Collecting Chinese Flora

Ming Qing Yanjiu 24 (2020) 209–244 brill.com/mqyj Collecting Chinese Flora: Eighteenth- to Nineteenth-Century Sino-British Scientific and Cultural Exchanges as Seen through British Collections of China Trade Botanical Paintings Josepha Richard University of Bristol, UK [email protected] Abstract In the eighteenth to nineteenth century, British botanists collected thousands of Chinese plants to advance their knowledge of natural history. John Bradby Blake was the first British botanist to systematically collect Chinese plants in the 1770s, a time when foreigners could only access Guangzhou (Canton). This article demonstrates that Blake’s Chinese flora project heavily relied on the work of Chinese ‘go-betweens’, notably painter Mak Sau, who painted Chinese plants in a scientifically accurate man- ner. The genre of Canton Trade botanical paintings is a hybrid between European botanical tradition and Chinese bird-and-flower paintings that had previously been difficult to analyse owing to the lack of chronological evidence. Thanks to new data uncovered in different Blake collections, this article begins to untangle the chronology of these botanical paintings, and in the process uncovers the untold agency of Chinese ‘go-betweens’ in early Sino-Western scientific and cultural exchanges. Keywords Chinese export art – natural history – history of collections – Canton System – China Trade – botany – botanical illustrations During the Canton System period (1757–1842), Western European and North American visitors to China could only visit Guangzhou and Macao. This restric- tion did not reduce the volume in tea trade, but it did have an impact on the © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/24684791-12340049Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 10:23:39PM via free access 210 Richard sort of Chinese art that was brought back to Europe. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, a large quantity of paintings and decorative art pieces ei- ther made in Guangzhou, or other parts of China and transiting through the city, were brought back to Western Europe and North America by the traders engaged in the China Trade. These Chinese artworks were no longer only made for Chinese tastes: there started to be artworks purposefully made for the Western market. China Trade art (sometimes called ‘export art’) is character- ized by the fact that it was meant for sale to foreigners: some Chinese artists exclusively worked for the Western European and North American market spe- cifically, and their artworks were literally ‘made for trade’.1 Some of these artworks the foreign visitors intended to sell once back home, and many ended up in the collections of European gentry. Parts of the artworks were meant as me- mentos to remember the traders’ time in China and display in their home—in time most of these too found their way to the auction houses. When looking for new information on Chinese cultural history, China Trade art might not appear as the most evident source of enquiry, since its purpose was to please a non-Chinese audience. Despite some undeniable pressure to conform to the orientalist expecta- tions of their intended audience, and adoption of certain techniques such as Western perspective, scholars have shown that China Trade paintings can make for surprisingly reliable historical evidence. Lawrence Wu demonstrated that mid-nineteenth-century China Trade watercolours made in Ningbo and now kept in the Brooklyn Museum accurately represented Chinese trades such as street food vendors by contrasting them with early photographs.2 Kee Il Choi Jr. has elucidated the origins of several frequently represented land- scapes and cityscapes in and around Guangzhou.3 Economic historian Paul van Dyke and art historian Maria Mok have more recently used a series of cityscapes to document the architectural history of the Factories, a row of buildings where Western European and North American merchants lived and traded in Guangzhou during the period of the Canton System.4 China Trade paintings were also shown to be realistic depictions of Chinese merchants’ gar- dens at the same period, down to the very potted plants whose species could be identified.5 The present article focuses on China Trade botanical paintings 1 Hence the title of Rosalien van der Poel’s Made for Trade, Made in China: Chinese Export Paintings in Dutch Collections (2016). 2 Lawrence Wu 1989: 63. 3 Kee Il Choi 1997, 1998, 1999. 4 Van Dyke and Mok 2015. 5 Richard and Woudstra 2018. Ming Qing YanjiuDownloaded 24 from (2020) Brill.com10/03/2021 209–244 10:23:39PM via free access Collecting Chinese Flora 211 made in Guangzhou under the Canton System. Carl Crossman agreed with Craig Clunas that among China Trade paintings, “botanical subjects were some of the very few which grew out of a native Chinese tradition”.6 Indeed when Western European botanists asked the employees of maritime enterprises to gather Chinese flora in the eighteenth century, they found that Chinese painters with an already extant tradition of painting naturalistic plants were ideally suited to produce scientifically accurate botanical paintings to accompany live specimen. The Song Academic School of painting in particular is known for its naturalistic style of ‘birds and flowers’ genre.7 The fact that foreign naturalists commis- sioned botanical paintings for scientific purposes means that the agency of the Chinese painters, as well as that of other Chinese contributors that helped collect the plants represented, was often forgotten. At some point in time China Trade painters modified botanical paintings meant as scientific tools to sell the latter in decorative albums to their foreign customers. The chronology of this transition has not so far been studied in detail, in large part due to the vast numbers of albums that such research entails, and their dispersion across the globe. This paper is an attempt to establish such a chronology, by using collections that are largely kept outside of China. Although foreign commissioners, customers, and collectors amount to a large part of this story, the aim of the paper is to reinstate some of the agency for the creation of both types of China Trade botanical paintings to multiple hidden Chinese contributors. As such the topic is firmly grounded in the late Qing dynasty history of collections. 1 Dating British Collections of China Trade Botanical Art Although it is slowly becoming part of ‘mainstream’ Chinese art history, ex- pertise in China Trade art has long lied within the exclusive realm of enlightened collectors. Whether descendants of their original owners or acquirers through auction houses, a large debt is owed to worldwide collectors in dating and attributing China Trade artworks. Crossman acknowledged as much in the foreword to the updated edition of Decorative Art of the China Trade in 1991, which is still the uncontested reference book in the field. One of the earliest enlightened collectors of China Trade paintings was American trader Nathan Dunn (1782–1844), whose Chinese Museum opened in Philadelphia 6 Clunas 1984: 82; Crossman 1991: 182. 7 Hulton and Smith 1979: 3–7. Ming Qing Yanjiu 24 (2020) 209–244 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 10:23:39PM via free access 212 Richard in 1838, was briefly exhibited in 1840–1850s England, and was consequently dispersed through auction sale.8 The contemporary reception of the artworks was far from warm, despite Dunn’s praise for the artists’ realistic skills. The mass-produced nature of the great part of the artworks, and at times failed attempts to conform to Western taste when it came to the use of perspective, were common criticisms of China Trade artworks.9 The largest single collec- tion worldwide likely remains that of the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, founded in 1799 by families involved in the China Trade. Since the British generated the most volume of trade among foreigners in nineteenth-century Guangzhou, it is unsurprising that the United Kingdom holds numerous private and public collections of China Trade art. The latter were little known until the important works of Patrick Conner and Craig Clunas were published in the 1990s.10 Since the 2000s, scholars are progressively rediscovering China Trade artworks long held in European and North American museums, encountering is- sues such as uncertain dating and attribution. In La Rochelle in France, several genre paintings by Youqua had simply been forgotten under a table in the museum’s reserve until they were rediscovered by Genevieve Lacambre in 2005.11 Since then, the oil paintings have been restored and exhibited successfully. For museums, acquiring China Trade artworks constitutes a safe investment, as the artworks were usually legally acquired, contrarily to other Chinese artworks whose provenance might not be as clear. In response to more frequent exhibitions and new publications, the value of China Trade art has risen in auction houses across the world. As such, China Trade art makes for an ideal and contemporarily relevant topic when it comes to the history of collecting, collections, and collectors in the context of late imperial China and its global connections. Botanical paintings are especially interesting since their interconnection with the Chinese tradition of bird and flower paintings and Western naturalist endeavours allows us to query the motivations of both artists and customers across the span of roughly a century of global connections in Guangzhou. At the origin of my interest in dating China Trade botanical paintings is an album kept in the British Museum. Combining three different genres includ- ing Chinese flora, costumes, and boats from the late eighteenth century, the 8 Jane C. Ju 2014: 62. 9 Maria Mok 2014: 32. 10 Clunas 1987; Conner 1996. 11 Moreau and Musée des beaux-arts de La Rochelle 2015: 13. Ming Qing YanjiuDownloaded 24 from (2020) Brill.com10/03/2021 209–244 10:23:39PM via free access Collecting Chinese Flora 213 paintings are not in a silk binding and were probably combined in a leather album after leaving China.

Load more