East and West meet in Chinese export art

Abstract

East and West meet in Chinese export art

China played an important role for the Netherlands in the ‘overseas world’ as long ago as the seventeenth century. According to Tristan Mostert and Jan van Campen, authors of a book on Sino-Dutch relations since 1600, entitled Zijden Draad. China en Nederland sinds 1600, ‘no country or region appealed more to the imagination and never before had expectations of wealth and trading opportunities run so high’.[1] Like their American, British and other European contemporaries, the Dutch all came back from their commercial adventures in China or their years spent in the Netherlands East Indies, for example, with Chinese art objects specially made for export. These were generally luxury goods produced to order from materials unknown in Europe at the time. The decorations, colours, and excellent craftsmanship with which these ‘exotic’ luxury goods were made drew great admiration and aroused people’s curiosity about their country of origin, in what was at the time the almost impossibly distant China. Besides westerners’ fascination with Chinese export art, according to the deputy director of the Guangdong Museum, this transcultural exchanged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also prompted a dialogue between Cantonese and European culture. ‘The encounter and dialogue brought a new form of civilization and created a new fashion, forming a new taste of culture, bringing a curiosity of the civilization of mankind.’[2]

[1] Mostert & Van Campen 2015, 19. [2] Preface to exhibition catalogue Chinese export fine art in the Qing Dynasty from Guangdong Museum 2013, 008.