Page 16 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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the other hand, qualitative research was done on exchange across large parts of the globe. The
the representation and iconography of the paintings, the individuals – including merchants,
different subjects. The surprising outcome of this travellers and other kinds of explorers, and
study was the number of paintings found, which family members – and the institutions
turned out to be far more extensive and (museums) are all taken into consideration.
historically valuable than expected. Among the
paintings discovered were: several by the famous Focus on the Netherlands
Cantonese export master painters Spoilum, Chinese export paintings for the Western market
Youqua, Sunqua and Puqua; unique sets of were so appealing to foreign trading powers
(signed) watercolours and gouaches; active in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
extraordinarily rare, anonymous oil winter that they can be found in museums and private 15
landscapes; traceable ship portraits; harbour collections around the world. As is generally
views with strong provenance information and known, the majority is now held in Europe and
even large coherent sets of paintings including – America with only a few in China, mainly in
what is believed to be – forerunners of the Macao (present-day Aomen) and Hong Kong.
legendary Puqua watercolours of street Currently, a growing number can be found in
characters. There is little doubt that the (newly established) museums in Guangzhou and
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previously obscure Dutch collections have other cities in China. In the energetic Chinese
archival and documentary significance. 8 harbour city of Guangzhou – still indispensible
Building further on the outcome of my MA for doing business around the world – the study
thesis, I have taken the Dutch situation as the of the historical China trade episode, with its
starting point for this dissertation, with extensive and still undiscovered aspects, has seen
paintings bought or ordered in China by Dutch a remarkable revivification of late. 10
sailors and private merchants at the end of the While recognising the necessarily porous
eighteenth to the second half of the nineteenth nature of national boundaries, a focus on the
century. Analyses of primary source material and Netherlands is justified due to the following four
relevant secondary literature on the subject were considerations: Firstly, Dutch-Chinese maritime
thoroughly contextualised. trade relations date back to the seventeenth
Broadly, Made for Trade studies the trajectory century. These paintings were collected not only
from their past production to the musealisation in Dutch colonial households in Batavia and
of Chinese export paintings in Dutch collections. Cape Town or in the coastal cities of India and
It includes individual moments of human actions Ceylon (Sri Lanka), like Surat and Galle, where
towards Chinese export paintings as greater and the Dutch also had their settlements for a while,
longer (more complicated) processes of cultural but also by merchants of the China trade and

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8 Youquas in the City Archive and Athenaeum Library Deventer, Museum Volkenkunde Leiden and
Wereldmuseum Rotterdam. Spoilums in Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Sunquas in Tropenmuseum Amsterdam and
Museum Volkenkunde. Puquas in Ceramics Museum Princessehof.
9 The Museum of Contemporary Art in Yinchuan, Ningxia, China opened in August 2015. To my surprise this
museum also owns a wonderful collection of ‘early Chinese Western-style paintings’ (moca-yinchuan.com). With
an exhibition on this subject entitled The dimension of civilization, from 8 August 2015 to 31 December 2016,
Yinchuan, a former trading settlement along the former Silk Road, showcased its connection to the Chinese
international trading history. The Maritime Museum in Shanghai also holds a serious collection.
10 Embodiments of this revivification include, among other things: the reopening in 2010 of the brand new,
modernised, large-scale Guangdong Museum with much attention for the China trade period; the establishment of
the Thirteen Hongs Research Center at Guangzhou University in 2009; the organisation of a number of symposia
on the theme ‘thirteen hongs’ (for example, the jointly held symposium Literatures and the studies of Canton
thirteen hongs in September 2013, organised by the Guangzhou Association of Social Science Societies,
Guangzhou Local Gazetteer Society, Canton Hongs Research Center and the Guangzhou Archivistics Society); the
ongoing and intensified academic research into the multidimensional historical aspects of the China trade at Sun
Yat-sen University (Zhongsan University); and the opening in 2013 of the Guangzhou Council for Promotion of the
Culture of the Thirteen Hongs at the Guangzhou Culture Park. This council is dedicated to the research and
promotion of the history and culture of the thirteen hongs. It will also collect historical records and publish books,
magazines and videos about the thirteen hongs, push for the construction of a museum dedicated to these foreign
trading houses, collect and exhibit related cultural relics, and provide information for the development of the
thirteen hongs business district. Furthermore, there are an increasing number of exhibitions being organised around
this theme by museums and libraries in the region.