Page 212 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

96 pag:Opmaak 1
18-10-2016 15:41 Pagina 19
roos boek 193-288 d

China in the early seventeenth century entailed a
Value accruement through dynamic cultural lively transfer of illustrated prints and miniature
interactions, inspiration and the act of paintings. 63 During the eighteenth century,
appropriation growing numbers of (old) paintings from famous
New art forms and cultural paradigm shifts European collections were reproduced as prints,
usually come into existence after a long period and it is possible that copies of these prints made
of evolution that enables them to take root and their way to China via the imperial court or
grow. This also applies to the development of through Dutch and Belgian missionaries,
Chinese export painting. In this process – that merchants and scientists. 64 We can assume, and,
already began in the sixteenth century – several indeed, several scholars have argued, that
factors in China meant that Western artistic Chinese painters transformed Western prints by 211
conventions were incorporated and successfully making their specific features one of their
executed. The presence of Jesuit painters at the cultural resources or selling points to meet their
Chinese court and the preference of the Qing own needs. 64 Jourdain & Jenyns’ early writings
emperors Kangxi (1662-1722), Yongzheng about Chinese export art in Canton reads:
(1723-1735) and Qianlong (1736-1795) for
Western painting techniques in their [w]riting of paintings of this period, Sir George
commissions to court painters, albeit on a Staunton speaks of the closeness of the copies of
limited scale, contributed to Western European prints, which attracted the notice of a
conventions making inroads into Chinese ‘gentleman eminent for his taste in London’,
painting traditions. who had in his possession a coloured copy made
While Westerners and their art gradually lost in China of a print from a study of Joshua
status to the northern court when the reign of Reynolds, which he ‘deems not unworthy’ of
Emperor Qianlong ended, events in South China being added to his collections of valuable
took a different course. Foreign merchants were paintings. 66
engaged in brisk trade with China, and Canton
was the only port of access for foreigners. In the Clearly, Staunton (1781-1859), who had been
run up to the eighteenth century, China’s appointed secretary to Lord Macartney's mission
encounters with Western imperialism had to China (1792-1794), was impressed by the
already provided an important impetus to transformation of a European print into an oil
Chinese export paintings. After all, the massive painting. He pays little tribute (‘not unworthy’)
trade in porcelain, tea and silk, and the rage for to the endeavours of the Chinese painter and
all things Chinese in the West, had stirred an adds his Chinese artwork to his collection of
interest among Westerners for China and valuable paintings. Cantonese painters actively
fostered their predilection for ‘faithful’ used copying as a production method at the time
portrayals of Chinese life and its countryside. of the historical China trade. To produce an oil
It is known that Cantonese painting studios painting from a print requires adequate painting
were supplied with Western-style engravings and skills; the professionals in Canton possessed this
prints, which served as models and inspiration expertise. Moreover, this transformation process
for their works. Several possible examples can be gave them ample opportunities to show their
identified by linking the motifs found within cleverness.
these export paintings and by tracing sources The possible Western landscape prints
and inspirations from sixteenth- and brought to China did not survive the whims of
seventeenth-century Western and Chinese the time, but through Wang’s research we know
painters. Thanks to the meticulous research of that perspectival (Western-style) pictures, such as
Nicolas Standaert on Chinese prints and their those handled by Jesuits in China (Figure 4.74.),
European prototypes, we know that the history may also have employed a visual effect like
of Chinese reproductions of especially Flemish “displaying a rigorous form of perspective
engravings are relatively well-documented, and marching toward the center of the painting” and
that the cultural exchange between Europe and “exerted a stylistic impact on the local

---
63 Standaert 2006, 231. Chinese (woodblock) prints after paintings by Joachim Patinier (c. 1485–1524) that were
made by members of the sixteenth-century Wierix family or Maarten de Vos (1531–1603) from Antwerp are known.
64 Crossman 1991, 125, 188 and 214.
65 Shang 2005; Standaert 2006; Wang 2014-a and 2014-b.
66 Jourdain & Jenyns 1950, 108.