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the subject matter of these paintings, which were and open up the subject in a more than adequate
so strange to the Chinese painters. 45 In his way. Using different sources and providing new
work, Jiang argues that “the commercial insights on historical facts concerning visual
activities in the historical China trade made a traditions, (post)modernism and globalisation,
serious contribution to cultural intercourse; it these studies are a welcome addition to the
affected social thought, and let new professions (still) Eurocentric driven scholarship regarding
emerge.” 46 Accordingly, so Jiang states, we must Chinese export painting.
take a new look at Canton from the export art
perspective and take export paintings “to show 1.3.
how Canton port played an important role in Other research
32 cultural exchange.” 47 I would like to mention the recently published
In 2003, Lu Wenxue completed his work of Wang Cheng-hua, Associate Research
dissertation Yuedu he lijie: 17 shiji-19 shiji Fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei, and that
zhongqi Ouzhou de Zhongguo tuxiang (Reading of Yeewan Koon, Associate Professor at The
and Understanding: The Image of China in University of Hong Kong. 50 Wang’s article
Europe from the 17th Century to the Mid-19th ‘A Global Perspective on Eighteenth-Century
Century). 48 The English abstract reads that this Chinese Art and Visual Culture’ in The Art
study focuses on the changing Western image Bulletin discusses the interconnectedness of the
of China in the seventeenth and eighteenth world in art and its specific patterns that drew
centuries. The first part provides a historic China and Europe together in the eighteenth
overview of the visual representation of China century. Wang succeeds in extending the
in Europa, given by early Western traders, scholarship on the art and visual culture in the
botanists, draughtsmen, missionaries, engravers, late Qing by approaching the phenomenon of
scholars and geographers. The second part Chinese export painting through the lens of
covers a study into the diverse themes in export appropriation. Wang says, and I agree with her,
paintings. Examples of Chinese cities, customs, that appropriation “gives agency to local actors
costumes, plants and flowers are extensively and is thus one apposite response to the concern
analysed with the aim of investigating what of Eurocentrism in art historical research.” 51
Westerners understand about China from these In her colourfully illustrated book A Defiant
kinds of images and how this understanding Brush. Su Renshan and the Politics of Paintings
influenced Western ideas about China. in Early 19th-Century Guangdong, Koon fills
With the use of newly accessible historical the current gaps in the field by connecting
Chinese textual sources on, for instance, the different spheres of artistic production into a
materials, pigments and paper used for the broader historical context. In particular, her
production of Chinese export painting, new data chapter on art and trade in Guangzhou is very
comes to the fore. Until the 1990s, for example, informative, in the sense that it gives an answer
public institutions in Guangzhou knew little to the question: What type of art circulated in
about pith paper. They neither collected these early nineteenth-century Guangdong? Koon
kinds of artworks, writes Chen Yuhuan in her demonstrates that widening the scope of analysis
preface of Created in Canton, nor did the of export art tailored for an audience outside
curators of the city’s museums and galleries China, e.g. paintings of street peddlers, by
know much about this particular art genre. 49 including the ‘open circuit’ of the Cantonese
The current welcome scholarly efforts broaden domestic image market, broke the

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45 Lingnan (Guangdong) poetry flourished in the late Ming- and early Qing dynasties. The Lingnan poets Qu
Dajun (1630-1696), Chen Gongyin (1631-1700), and Liang Peilan (1632-1708) were regarded as the Three great masters
of Lingnan (source: China and Inner Asia sessions, Session 186: A contending voice from the far South: Lingnan
poetry in seventeenth century China, annual meeting Association for Asian Studies (AAS), 4-7 April 2002.
Unfortunately, when I consulted this source (http://www.aasianst.org/absts/2002abst/China/ sessions.htm) again in
September 2016 this account has been suspended.
46 Email Jiang, 23 November 2015.
47 Ibid.
48 Lu 2003. Lu’s dissertation was submitted at the Department of Public History, Cross Culture Study, at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
49 Williams 2014, ii-iv.
50 Wang 2014-b. Koon 2014.
51 Wang 2014-b, 392.