component of four seasons, as human minds
landscapes and figures in the prints were perceive winter as the end of an annual cycle,
switched for specific Chinese landscapes with and in it observes bleakness in all form of life.
Chinese figures. 139 In Chapter 6, I examine a set Throughout the centuries, painters have keenly
152 of ten rare and unique winter views in the observed nature, and thereupon expressed many
Leiden Museum Volkenkunde more thoroughly, features which are characteristic of the winter
as a result of which it becomes clear that this season: spring’s flowering, summer’s shade,
narrative painting set can be seen as a textbook autumn’s textures and colors, and winter’s
example of transcultural artwork. Because I bones. The latter refers to the barrenness of
provide a detailed treatment of this Leiden set branches after the leaves have withered and
(Figures 6.1. to 6.10.) later in this dissertation, fallen, and the solemnity with which dried and
this section only briefly discusses the way in lifeless trunks stand after cold winter has settled
which winter views and river scenes are over the surface. 141
meaningful and popular as subject matters for
Chinese export painting. In addition to this explanation of the importance
of representing winter, the same catalogue tells
- Winter views us that winter landscapes were being painted as
Winter was (and still is) a favourite season to early as the fourth century, while the path to the
Fig. 4.70. River scene, paint among Chinese painters. Thus, this subject first Chinese snow landscape painting leads back
anonymous, oil on matter, besides being a genre under the heading to the sixth century.
canvas, c. 1820s, of Chinese export painting, has been a recurring Although snow and ice were not regular
72 x 102 cm, feature of the Chinese domestic painting annual meteorological phenomena in Canton,
Museum Volkenkunde/ market. 140 In China, winter was interpreted as some historical sources suggest, as Shang posits
Nationaal Museum van the end of the annual cycle. This meant that, at in his article ‘Rediscovering views of Northern
Wereldculturen, the same time, winter was interpreted as the China. Late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
inv.no. RV-360-1135. beginning of all ideas and life. The catalogue winter scenes’ in Arts of Asia, that they did
occur sporadically. 142 So sporadically, in fact,
that Cantonese painters could not have had
enough time to observe these types of landscapes
and reproduce them in their paintings. The
winter views referred to in this study, therefore,
must primarily be a product of the circulating
(Western) printed examples or, secondly, have
emerged from the imagination of the Cantonese
painters. Besides the importance of painting
‘winter’ in the Chinese classical (literati) painting
practice, another reasonable explanation for this
subject matter finding its way into Cantonese
export studios is the idea that it was the result of
a link between Chinese court painters and
missionary painters in northern (and snowy)
Beijing and export painters in Canton. It is
known that Western missionaries worked
together with Chinese court painters on a
number of large-scale official art projects

---
139 Shang 2005, 95. Wang 2014-b, 386-387.
140 Shang 2005, 95.
141 Special exhibition of winter landscapes, 1989, 73-74.
142 Shang 2005, 95; The Chinese Repository, 8 February 1836.