Page 80 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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Kraus, the cycle of the China trade changed The second is copying the same in oil. He holds
significantly, as did the corresponding clientele his brush differently from a European, and rests
for export painting. 83 The emergence of his hand on a flat piece of wood. In his left hand
photography in China and Hong Kong around he holds the daguerreotype which he is enlarging.
the 1840s, immediately threatened the livelihood The Chinese enlarge their pictures by squares,
of a number of export painters. For those who in the same manner as we do. The third is
were more innovative, the introduction of this painting a view of Hong Kong for some merchant
new medium resulted in a rather promising captain. Two ‘free and enlightened citizens’ are
business opportunity. They switched to running entering, with the intention of having their
photography shops, where they expanded their features handed down to posterity. Hong Kong
painting practice by mixing techniques such as is full of these painters. […] Some of the native 79
enlarging photographs and offering services like painters are extremely clever, and a few of them
retouching negatives or photographic prints, have engrafted European perspective upon
tinting photographs, adding colour to the black- Chinese minuteness and are consequently able to
and-white (or sepia) images and painting on top produce very creditable oil and watercolour
of them to make portraits. Many painters pictures. Buth their forte is copying miniatures
advertised themselves as ‘artist and from photographs: this they do to perfection,
photographer’, ‘photographer and painter on having been taught by Europeans. Some of their
canvas’, ‘photographer and portrait painter’, colours are well known and justly celebrated in
‘photographer and ivory painter’, and so on. 84 Europe, perhaps none more so than the
It is known that the Cantonese export painters vermillion, though the most magnificent blue is
Lamqua and Sunqua (act. 1830-1865) already made in great quantities. 88
had studios based in Hong Kong in 1846. 85
In the rapidly increasing foreign trade in the Despite the affable ‘brother artists’ used by the
British colony, a new kind of trade in export art editor of The Illustrated London News, the
was created, namely, the painting (copying) of tendentious tone of voice of this article –
daguerreotype images and the printing of a Eurocentric, full of badinage and showing moral
carte-de-visite, together with a photographic
image of a Chinese painter. 86 This business
caught the imagination of many and illustrations
and photographs of painters performing this
practice showed up in Western newspapers and
weekly magazines. An engraving from a sketch
by Charles Wirgman (1832-1891), an English
artist and cartoonist and working as the ‘Special
Artist in China’ for The Illustrated London
News, shows the interior of a Chinese studio in
Hong Kong, where, as we read in the
accompanying text, “we have three brother
artists at work.” 87 (Figure 3.4.) The caption
reads further:

The first is working at a miniature, from a
daguerreotype, and beautifully he manages it.

--- Fig. 3.4. Chinese artists,
83 Kraus 2005, 73. Charles Wirgman,
84 Gu 2013, 123. wood block print on
85 Lee Sai Chong 2005, 242-246. In the years preceding the first Opium War, Lamqua and Sunqua managed large paper, 28 x 40.5 cm,
artists’ studios in Canton. In his dissertation on this subject, Lee informs us extensively about them and the studios The Illustrated London
of other well-known Cantonese master painters, such as Tingqua, Fatqua, Tonqua, Puqua, Namcheong and Youqua. News, 30 April 1859,
86 Lee Sai Chong 2005, 243, 252-253. An example of this practice (a printed carte-de-visite with an image of a 428, Hong Kong
Chinese painter) was Pun-Lun, photographer and ivory painter, no. 56 Queen’s Road, upstairs, opposite the Oriental Museum of Art,
Bank Hong Kong. inv.no. AH1980.0042.
87 The Illustrated London News, April 30, 1859, 428. This newspaper is the first illustrated periodical in the world,
which was printed for 161 years from 1842 to 2003. It is regarded as the finest pictorial example and historic social
record of British and world events up to the early twenty first century. See: http://www.iln.org.uk.
88 The Illustrated London News, April 30, 1859, 428.