Page 171 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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elaborated in Chapter 2, this chapter will and a respect for humanity, would bring
illustrate the usefulness of approaching Chinese scientific progress and societal transformation.
export paintings from a commodity perspective These new views, in turn, led to the study and
and highlight the journeys of some coherent sets ‘education’ of faraway peoples, and to
of paintings in the Leiden Museum nationalism with an increasing desire for strong
Volkenkunde, the Maritime Museum in and influential nation states, from which
Rotterdam, and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. colonialism derived. Thanks to the trade
relations of the Dutch VOC and the Netherlands
5.2. Trading Society (NTS) with Indonesia, China
Glorious but overlooked value – and Japan, objets d’art from these countries
170 a cultural biography 3 found their way to Dutch private merchant-
From the mid-nineteenth century, the expansion collectors and ethnographic museums and
of Dutch trade with China was closely galleries. Although the trade in paintings was
Fig. 5.1. View of the
associated with new ideas about collecting and mostly private and minuscule compared to the
waterfront of Canton,
selling works of art from unknown countries. In export of Chinese tea, raw silk and ceramics,
anonymous, oil on
the early nineteenth century, the forerunners of “its scale and volume,” to acknowledge Wong’s
canvas, 1845-1855,
the Dutch ethnographic museums had no statement about this trade, “would still jar with
87.5 x 200 cm, 6
collecting policy of the kind we know today. any conception of paintings as rarities.”
Museum Volkenkunde/
There were only curiocabinets, Kunst and The results of this practice are visible in the
Nationaal Museum van
Wunderkammern, and private collections, which collections of the Dutch museums, where these
Wereldculturen,
were closed to the public. Institutional collecting paintings are not only found in large numbers,
inv.no. RV-B3-1.
by the Dutch government began with the but also where the confluence of values
foundation of the Royal Cabinet of Rarities in (commodity/export, historical, artistic, material)
1816 and, subsequently, the national makes them more than competitive with
4
ethnological collection increased. Early important collections around the globe. The
collecting had strong links with the nineteenth- Dutch paintings are as equally valuable as those
century cultural, political and social context, among other collections in the Hong Kong
which had its roots in the Enlightenment. 5 Museum of Art, the Guangzhou Museum, the
In the eighteenth century, many were convinced Macao Museum of Art, the Peabody Essex
that this new age, enlightened by reason, science Museum, and the V&A. 7

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3 This paragraph, in a modified form, was previously part of the article ‘The westward movement of Chinese
export harbour views: significant paintings with a social function’, in: Shilin, Leiden University, Journal of Young
Sinology, (Proceedings of the first Rombouts graduate conference Globalization and glocalization in China held in
September 2012 at Leiden University).
4 Effert 2003, 11.
5 Avé 1980. Ter Keurs, 2005.
6 Wong 2011.
7 See Appendix 2 for an overview of public collections with Chinese export paintings worldwide.