Page 87 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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directly to foreign consumers. In such cases, the watercolours and gouaches, the vast majority of
shop assistant and the hong merchants could be which form the so-called Royer Collection (more
considered as middlemen. It is known that about this later). 117
during visits to the homes of Chinese hong Undoubtedly, more research can be done of
merchants, who maintained cordial working ships’ lists, family archives and inventories of
relations with their foreign colleagues, Chinese possessions with regard to who exactly the VOC
export paintings were bought by these Western and its successors, such as the Nederlandsche
traders. In this sense, they functioned Handels-Maatschappij (The Netherlands
simultaneously as middlemen, private Trading Society), transported Chinese export
businessmen and as pioneers in cultural and paintings for. It is clear that this transport was
86 economic exchange between China and the usually commissioned unofficially, otherwise it
West. We can confidently say that this would be listed in the relevant archivalia; this is
transcultural export painting market functioned not the case. 118 Private merchants were
because of, and not in spite of the Chinese frequently in charge of the purchase of export
painting shopkeepers. Besides their colourful art from China (via the Dutch East Indies). The
painting practice, they also tried to sell the illegal and private trade or even smuggling
works and make money. Hardly any middlemen, obscures a clear view of the official trading
in the sense of marketeers promoting the goods, which were not specified in the ships’
paintings, were needed for the art trade commodities lists. Hence, it is a daunting task to
transactions. After Hong Kong opened up after map the commercial aspect of the nineteenth-
the first Opium War in 1843, many painters century Dutch Chinese export painting market.
moved their business or opened a second In the Introduction to this dissertation I argued,
painting shop. Once photography had made its therefore, that there was no thriving domestic
appearance in the second half of the nineteenth trade in Chinese export paintings and that they
century, there was talk of ‘touters’. According to were mainly collectibles for private use, in the
an observation by Thomson, the British Netherlands at that time.
photographer who was in Hong Kong in 1873, The reference work, The Provenance Index of
these often young boys were tasked with the Getty Information Institute by Fredericksen
“scouring the shipping in the harbour and at the (ed.), which contains the corpus of paintings
quay, with samples of, for example, enlarged sold in the Netherlands during the first decade of
painted copies of photographs, in order to find the nineteenth century, reports that the Dutch
ready customers among the foreign sailors.” 116 market differed from those in Paris or London:
Since the South-Chinese port cities had similar
export painting businesses with similar clients in that it consisted almost exclusively of pieces
and painters even had studios in more than one produced within its own borders, whereas the
city, we can assume that the same practice was British market, and to a lesser degree the French,
also happening in Canton. was largely composed of works produced in
Once the products moved outwards into the other countries. This was partially owing to
world of Western art markets art dealers re- topography, since the Low Countries were less
emerge as important middlemen along the centrally placed than London or Paris for pan-
trajectory of the paintings. To understand how European trade, but is also resulted from the
they found their way onto Dutch soil, this enormous volume of pictures produced in the
section briefly outlines the nineteenth-century Netherlands, coupled with a very limited taste
Dutch art market for Chinese export paintings. among the Dutch for the art of other countries. 119
The precise numbers of Chinese export paintings
that entered the Netherlands awaits further Chinese export paintings were obviously not
research. Today, an inventory of Dutch readily available at the major Dutch auctions
collections reveals about 150 oil paintings (on houses in this period (the first decade of the
glass and on canvas) and thousands of nineteenth century).

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116 Thomson 1873, vol. 1. 1982, n.p.
117 Van Campen 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2010.
118 Communication Christiaan Jörg (2008). Field research in mentioned primary sources in the National Archive,
The Hague Royal Library and the National Maritime Museum yielded little useful information in this regard.
Literature research and reports from the five Dutch NTS expeditions to Canton in the years 1825-1830 also did not
provide information about Dutch commissions for the production of Chinese export paintings.
119 Fredericksen 1998, ix-x.