This page has tags:

1. 1 media/ChinaTradeOldChinaSt.jpg 2016-05-04T18:12:50-07:00 Zachary Ziebell 8eecdb2214ffc2e89ec5ed5f180953625d845cc7 The China Trade Era Caroline Frank 20 image_header 281351 2019-08-11T07:44:12-07:00 Caroline Frank a1a5e7e9a2c3dba76ecb2896a93bf66ac8d1635e

This page is referenced by:

• 1 2016-02-26T12:37:34-08:00 Export Art 8 plain 2017-02-01T07:42:03-08:00

      In addition to the narrative accounts transmitted to Europe, information regarding China was also diffused through the trade in commodities conducted by the various European East Indies Companies and a flood of U.S. traders after 1784. Large quantities of Chinese porcelain, lacquer, silk, furniture, paper screens, wallpapers and fans were exported to Europe and the United States, and used to create an “Oriental” atmosphere in Western households.[3] These fruits of trade stimulated Western interest in an “exotic” China, contributing to and building upon the 18th-century rococo aesthetic of chinoiserie, a derisive miming of an imaginary Asian exoticism. Among the exported artifacts found in Western homes was a new style of Chinese painting created by Cantonese artists catering specifically to the foreign market. This export art became an integral source of information on Chinese culture for Europeans and Americans in the late 18th through 19th century, and it therefore deserves close scrutiny by scholars of Sino-Western history.

      Paintings of Chinese punishment were a unique category of export art. As traditional Chinese painters were not interested in presenting violent scenes, these punishment paintings did not correspond with traditional Chinese aesthetic values, and clearly deviated from “the rule of morality and benevolence”(德治仁政), which was highly emphasized and promoted by Chinese rulers and taste-makers. The paintings of Chinese penalty sold at the port of Guangzhou, however, are realistic and life-like, and “the true reflection of the social life at the time. These pictures were not only desired by Westerners, but also widely used in public prints in Europe, when news stories greatly affect European impression of China.[4] These paintings, along with the narratives of the Qing legal system, presented the Chinese as unusually cruel. The impact of this art should be discussed in the context of both European and Chinese societies.
  ________________________

  
  
  ^{[3] Nancy Ellen Davis, “The American China Trade, 1784-1844: Products for the Middle Class.” George Washington University Dissertation, 1987
  [4] Cun,Jie 存洁. Shijiu shiji Zhongguo waixiao tongcao shuicai hua yanjiu 十九世纪中国外销通草水彩画研究. Shanghai上海: Guji chuban she古籍出版社, 2008.p. 62: “是當時社會生活的真實寫照，...不僅成為西方人士競相爭閱的圖畫，也被廣泛用在歐洲的大眾印刷品中，圖解當時的新聞故事，大大影響著歐洲人對中國的印象.”}