Punishment paintings appearing in Guangzhou in the latter half of the 18th century were great attractions for foreigners. According to Toogood Downing, an American who visited Guangzhou in 1836, “at the present time, many of the painters at Canton make a great deal of money by drawing terrific pictures on rice-paper, and selling them to the foreign visitors, who are ready enough to believe the natives capable of any kind of cruelty. Whether these barbarous instruments of punishment were ever in use at a former time may be a matter of doubt, but certainly they are not at present in existence."[5] In addition, Downing further believes that the paintings are merely the result of wild imagination and fantasy, instead of a presentation of actual punishments:  “The barbarous torments depicted on the rice-paper, and which have often been supposed in Europe to the real tortures inflicted on unfortunate Chinese, are many of them well known to be entirely imaginary and founded upon the religious notions of the natives. The Buddhists believe that there will be rewards and punishments hereafter, and therefore rack their brains to devise fitting torments for the damned in the infernal region. The painters exercise their invention in the east, on the same subjects as some of our most celebrated poets of the west."[6] Based on this assumption, Downing even believes that the paintings was deliberately encouraged by the authority to warn both domestic and foreign audiences: “I am inclined to think, that the mandarins encourage the publication of these monstrous productions, many of which are really barbarous, in order to instill into the minds of the people, a due degree of respect for the power of the law; but more especially to overawe the Fan-quis, whom they hope by this means to keep in good order."[7] As the narratives of foreigners traveling in Guangzhou during the time suggest, for artists catering to both domestic and foreign markets, there was clearly a connection between the sources for their traditional works and those for export purposes. This is, without doubt, an important feature of the Cantonese punishment art arriving in the West in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Although these paintings on penalties largely deviated from traditional Chinese aesthetic standards, similar works on the legal system, sentencing, and imprisonment are still found in various traditional paintings from outside the judicial sphere. For instance, Shang Xi, a painter who served in the court of Ming Dynasty 1430 to 1440, painted Guan Yu arresting the General (關羽擒將圖), which depicts the story of general Guan Yu, who captured an enemy general, Pang De, and tried to subdue him through torture. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, popular woodblock print engravings reached its climax. Carvers and painters across the country created a vast archive of printed paintings, used to illustrate books including novels, dramas, encyclopedias, religious writings, natural history, and readings for women.

    Among these mass-produced print paintings, themes on punishments and prisons were common. For example, “prison visiting” included in the 1566 book The story of Li Mirror (荔镜记) presents the scene of a relative of the prisoner paying him a visit. In this picture, the prisoner and the visitor are divided by a thick wall and are under surveillance of the warden. Furthermore, in novels about Judge Bao (包公), courtroom and investigation scenes are even more common. Due to the similarities in composition and themes, it can be assumed that many of the exported paintings depicting decapitation, whipping, and inquisition drew inspiration from these traditional wood-block engravings. For instance, the depictions of trials and punishments are often included in “The New Legend of Judge Bao in the Case of Wupen”(新刊說唱包龍圖斷歪鳥盆傳) and “The Legend of Liu Dusai on Lantern Festival” (師官受妻劉都賽上元十五夜看燈傳) published during Chenghua Period, in which scenes such as “Judge Bao in the Trial of the Wupen Case”(包相捉耿一耿二斷鳥盆) and “Judge Bao oversees the decapitation of convicts”(包相監斬犯人) offer detailed depictions of the court trial and decapitation. In addition, the book The Brave Lady (英烈傳), published during Jiaqing Period, included illustrations of shackled prisoners in its chapter “The War at Chengzhou”(戰承州). Examples from the literary realm are abundant—the beating of prisoners (打板子) in the novel Warning of Reincarnation (輪迴警示) of the Tianqi Period, the inquisition scene in “Jinhun Zhang trapped in Kaifeng”(禁魂張屈陷開封府) collected in Feng Menglong’s The Ancient and Modern Stories (古今小說) published during Tianqi Period, a trial scene in Clear Words to Illustrate the World (喻世明言), trials of women prisoners along with description of finger-crushing tools in Astonishing and Miraculous Tales II (二刻拍案驚奇) of the Chongzhen Period, and the decapitation scene in The New Story of Jade Mirrow (玉鏡新譚)—all are familiar to Chinese people of their time and used largely as means of dissuading people from committing crimes.