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particular culture or tradition and belonging to great truth and faithfulness, yet there is a total
all.” 44 Universality also appears in comfortable want of perspective. The objects in the back-
proportions. When, for example, the format ground are as large as those in front, and not the
becomes more important than the painting, this slightest allowance is made for that mellowing
says something about the aspiration of the of the tints which is produced by distance. [...]
painting studios, i.e. to sell as much as possible Although to our eye these performances have no
of what the customer wants and in a format that merit whatever, except perhaps their freedom,
can be carried home. By themselves, these the Chinese reverence them somewhat in the
aspects do not convey any information about a same way as we do the rough sketches in pencil
specific tradition or culture. of chalk, done by Raphael, Da Vinci, and others
208 On the other hand, ‘particularities’ of of the old masters. 47
paintings stamp a specific cultural imprint on the
image. As Wu further explains, “once the Familiar with the well-established painting style
particularities attributable to a culture are in late eighteenth- to mid-nineteenth-century
discovered, their significance seem to grow more Britain – that is, the picturesque, along with the
and more. [...] Time further complicates the beautiful and the sublime – Downing naturally
cultural differences. So, particularities are by no did not very well understand the elongated
means permanent features in a society.” 45 Chinese scroll paintings. By saying that Chinese
I argue that this means that a process of landscape paintings are imperfect and faulty, his
developing new particularities will always begin text exudes an attitude of superiority, i.e.
again. Consequently, viewers from one culture Western painting conventions are better than
frequently do not fully understand paintings Chinese ones. He notices, however, the different
from another culture. The fact that cultures are valuations placed on these paintings by himself
never hermetically sealed makes this process ever and Chinese viewers in a respectful way and is
subject to change. As much as Chinese literati- aware of his own ignorance of this esteemed
painters could not appreciate Western-style Chinese painting style. But Downing
painting, Westerners were not familiar with the understands well that local viewers adore these
traditional Chinese portrayals of landscapes, or performances in the way that he loves old
the style in which they were painted. We know, masters from Europe, and thus these landscapes
for example, that the Chinese painter Wu Li are certainly of some value. 48
(1632-1718) emphasised the difference between Returning to the ten Tartarian winter views, it
Chinese and Western painting in terms such as is also appropriate to label them picturesque, a
‘spiritual excellence’ and ‘outward resemblance term first introduced into the mainstream by
of form’, implying that he deemed the former William Gilpin (1724-1804). Picturesque stands
characteristic to be superior to the latter. 46 for a category of painting in which, so Pagani’s
During his stay in Canton in 1836-1837, article ‘In search of a Chinese picturesque’ reads,
Downing wrote of the traditional Chinese land- “beauty came not from natural perfection but
scapes “they are in general very defective” and from a roughness, irregularity, and sudden
variation imparted by the artist,” 49 for those
[a]lthough the objects are often very finely elements that make a “scene beautiful in nature
drawn, and the tints of the colours laid on with does not necessarily make it pleasing as a

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44 Ibid.
45 Ibid., 183.
46 Sullivan 1980, 18-20.
47 Downing 1838, facsimile 1972. Several statements by Chinese and Western painters about each other’s work can
be read in Xiang 1976, 172-5, and in Sirén 1963.
48 It should be understood that in China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the status of landscape
paintings (shan shui, either mountain-water) corresponded with the status of portrait art in the West at this time.
According to Loehr 1962, 800, there is a view that this information typically expresses two contrasting worldviews
views. A traditional Chinese landscape painter is judged on his skill in terms of leaving viewers feeling that they are
really seeing mountains. Hills and mountain streams symbolise the ideology of Taoist thought, in which adapts his
life to the rhythm of nature. This is in contrast to the West, where the emphasis is much more on man attempting
to control nature.
49 Pagani 2010, 84. George Chinnery’s and Wiliam Alexander’s painting styles are considered to be ‘Chinese
picturesque’.