Page 19 - Christie's London China Trade Paintings Kelton Collection

*5
CHINESE SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY
The Cultivation and Export of Tea – a set of twenty-four
all numbered in red (lower right) and titled with Chinese characters, titled in English on the backing paper
pen and ink and watercolour on paper mounted on thin laid paper
each 9æ x 9æin. (24.7 x 24.7cm.) (24)
£10,000-15,000 US$13,000-19,000
€12,000-17,000
PROVENANCE:
Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 29 Jan. 1986, lot 4.
'Tea, an exotic herbal infusion of largely medicinal aspect when Samuel Pepys noted his frst cup in his diary in 1660, had by the
second half of the eighteenth century become an indispensible adjunct to civilised life and social intercourse across northern
Europe and the east coast of the United States. It formed by far the largest part of the value of the trade with China and would
continue to do so well into the nineteenth century, even when the Chinese monopoly on its cultivation was broken by the British
establishment of tea plantations in India and Ceylon.' (C. Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, 1984, p.23).
The sets of watercolours painted by the Cantonese artists for the western market illustrate the various stages from cultivation
and picking to packing and export, the series set in fantastic imagined landscapes, the artists unlikely to have ever visited the tea-
growing districts of Fujian, Zhejian and Jiangsu.

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fee are also payable if the lot has a tax or λ symbol. Check Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of this catalogue.