Page 75 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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of about 30 painting studios in the vicinity of the were put to work in this branch of the industry:
foreign hongs, where he could buy his pith paper
watercolours. 57 In 1835, The Chinese Repository 39. Pictures; oil paintings, rice paper pictures.
also wrote that there were approximately 30 There are many shops in Canton, Whampoa,
artists’ studios in Canton. 58 In 1848, however, and Hong Kong, where maps and charts are
when the French daguerreotypist Jules Itier copied, and scenes in oil are made in large
(1802-1877) wrote his extensive travelogue of quantities, priced from $ 3 to $100 a piece;
his journey, upon his return to France after he pictures and engravings are accurately copied,
stayed for several years in China, he mentioned and some of the views and Chinese landscapes
Youqua’s atelier: are well drawn. The paintings on pith paper are
74 well known. [...] The copying of miniatures or
Il y a, dans Old-China Street, un magasin des engravings on ivory also forms a branch of
plus renommés pour ses peintures à la gouache industry of some importance; and the finer
sur papier dit de riz, comme pour les dessins aut specimens of work of these artists are very
trait et les tableaux à l’huile qu’on y fabrique. Je beautiful. Outline designs in India ink, of the
me sers de ce mot, parce que ‘est réelement une crafts and professions among the Chinese, are
fabrique que l’atelier du célèbre Yom-qua. 59 sold in books at a cheap price, and some of them
are admirably designed. Of all these the number
This quote from Itier about painters working annually carried away is very great, and their
like factory workers indicates there were many manufacture furnishes employment to hundreds
of them. It was recorded some years after the of workmen. 62
first Opium War (1839-1842) and it gives
us a sense of the large scale of this painting Further, in 1862, Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de
production. 60 It matches other records from Conches (1798-1887), French diplomat,
that period, namely, also in 1848, Samuel Wells journalist, writer and collector, wrote in his
Williams recorded that the production of export Causeries d’un curieux:
paintings in Canton was carried out by
“between two- and three thousand pairs of L’atelier de Joé-Koa, à Canton, est tout à fait
hands.” 61 The way in which Williams described dans le meme style. Plusieurs centaines
this painting practice says something about d’ouvriers, plus qu’à-demis nus, à cause de la
working in an assembly line with a division of chaleur, y travaillent sous la direction de
labour and it shows a degree of disrespect for contremaîtres. 63
the hard-working individuals. We can assume
that he saw the production as being done by This observation by Feuillet de Conches makes
‘working hands’ and not by complete persons clear that, as a master painter, Youqua had his
with brains and a heart, who were trying to studio firmly organised with men who
personalise their own masterpiece within the supervised the other painters’ work, in order to
limitations set. The same author subsequently achieve the highly appreciated Youqua-quality
wrote in the Chinese Commercial Guide that that his customers expected. It is likely that the
there were many details and regulations in availability of cheap labour was an important
respect of foreign trade in 1856 and that the aspect, just as it had been over the centuries
number of oil paintings, watercolours and ivory throughout China and, certainly, it was essential
engravings were so great that hundreds of people in nineteenth-century China for competing with

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57 Crosmann 1991, 150. Bryant Tilden’s papers are concerned with life and trading in China, in the second decade of
the nineteenth century; they are held at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Massachusetts, US.
58 Lee Sai Chong 2005, 197. The Chinese Repository, October 1835, no. 6.
59 Itier 1848, 17. Translation: In Old China Street, there is one of the most renowned stores for his [Youqua]
paintings in gouache on paper, called ricepaper, and for line drawings and oil paintings that are made there. I use
that word (fabrique), because actually [think] the workshop of the celebrated Yom-qua is like a factory.
60 It is imaginable that the foreign trade (including the Chinese export painting market) in Canton benefitted too
of the opening of Hong Kong harbour in 1842.
61 Williams 1848, 175, quoted in Clunas 1984, 81.
62 Williams 1856, 181.
63 Feuillet de Conches 1862, 147-148. Translation: Youqua’s studio in Canton is quite in the same style [as Lamqua’s].
Several hundreds of artists with bare backs because of the heat work there under the direction of the foremen.