Page 82 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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whose own subject is a Westerner or a Western holds in his hand and the oil painting he makes,
family, whose portrait he holds in his hand while is something we can only speculate about. He
he paints an enlarged portrait in oils. We can could demonstrate his artistic skill in the
assume that the Westerners commissioned the medium of oil painting – one that is coded as
portrait in oil, but those responsible for this superior to and more prestigious than
photographic portrait were the Western photography, as Vinograd so strikingly analyses,
photographer and his potential viewers. The because of “the very act of transfer that the
latter were the agents for this portrait and its photographer witnesses.” 93 The implication of
‘ethnographic gaze’, to which this Chinese this act, then, is that the Western photographer
painter is subjected. This ‘gaze’ is defined by could identify himself as a ‘minor’ “mechanical
artistic, historical and personal considerations. copyist of appearances.” 94 This analysis of 81
The first photo shows a European-style chair Vinograd links to my overarching argument that
and easel, whereas both photos display a painter Chinese export paintings produced as
with the typical Chinese queue, which marks commodities for Western commissioners can be
him as a subject of Manchurian rule. conceived of as artworks, with intelligent and
Futhermore, both present the Chinese manner of artistic efforts by the Chinese painters to ensure
holding the brush, although applied to an that the large oil paintings resemble the tiny
upright rather than – in the Chinese way – a flat photographs as much as possible. This is no
surface. The painter on both pictures is small achievement and something that can only
portrayed as a ‘minor’ copyist, probably subject be done by real artists.
to a semi-industrial (lesser) and mass In the late nineteenth century, the famous
reproductive labour practice. The idea that painting practice in the coastal South Chinese
Western photographers and their implied viewers port cities continued to hold a fascination for the
had a superior attitude towards such practices is people back in the West. The Graphic, another
inspired by the account of Thomson, which British illustrated newspaper, published a series
reads that these Chinese painters: of articles entitled ‘Life in China’. 95 In the 11
January 1873 edition, in Part VII of this series,
drudge with imitative servile toil, copying the newspaper showed an engraving of a
Lamqua’s or Chinnery’s pieces, or anything, no Chinese portrait painter by the English artist Fig. 3.6. Chinese
matter what, just because it has to be finished William Bromley (1769-1842). (Figure 3.6.) portrait painter,
and paid for within a given time, and at so much While the text accompanying the illustration ‘A W. Bromley (painting),
a square foot. […] The occupation of these Chinese artist’ teaches The Graphic readers how M. Harri (engraving),
limners consists mainly in making enlarged to find the best Chinese artists in Canton and The Graphic,
copies of photographs. […] These pictures Hong Kong, informs them about the borrowing 11 January 1873, 35.
would be fair works of art were the drawing
good, and the brilliant colours properly
arranged; but all the distortions of badly taken
photographs are faithfully reproduced on an
enlarged scale. 92

The pejorative notions in this account, together
with the idea of an ‘exotic’ painter and the more
familiar Western portrait subject who meets the
viewer’s gaze from the canvas with a kind of self-
confidence and directness, formed the basis of
the ‘gaze’ of many Western men at that time.
Nevertheless, the Western sitter(s) is/are subject
to the artistry of the Chinese painter as the agent
of his/their image production. The Chinese
painter’s ‘gaze’, split between the photograph he

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92 Thomson 1982, n.p.
93 Vinograd 2015, 21.
94 Ibid.
95 The Graphic was firstly published on 4 December 1869 and ran until 1932. This weekly covered home news and
news from around the British empire, and devoted paid attention to literature, arts, sciences, the fashionable world,
sport, music and opera. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Graphic.