Page 79 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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Hokki, who made drawings and watercolours knowledge of perspective, and the differences of
for him. 76 light and shade have not been much noticed by
Another reminder of the presence of a them, but their colours are vivid and striking,
Chinese export artist in Batavia, comes from and in delineating flowers, animals, or the
Friedrich Baron von Wurmb: “We have a human countenance, they are sometimes very
Chinese here, who has a very clever and steady successful. 80
hand for drawing and who is able to reproduce
everything you place before his eyes with the Another foreign merchant, Osmond Tiffany
utmost exactness, but notwithstanding all the (1823-1895), who wrote about the quality of
trouble I took to teach him the right shading and export paintings, recorded that “nothing can
78 colouring he is not able to reproduce these exceed the splendour of the colours employed in
necessary qualities in his own paintings.” 77 representing the trades, occupations, life,
Furthermore, Caspar Schmalkalden, Sir ceremonies, religions, etc. of the Chinese, which
Stamford Raffles, Marquis Wellesley and all appear in perfect truth in the productions.” 81
Edward Clive were seventeenth- and eighteenth- Their value, according to Tiffany, was not only
century Western patrons who either had Chinese in the appropriate colours, but also the in exact
artists in service, or commissioned them depiction of the figures and their price.
specifically to produce paintings, mainly of Accordingly he wrote: “They cost, for the usual
Indonesian flora and fauna. 78 ln the class of excellence, from one to two dollars a
Netherlands, we know of Jean Theodore Royer dozen; which is not high, when we consider their
(1737-1807), an eighteenth-century collector, truth, the time spent upon them, and the variety
who was familiar with the expertise of the of colours employed.” 82
Chinese artists. From the 1770s, he ordered These nineteenth-century observations, on the
most of the paintings for his Chinese museum in one hand, give us the idea that those men,
The Hague from Canton. His extensive contrary to expectations, were surprised by the
collection of almost 3000 objects, primarily high quality and the truthfulness of the
from China and Japan, was bequeathed to the paintings. This considered truth, however, was a
Dutch royal family at the end of 1914. His selective and subjective reality. It is known and a
legacy was partially the reason for the generally accepted idea that most paintings were
establishment the Royal Cabinet of Rarities (See idealised. On the other hand, the prevailing
also Effert, Van Campen and Chapters 5 and 6). 79 Western painting conventions predominate these
Several Western men in China, either observations, as these men appraise the
merchants, draughtsmen, or missionaries, have performance of the paintings in terms of the lack
written about their time in the Pearl River delta of linear perspective and the assumed ignorance
in the nineteenth century. These primary sources of the principles of light and shade in painting
bear witness to the advance of the Chinese in the techniques. In my opinion, these aspects (varying
fine arts. One observation by the English perspectives and little to no light and shade-
missionary Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857) working) are applied purposefully and are what
reads: make Chinese export painting different and a
fascinating art genre in its own right.
We may observe that the graphical After the Opium Wars in 1842 and at the end
representations of the Chinese are not altogether of the 1850s, which resulted in the forced
despicable. It is true they lamentably fail in the opening of several Chinese ports, according to

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76 Kraus 2005, 70. Josua van Jpern describes this in ‘Beschreibung eines weissen Negers von der Insel Bali’. This
was the German edition of the first publication of the Verhandelingen der Bataviaasch Genootschap van kunsten
en wetenschappen, Leipzig: Wengandsche-Buchhandlung, 1782, 352. Van Jpern worked as secretary to the
Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Batavian Society for Arts and Sciences).
77 Kraus 2005, 70. Friedrich von Wurmb describes this in ‘Briefe des herrn von Wurmb und des Herrn Baron von
Wolzogen auf ihren Reisen nach Afrika und Ostindien in den Jahren 1774-1792’. Von Wurmb was responsible for the
library of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen.
78 Kraus 2005, 68-72.
79 Effert 2003, 2008. Van Campen 2000-a, -b, -c, 2002, 2010.
80 Medhurst 1840, 112-113. Read a more extensive summary of the compliments about the artistic expertise of the
painters in Canton given by contemporary Western visitors in Mok 2005, 32-36.
81 Tiffany 1849, 84.
82 Ibid.