Page 52 - Christie's London China Trade Paintings Kelton Collection

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CHINESE SCHOOL, CIRCA 1820
The Tea Warehouses at Canton: Tea being delivered to the warehouse; and Packing the tea chests for export
oil on canvas
each 19Ω x 29in. (49.5 x 73.7cm.) (2)
£60,000-80,000 US$75,000-99,000
€68,000-90,000
PROVENANCE:
Jean-Pierre Marque.
Anon. sale, Sotheby’s, 25 Sept. 1986, lot 98.

EXHIBITED:
Brighton, The Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, The China Trade, 1600-1860, Feb.-April 1986, nos 5 and 6.
Two fne and rare early 19th-century pictures depicting the delivery and packing of tea in a Canton warehouse. Tea is seen being
delivered into a packing hall in canisters and poured into a corner of the hall, before being decanted into lead-lined tea chests and
then trodden down before the chests are sealed.

'Hong merchants had warehouses throughout the western suburbs and across the river on Honam (Henan ... ) Island, where they
kept their merchandise. They also had a factory in the Thirteen Hong area, where they had living quarters and where foreigners
could go to examine their wares.' (P. A. van Dyke and M. Kar-Wing Mok, Images of the Canton Factories 1760-1822, Hong Kong,
2015, p.xix).
Most of the warehouses belonging the Hong merchants were in the western district of Canton, a little away from the Hongs and
Old and New China Streets, its neighbouring alleyways lined with shops: 'The shops in the suburbs beyond, in Fan Street, Lantern
Street, Physic Street and Rising Dragon Street, also had a great deal to interest the foreigner. In the autumn of 1838, shortly before
the 'opium crisis', the English amateur artist William Prinsep, who in Bengal had been a student and patron of George Chinnery, was
able to visit a variety of diferent establishments that were technically out of bounds. Prinsep's memoir recalls that in the company
of the French artist Auguste Borget, he 'wandered through the crowded streets behind the European Hongs ... The two artists
were received hospitably by the shopkeepers, who served them 'boiling but exquisitely good tea of course without sugar and milk.'
... Prinsep also went to a tea warehouse, where he saw the tea being trodden down into chests by Chinese men whose bare feet
'were suficiently clean for the purpose.'' (P. Conner, The Hongs of Canton, Western Merchants in South China 1700-1900, as seen in
Chinese export paintings, London, 2009, pp.76-7).
'The evidence given by witnesses before the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1847 to enquire into the
Commercial Relations with China, contains a great deal of information with regard to British trade with China, and as tea was the
chief export, much of the evidence related to that commodity. ... Mr R. M. Martin in his Report on Tea, July 1845, printed in the
Committee's proceedings, says:– "It is more than probable that tea has now reached the limit of its consumption in England and
that any reduction in taxation ... would not augment the use of this innutritious leaf." The import into England in 1846 was about
56½ million lb.' (J. Orange, The Chater Collection, London, 1924).

50 In addition to the hammer price, a Buyer’s Premium (plus VAT) is payable. Other taxes and/or an Artist Resale Royalty
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.