SET OF TEN CHINA TRADE 'TEA CULTIVATION' PAINTINGS
QING DYNASTY, CIRCA 1800
£12,500
Auction: 8 November 2017 at 17:00 GMT
Description
ink and colour on paper, depicting various stages of tea cultivation: cultivating the plants, picking the tea leaves, bringing the tea from the fields for sorting and drying, sorting and drying, pounding the leaves, bringing the tea for firing, firing the tea, packing tea and weaving boxes, loading the tea for Canton, a tea hong in Canton, all framed and glazed (10)
Dimensions
28x19cm (sight)
Footnote
Provenance:
Private Scottish collection. For more information, please see lot 183.
Note:
This set of images depicting the production of tea belongs to the tradition of Chinese export paintings. Produced in the port cities of Canton in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and depicting various aspects of Chinese life, the export paintings were popular souvenirs for Western travellers and merchants. Around 1800 paintings illustrating the main trade production processes, such as porcelain manufacture, tea growing and harvesting, and silk production became particularly popular. Based on the traditional genre of Genzhi Tu (Illustrations of Agriculture and Sericulture), these China trade paintings are interesting not only because of their technical precision, but also because they place the processes in fanciful and idyllic settings far removed from actual life, so as to give the Westerners an idealised image of China.
A complete set would have comprised twelve paintings, each illustrating a particular stage of the process. Very few complete sets exist today, and fewer even have ever appeared on the art market (See for example lot 190 of Sotheby's sale in their New York rooms on 13th September 2017). A comparison between the known sets shows that, whilst the artists follow very strict schemes of pictorial composition, they were allowed to exert their artistic freedom in the rendering of details.