Page 83 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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of European painting technics from the Jesuit of European painting customs at that time.
missionaries, and says something about the As Oliver Moore writes in the IIAS
imitation and the practice of “producing hideous Newsletter, in the late Qing, “the new medium
copies of photographs in oil” in these cities, it of photography was addressed with highly
also tells that: traditional concepts borrowed from the
manugraphic (hand-drawn) skills of painting.
[T]here are still one or two artists who execute Indeed, the popularisation of photography
portraits from life, as in the case of the artist in was in part due to a highly durable conception
our sketch, who, adhering to the conventional that photographers did only what painters had
ideas of Chinese propriety in art, is careful to done and continued to do, both naming their
82 arrange every fold of his sister’s dress with art xiězhēn.” 97 By using this term (xiězhēn) both
geometrical precision, and to avoid as much as photographer and painter considered their work
as an accurate rendition of the depicted scene
and/or as a painted portrait. It has been widely
admitted that the early Chinese photographers
had their background in (export) painting.
Figure 3.7a. shows a visual from the Tuhau
ribao (Pictorial Daily) depicting painting and
photography side by side to accentuate the
overlap between these two practices. 98 In the
calligraphy, the last two characters on the right
side read 写真, xiě zhēn.
Another example of the close connection
between both artistic businesses in the last
quarter of nineenth-century China and Hong
Kong, is the picture, taken by an anonymous
photographer. (Figure 3.7.b.) It regularly
happened that these kinds of photographs of a
lady, with her bound ‘lily’ feet clearly visible,
was enlarged and rendered into oil on canvas.
Sometimes, a photographer-cum-painter ‘re-
used’ his photowork for his other (painting)
business and, inspired by the female sitters and
the lucarative business that these kinds of
paintings promised, put up his artwork up for
sale to either Chinese or European customers.
Fig. 3.7.a. The urban possible shading in the face, as were he to (See Figure 3.5.b.)
professions of painting introduce the shading deemed necessary by our In the twenty-first century, there are still
portraits and prejudiced minds to give modelling and body to artists’ studios and workshops where mass
photograping. Tuhua the figure, the work would, in all probability, be production meets the Western demand for
ribao (Illustrated Daily thrown on his hands as a failure, seeing that the paintings from China. The mass production of
News), ca. 1909-1910. Chinese cannot understand why one side of a copied oil paintings in Dafen, near the South-
face or feature should be darker than the other. 96 Chinese village of Shenzhen, is the most famous
location for this kind of work. 99 Paintings in all
Again, this text shows a quite arrogant attitude sorts of sizes, figurative or abstract, are made to
of the British writer towards the Chinese painter order and shipped to the West via major trading
(“the work would, in all probability, be thrown houses. Here, again, Western taste is central.
on his hands as a failure, when he painted shade- Chinese painters turn out perfect copies of
work”), who exhibits his sophisticated skills by Western masterpieces; production amounts to
producing a magnificently large and detailed oil millions of paintings per year. The success of the
painting. In addition, this subjective notion contemporary Chinese art in the global art
highlights the leading position, if not hegemony, market means Dafen painters also produce

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96 The Graphic, 11 January 1873, 35. See: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.
97 Moore 2007, 6.
98 Tuhau Ribao, no. 134, 1909, 8; Gu 2013, 126; Moore 2007, 6.
99 www.dafenpainting.com. Wong 2010, 2011 and 2013.