Page 222 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

96 pag:Opmaak 1
18-10-2016 15:41 Pagina 29
roos boek 193-288 d

Concluding remarks

221

In the Introduction, I argued that the virtually hand, in nineteenth-century Holland, this genre
unknown Chinese export paintings in Dutch was greatly appreciated and, consequently,
collections definitely have archival and enjoyed a high status. Over time, this
documentary significance. To support this appreciation diminished. The society at large, at
argument, I discussed in Made for Trade the least in the Netherlands, did not value Chinese
commodity/export, historic, artistic, and export paintings and, on the whole, became
material value aspects of the identified genres. detached from them. The value of this particular
Accordingly, this dissertation discusses questions concept of Chinese export painting, based on
such as: Are those integrated, transcultural relations with co-existing values and meanings,
paintings in Dutch collections to be considered greatly diminishes in these periods of
1
as commodities or as art objects, or are both detachment. The perception of the hybrid
qualifications appropriate? How and when does character attached to these paintings, generated
value accruement occur in a painting’s life? Is it from the contexts in which they originally were
the degree of translatability that provides produced, lead to the idea that during a part of
aesthetic value to these paintings? Can we think the twentieth century, these paintings were
of a new outlook for this painting genre? In identified as mixed, inferior, and not objets d’art
wrapping up the discussion, I would say that it is at all. They did not fit some cultural norm,
abundantly clear that the representational and either Western, or Chinese. That is why these
social function of the corpus with the assigned paintings are often termed ‘hybrid’, a term that
values lends the Dutch collections substantial use I have used throughout Made for Trade in the
value. most positive sense to describe these artworks as
Chinese export paintings, to a greater or products of confluences of ideas, but that has its
2
lesser extent, can be considered as objects giving own negative qualities too. This attitude – of
tangible form to spoken metaphors of success, identifying Chinese export paintings as inferior –
money, sea travels, and trade deals. Their explains their currently largely forgotten and
3
particular means of production under specific ‘frozen’ state. On the other hand, in
conditions and their exchange and use also nineteenth-century China there was hardly any
illustrates contrasting Dutch and Chinese appreciation for these specific visual objects
4
notions of value and utility of this painting made for the ‘red-haired barbarians’. Despite
genre. These notions oscillate between a dyad of the fact that these highly desired commodities
high and low appraisal and assert contradictory were flying out of the export painting studios
attitudes towards this genre across different and thus were very profitable, they were
places and in the course of time. On the one generally met with incomprehension. This tide,

---
1 Martyn Gregory, an international specialist dealer in China trade paintings, confirmed the observation that the
market for and interest in these paintings is very small in the Netherlands compared to the United Kingdom,
America and China (TEFAF March 2015).
2 Read more on the term ‘hybridity’ and its discontents in Dean & Leibsohn 2010.
3 Mr Gan Tjiang Tek (1919-) indicated that all the inventory numbers under no. 1000, including the many Chinese
export paintings, were seen as unimportant during his curatorship in Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden (i.e. 1950s to
1984), due to the fact that these objects were made by anonymous artisans (conversation with Boen Ong, relative
of Gan, on 9 March 2015).
4 Ever since the visit by a Dutch fleet led by Jacob van Neck in 1601 the Dutch were called ‘red-haired barbarians’.
This name continued to be used in China since that visit. Cai 2004, 3.