Page 22 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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images themselves and a consideration of the
histories of their acquisition, transmission and
display throughout their life story. Since the
group of paintings central in this final chapter is
currently ‘frozen’ in a contemporary
ethnographic museum context, I will conclude
this chapter with some reflections for future
practices around this set of narrative artworks.
Conducting research on the trajectories of
paintings as actants, from their production to
consumption, led to the conclusion that their use
value makes them both art objects and
commodities. This makes Chinese export
painting distinctive as a phenomenon, to be
treated – as previously mentioned – as a class of
its own. 25 The concluding remarks incorporate
this conclusion.
This dissertation closes with a reference list of
all the sources used in the research process, an
accountability of the illustrations used, a
summary of this disseration (also in Dutch), my
curriculum vitae and three appendices. Appendix
1 provides an inventory of the Dutch collections,
where they are kept, their technical data and
subject matter. The second appendix gives an
inventory of the public collections of Chinese
export paintings worldwide and a register of
export painters who were active in Canton,
Hong Kong and Shanghai between the years
1740 to 1900 is given in Appendix 3. This
register, scattered with advertisements for
Chinese painting studios, found in primary
sources, gives us a clear insight into each
painter’s specialties regarding media used and
the range of subjects he was able to paint.
Bird with peonies,
inscription recto on
small sticker:
B.L.H., anonymous,
watercolour on paper,
19th century,
41.5 x 29 cm.
Museum Volkenkunde/
Nationaal Museum van
Wereldculturen,
inv.no. RV-87-1.

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25 Painting specifically for the market place in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, oddly enough, does not have the
connotation of ‘export painting’.