Eighteenth-century Chinese reverse glass paitings in a Dutch collection

Abstract

Chinese export painting had a strong appeal to foreign powers active in China and neighbouring Asian countries in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. As a result, today, Chinese export paintings can be found in eighteen public collections in the Netherlands. The Worldmuseum in the Netherlands owns some sets of Chinese reverse glass paintings. The set central in this chapter consists of 19 eighteenth-century images with an interesting provenance back to 1824, the year when they entered the collection of the Dutch Royal Cabinet of Rarities. In this essay Van der Poel will discuss the subject matter of two paintings from this delicate set of oil paintings, which contain elements suggesting a strong link wit the period they were produced (1785-1790) and are exemplary for the westward movement of this specific painting genre. It is clear that these commodified artworks with their cohesive values make this painting genre distinctive and a class in its own right.