Page 16 - Bonhams Roy David's Collection Nov 2014 London

at Canton. On gaining permanent residence at the five treaty
ports, the British population in China grew in size and became
more diverse, to include consular staff (officials/collectors in Arbuthnot, Bedford, Collins, Boode, Bowman, Runge,
the Chinese Customs Service like Hippisley and Hirth) and
a permanent military presence, in addition to traders and
increased missionary activity… The British residents in China
represented a new group of collectors, with access to a wider
range of objects than previously… Treaty ports provided a base
for collecting directly in China rather then through the China
trade or the circulation of previously exported goods within
Europe.
Examples of these new collectors were Robert Fortune, John
Henry Gray and Stephen Bushell.
9. Numerous Western collectors (some 30 of them
at least), like Reeves, Freer, Bahr, Sir Percival David, Veith,
N.S.Brown, Gulland, Crofts, Crozier, Garratt, Hoover,
Schoenlicht and Liddell, buying personally in China or
through agents there. The American William Pethick (d. 1901),
secretary and diplomatic adviser to Li Hung Chang, the Qing
statesman and a great collector of porcelain, is credited with
forming much of the collections of Squiers and Charles Dana.
The biography of Robert Fortune in ‘Provenance’ will reward
reading on this subject.
10. Western dealers buying directly in China, either
on personal visits or through representatives sent by
them, or through agents who had established themselves
in the East, including in the Peking antique markets, Hong
Kong, Shanghai, and the Western territories, and factories,
and doubtless the Legations as well.
In addition, foreign art dealers began to appear in Beijing
and the major treaty ports, and they seem to have consulted
with the experts in the legations. As they bought up valuable
collections, newly classified objects found their way into
European and US markets. The volume of this traffic seems to
have been so great that on her seventh visit to China in 1899,
Eliza Scidmore declared that travellers could forget about
finding valuable curios in Chinese markets; the best things were former Imperial gifts, brought back by British Imperial
on sale in London, Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Weimar, New York
and Baltimore, not Beijing.
Yamanaka had his own estate in Peking and made regular
buying trips and George Eumorfopoulos made it clear that
Yamanaka was responsible for much of the quality of his
huge collection. Some dealers like Loo, E.T.Chow, Tonying
and T.Y.King had special lines into sources of high quality and
Imperial wares, long after such sources were closed to others.
Sparks also went personally.
11. Westerners in China acting (many of the
doubtless part-time) in parallel with more official functions:
Lowder and others. The Richard Bennett and G.R.Davies
collections, to name only two, were ‘formed entirely of pieces
intended for home use in China and imported in great part
direct from that country’, some of the pieces, for Davies for
instance, supplied by E.O.Arbuthnot in Shanghai; Andrew
Burman also supplied Davies and Gulland.
12. Local dealers, mostly indigenous, in Hong Kong,
particularly from the 1950s, selling to Westerners. From this
territory a great deal of illicit trade originating on the mainland
was conducted in the early Communist era in China.
13. Unknown quantities looted and carried home by
the Japanese when, at various times, they invaded and
occupied parts of China. Japan became, and is, a rich vein
for Western dealers, auction houses and collectors.
14. The activities of international auction houses,
operating latterly in Hong Kong, doubtless tacitly
encouraged the flow of goods from mainland China and
other areas and countries in the East, drawing out Chinese
domestic-market wares for the local Hong Kong and
international markets.
15. Auction sales in the West by Oriental dealers and
residents. On 7-8 February 1907, for instance, S.Koopman
(his name written in handwriting in the catalogue) consigned
Chinese porcelains to Christie’s in London, described as ‘the
property of a Gentleman and were formerly in the Collection of
His Excellency Chen-Kwang-Foo, late Viceroy of Nanking’, lots
78-129, blue and white and enamelled wares. On 3 February
1921, Christie’s in London had 135 lots of porcelain for sale ‘by
Order of the Judge of His Majesty’s Provincial Court Hankow’.
16. Fine Chinese pieces from other countries –
Persia, India, Africa and Egypt – partly the result of earlier
indigenous ‘better taste’ than in the West, and including
officers, officials and their families, for instance, Mrs
Halsey, Sayce, Sir John Home and Berkeley Smith.
17. Pieces supplied to Western dealers by soldiers
and sailors returning from the East: to Gump, for instance,
particularly after 1860 and 1900. The Opium Wars, though
regular trade with China was suspended during their course,
eventually created new channels for the armed forces for
collecting in China itself. Private collectors would have benefited
directly or indirectly from military spoils, as, to cite the most
advantageous example, Alfred Morrison did from Captain
Henry Loch’s in 1861.