From the middle of the 18th century trade had increased between China and England, America and countries in Europe for tea, porcelain and silk and led to curiosity about life in the exotic east. Guangzhou (Canton) was the only port in China open to the west, and wives and children were not allowed there, sometimes staying in neighbouring Macau.
Gouache Paintings
So western traders commissioned albums of people and scenes of daily life. The paintings, usually produced in gouache on pith paper, were executed in Chinese studios by a number of painters who each specialized in one aspect such as the heads, clothing, trees, and so on. Those from the studios of Tinqua, who was the best known artist working in Guangzhou during 19th century, and Youqua (both fl.1840-1870) are highly prized for their exquisite detail. Bright flat colours and western perspective, not found in Chinese painting, was incorporated giving the work a charming naivety.
Boxed sets of albums showed every aspect of Chinese life from birth to death, each album containing between four and fifty paintings bound between silk brocade or embroidered covers. Macau and Guangzhou, and later Shanghai, Xiamen (Amoy) and Hong Kong were also depicted when these ports were opened. These full sets sometimes come to light, but most have now been split up and framed individually.
Larger paintings in gouache depicted processes which were familiar to the western traders at the time. Tea production, from picking the leaves to packing them in chests; silk production, from gathering mulberry leaves, feeding the silkworms, to weaving the silk; and all the steps in making porcelain were the three main activities illustrated usually in sets of twelve.
China Trade Oil Paintings
Chinese painters such as Spoilum (fl. 1785-1810) and Lamqua (fl. 1830-1860), produced complete works by themselves. (One school of thought believes Spoilum to have been the father of Lamqua and his brother Tingqua.) These paintings, in oils, were of western sailing ships, sea captains and western and Chinese merchants, or of scenes in gardens belonging to Hong compradors (middlemen) which the foreign traders visited periodically.
George Chinnery, Thomas and William Daniell
Possibly the most famous painter on the south China coast in the first half of the 19th century was an Englishman, George Chinnery, who was born in London in January 1774. He moved to Ireland then fleeing to escape his wife, he lived for a while in India before arriving in Macau in February 1825 where he stayed until his death in 1852. Chinnery's sketches and oil paintings of Macau, and portraits of sea captains, important merchants, traders, and their families give a vivid picture of life in the nineteenth century and now fetch very high prices. Thomas and William Daniell, uncle(1749-1840) and nephew (1769-1837) respectively, who were in Guangzhou in 1785 were also well-regarded western artists. The London-based dealer Martin Gregory carries a selection of these artists, as well as those below.
Auguste Bourget, William Prinsep, Thomas Watson and Charles Wirgman
Others who painted in oils or watercolours, some of whom met and worked alongside Chinnery, included Auguste Bourget (1808-1877) the best known French artist to visit China and Macau between 1838 and his return to France in the 1840s, William Prinsep (1794-1874) who had studied drawing under Chinnery in Calcutta, Thomas Boswall Watson (1815-1860) who was Chinnery's doctor, and Charles Wirgman (1832-1891) who was the official illustrator and reporter for The Illustrated London News based in Hong Kong for four years from 1859, making several forays into China.
Further reading on Chinese export paintings: Carl Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, pub. Antique Collectors Club, 1991; Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours pub. V&A, 1984. Patrick Conner, The Hongs of Canton,
Western Merchants in south China 1700-1900, as seen in Chinese export paintings, pub 2009.
Valery Garrett - I was born in England but I’ve lived in Hong Kong for over thirty years. At first I worked as a fashion designer for some large ...
