5 Collecting patterns for Chinese art

1600-1935

Nick Pearce

The year 1567 may be seen as significant as regards the Chinese art market,
particularly as it related to Europe. Although the Portuguese had been
allowed to establish a permanent settlement on the Macao peninsula in 1557,
it was not until ten years later that the ban was lifted on maritime trade with
all but Japan. As Timothy Brook has noted, this coincided with the Spanish
conquest of the Philippines and the opening of silver mines in Bolivia and the
shipment of silver to Macao by the Portuguese (Brook, 1998: 205). As Brook
has also noted: “The first Spanish galleons laden with silver arrived in Manila
to trade for Chinese silks and porcelains in 1573” —just six years later (Brook,
1998: 205). Although economic stimulation through this emerging globalisa-
tion of a market for Chinese goods, including artistic production, built upon
a domestic and inter-Asian trade, European trade was largely dominated by
the demand for luxury items, in particular spices, silk, tea, and porcelain.
Whilst these and other materials were in demand domestically, due to a com-
mercialised industry that dated back to the Song dynasty (960-1279), they
were part of Chinese élite consumption — the visible trappings of wealth and
status — rather than being at the core of a high art tradition. !
High art in China was afforded by calligraphy and its sister art, paint-
ing, with, in the field of three-dimensional art, objects that were associated
with antiquity and the lineage of power — ritual bronzes and jade carvings,
all linked historically with wealth and status. The market for and consump-
tion of Chinese art and artefacts in China and the West were therefore, until
the beginning of the twentieth century, remarkably different, although com-
monly delivered by the operation of a sophisticated market economy both
home and abroad. Only after 1900 did a better understanding of China’s art
tradition bring a commonality and new commercial activity.

Chinese art: the Western market

European contacts through trade were a large stimulus for China’s economy
from the late sixteenth century onwards, with the influx of Spanish silver in
exchange for raw materials and luxury goods. As many commentators have
noted, the impact on the Ming (1368-1644) economy as it then was with
54 Nick Pearce

monetarisation through silver replacing other forms of exchange, such as

the traditional barter, was significant for the domestic and export art mar-
kets (Atwell, 1982). As mentioned above, these markets were remarkably
different. From the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in Chinese waters
in the sixteenth century and the establishment of the English, Dutch, and
French East India Companies in the seventeenth century, Chinese artefacts
were sought after as part of a larger trade in spices, silk, and later tea. By the
eighteenth century, European trade became centred on the port of Canton
(Guangzhou), and it was there, dominated by the commodity of tea, that
porcelain and largely craft objects (the latter produced locally), were shipped
to Europe (and after 1784, America), in large quantities, forming a regular
trade (Connor, 1986).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the silk exported to Europe
was largely the raw material with piece-goods forming only a small part.
As for porcelain, admired for its thin, translucent qualities, that which was
exported consisted largely of wares mass-produced in the town of Jingdezhen
in southern-central China and transported to the coast (Dillon, 1992). In
the early years, their shapes and decoration were undifferentiated from that
produced for the Chinese domestic market, but Chinese potters at Jingdez-
hen were used to accommodating shapes and designs for foreign customers
(particularly for the Near Eastern market), and during the later seventeenth
and into the eighteenth centuries, they produced forms and decoration spe-
cifically tailored to European taste (Kerr & Mengoni, 2011). Wares exported
during the eighteenth century became increasingly functional, reflecting the
growing popularity of tea and the need for large dinner services by the bur-
geoning middle classes that, with the fashion for serving dinner a la francaise,
required matching dishes and tureens on the table for up to three or four
courses (Pearce, 2008).
The focus upon Canton as the trading entrepdét after the 1720s, already
a major port and centre for craft production, allowed for the decorative fin-
ishing of porcelains sent from Jingdezhen to be overseen and new designs to
be prepared. These could range from scenes taken directly from engravings
and drawings to European inspired designs, all sent via the ships’ officers
and merchants. At Canton, some supervision could be made of the work in
progress. Applying the decoration at Canton also reduced the waiting time
between the placing of orders and their completion. This was particularly so
for orders that were of a standard shape like tea and dinner services, items of
which could be stocked at Canton and have their decoration applied imme-
diately. Speed was of the utmost importance, particularly for wares with
a political or social subject matter, which, by its nature, might have had only
a limited life of topical interest (Pearce, 2008; Kerr & Mengoni, 2011).
For most of the eighteenth century, there were two distinct avenues
through which porcelain and other artefacts could be imported from China
to Europe. One avenue was via the East India Companies themselves, the
other was as part of the private trade of the ships’ captains, officers, and
 Collecting patterns for Chinese art: 1600-1935 55

merchants known as supercargoes. Most private trade consisted of special

commissions, the earliest of which were porcelains decorated with armo-
rial bearings. Officers and supercargoes equipped with drawings, bookplates,
engravings of popular, classical, or satirical subjects, would on arrival at
Canton negotiate with a member of the Co-Hong, or Chinese merchants
licensed to trade with Europeans, to place the order. For less specific require-
ments, officers and merchants could buy ‘off the shelf’ from the many shops
in Canton. According to Charles de Constant, who visited Canton in 1779,
the Dutch imported some 43 million items during the period 1730-1790, as
did the English (Dermigny, 1964: 240).
The amount that could be shipped as private cargo varied throughout the
eighteenth century from 13 tonnes for a captain prior to 1740, to 38 tonnes
in the 1770s. This allowance of course consisted of more than just por-
celain and was reduced according to an officer’s rank (Pearce, 2008: 40).
Commissions might be placed by an individual householder or by the grow-
ing numbers of china merchants, known as Chinamen (many were women).
Documented as early as the seventeenth century, china merchants grew as the
trade increased (Toppin, 1935). There can be little doubt that these entrepre-
neurs placed orders with the officers and supercargoes of the EIC for porce-
lains decorated with specific and saleable patterns. It has been estimated that
between 1711 and 1774, there were well over 100 of these Chinamen oper-
ating in London alone, mostly in the vicinity of Leadenhall Street, where the
English East India Company’s headquarters and principal warehouse were
situated (Toppin, 1935). Canton was a thriving centre of craft production,
so as well as the market in porcelain, there was also a lesser one in carving,
mostly in ivory, but might include more exotic material, such as tortoiseshell
and mother of pearl, furniture in lacquer and hardwood, silk piece-goods
and painting — usually sets of watercolours that represented the typogra-
phy, trades, and occupations of China that were familiar to European traders
(Clunas, 1987).

Chinese art: the domestic market

The situation for the domestic market in China over the same period could
not have been more different. Whilst silk, porcelain, carvings, and furni-
ture were an integral part of the Chinese market for luxury goods, they did
not have the status that was accorded to them in Europe. During the Song
dynasty, the range of high-quality ceramics, each with distinctive qualities
and glazes, had by the Ming dynasty been raised to the category of collecta-
bles within what was a thriving antiques market occupied by peddlers at
one end and gentlemen dealers at the other (Clunas, 1991: Ch.4). As men-
tioned above, the highest level of art in China was calligraphy and painting.
Calligraphy and its sister art painting (considered the next major art form
as it too was executed using the same materials and techniques) were cre-
ated by the élite members of Chinese society, known as the literati, highly
56 Nick Pearce

educated, who peopled the bureaucracy and who were the arbiters of taste.
Their writing and painting created by the use of the brush and ink allowed
for the written language and painted images to take on an elegance, fluidity,
and intellectual substance that transcended mere communication or picto-
rial representation. The literati were the producers, consumers, and critics of
these arts and by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the idea of a literati
or ‘amateur’ practice taking precedence over professional practitioners held
sway. As James Cahill has eloquently stated in relation to Chinese painting:

The argument behind this “amateur ideal” was that the cultivated mind
of the amateur practitioner would make the right decisions intuitively,
or on the basis of Confucian “right principles”, on a level above exper-
tise, free also from base motives of material gain.
(Cahill, 1994: 5)

So while the work of amateur artists was raised up through their élite position,
professional artists relied upon their status through the patronage of that
élite, or at least, this was the myth created by them in their discourse.’ Core
to the myth of the amateur artist was, to quote Cahill again, the image of

a person of deep cultural refinement, he lives quietly, caring nothing

for worldly matters, engaged in scholarly pursuits, doing paintings or
calligraphy as an avocation, to express his emotions — and, to follow
through with the usual implications of scholar-amateur status, presum-
ably giving them to his friends, expecting no recompense other than the
occasional gifts and favors in return.
(Cahill, 1994: 4)

This was rarely the situation. There were paintings created by professional
artists that were both decorative and didactic (religious painting for example
were largely the work of professionals), but these were either anonymous or
unrecorded and certainly not part of any art historical discourse or canon.
It was paradoxically the work of literati artists and the few professionals
they patronised that were taken up by the well-developed art market in
China which became highly commodified. Whilst works did exchange hands
between friends (as many added colophons in the form of dedications indi-
cate), cash transactions, commissions and dealers, were also in operation and
commercial artists would have produced paintings ‘off the peg’ for purchase.
The burgeoning economy of Late-Ming China created an aspiring merchant
class, particularly in the rich area of the lower Yangzi region, that brought
them financially in relation to the élite although they had no officially rec-
ognised privilege, only fuelled these markets in named artists (Brook, 1998:
210-218).
As well as this market in contemporary and antique painting and calligra-
phy, there was also an active market in forgeries. Some of the great names,
 Collecting patterns for Chinese art: 1600-1935 57

both amateur and professional, were copied in their own lifetime (witnessed
by the many paintings spuriously attributed that survive in museum collec-
tions), a situation irreverently exposed by Li Yu (1610-1680), in his play,
Ideal Love Matches, published in 1659. It relates the story of two fictional
professional women artists, Yang Yunyou and Lin Tiansu, who are engaged
by two famous and real-life literati painters, Dong Qichang (1555-1636) and
Chen Jiru (1558-1639), to paint in their styles. Due to their fame and status,
Dong and Chen are constantly receiving requests for paintings, poems, and
inscriptions and are only too glad to find two painters who will relieve them
of this onerous burden (Hanan, 1988: 16 and 169-175).
The preoccupation in China with power and status elevated other objects
worthy of serious study, collecting, and connoisseurship. Since the Song
dynasty, during which period there began the reflection on China’s already
long history and culture, the excavation of objects in bronze and jade from
Bronze Age burial sites quickly led to a collectors’ market in these items.
This was aided by developments in printing that saw Song scholars embark
upon the revision of ancient texts, the production of encyclopaedias and cat-
alogues of antiquities, a tradition that continued into Ming and later Qing
(1644-1911) dynasties. Collected objects such as bronzes and jades served
the function of embodying the wealth and power of the ruling and noble
families for which they were originally made and to whom they were often
dedicated through inscriptions. They subsequently became the subject of
connoisseurship and inspired the production of new pieces in ancient style
(fu gu) for which there was a ready market. The publication of manuals on
taste designed to aid the consumer began in the early Ming with Cao Zhao’s,
Ge gu yao lun (Essential Criteria of Antiquities) of 1388 (expanded edition,
1459), and continued later into the dynasty with works by Gao Lian, Zun
sheng ba jian (Eight Discourses in the Art of Living), Wen Zhenheng, Zhang
wu zhi (Treatise on Superfluous Things), and Zhang Yingwen, Oing bi
cang (Pure and Arcane Collecting), all being published in the 1590s.* Includ-
ing remarks on high status items, such as calligraphy, painting, early bronzes,
and jade, these treatises also included the discussion of luxury goods such
as antique ceramics, carving in wood and bamboo, lacquer, and furniture
(Clunas, 1991).
Under the succeeding Qing dynasty, preoccupations with artistic consump-
tion continued and the materials included within the collecting fold wid-
ened as the eighteenth century progressed (Naquin & Rawski, 1987: 64-72).
But the Qing, conscious of a decadence that had crept into Ming society,
focused upon resetting the cultural climate, promoting scholarship on the
one hand but seemingly reconciling “the blending of literati and merchant
culture” that produced “new fashions”, as Richard J. Smith terms it (Smith,
1994; 187). He continues: “The result was an enormous demand among
consumers for innovative forms, colours, styles and textures” (Smith, 1994:
187).* As Smith acknowledges, the interest by Western buyers of Chinese
arts and crafts, especially porcelain, even though most were designed for
58 Nick Pearce

Western consumption, inevitably influenced Chinese taste. The influence

of Court patronage during the Qing also made itself felt for most of the
eighteenth century, especially under the Emperor Qianlong (r.1736-1795).
An enthusiastic collector, antiquarian and patron, he promoted the deco-
rative arts as well as calligraphy and painting, improving his connoisseur-
ship, expanding the imperial collections and initiating their documentation
through a spate of published catalogues. Under Qianlong, there was a greater
cross-over between objects made for purely decorative purposes and those
made as works of art to enter the collections of serious connoisseurs. The
arena of display — the palace or home — manifested itself even more strongly
in this period than that witnessed during the Late Ming.

Chinese art: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, there was a significant decline
in the European trade with China. Although there had been a growing
competition in hard-paste porcelain from European factories as early
as 1710 (in the case of Meissen), the Chinese market in this continued
until its steep decline after 1790. Changing taste, increased import duties,
and the growing dominance of the European ceramic industry, all had
an impact (Pearce, 1987-1988: 21-38). There was also a marked shift
in how China was viewed. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jesuit
view of China as a land of philosophers and a significant power in Asia,
was replaced by one that exposed the growing political and military weak-
ness of the country as the nineteenth century progressed and as Europe’s
commercial and imperial ambitions grew. Between 1840 and 1860, China
was defeated in two wars by two of Europe’s dominant imperial powers:
Britain and France and was engulfed in a major internal revolt between
1853 and 1863: the Taiping Rebellion. The First and Second Opium Wars
(1839-1842 and 1857-1860, respectively), forced trading concessions on
China, opened up the country to trade and diplomatic representation and
ceded territory (Bickers, 2011). In terms of its impact on the market in
Chinese art, more of what was considered to be ‘Chinese taste’ material
(as opposed to that made for export), was encountered by foreigners for
the first time with the sacking and burning of the Imperial palace complex
of Yuanmingyuan by Anglo-French troops in 1860 being a notorious but
watershed moment (Hevia, 2003). The loot that returned with the troops
and sold at a series of auctions in Britain and France, made up of imperial
porcelains, jades, enamels, paintings, and manuscripts, was of a different
order to that seen in Europe before and had a considerable impact. The
brilliance of many of the objects made them attractive to collectors and
were soon acquired by the newly emerging museums in Britain, Europe,
and the United States, as were gradually the antiquities — archaic bronzes,
jades, and early ceramics — traditionally favoured by Chinese collectors
(Howald, 2018; Pearce, 2018).
 Collecting patterns for Chinese art: 1600-1935 59

China’s high arts of calligraphy and painting fared less well during this
period. John Barrow (1764-1848), Comptroller to Britain’s First Embassy to
China in 1792-1793, recorded his opinion of Chinese painting, which was
a typical Western response:

With regard to painting, they can be considered in no other light than

as miserable daubers, being unable to pencil out a correct outline of
many objects, to give body to the same by the application of proper
lights and shadows, and to lay on the nice shades of colour, so as to
resemble the tints of nature.
(Barrow, 1804: 323)

The mismatch of expectations and understanding of the Chinese conceptual

approach to the visual that had only a tangential relationship to the external
world, went largely unappreciated in the West where narrative and represen-
tation based upon single-point perspective was key to painting. Calligraphy,
impenetrable to most, was largely ignored. A few paintings had entered col-
lections in Europe in earlier centuries, but they were mostly anonymous dec-
orative pieces overlooked by the literati and seen as curiosities rather than
fine art in the West.’ Not even later in the century was there anything like a
market for Chinese painting and it would remain a specialist field for most
emerging private collectors and museums being formed across Europe and
America. For example, the British Museum only began its systematic collect-
ing of Chinese painting in 1882 with the acquisition of the William Anderson
(1842-1900) collection of Chinese paintings (Wood, 1996-1997). Anderson,
had worked as Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at the Imperial Naval
Medical College in Tokyo and had purchased his collection in Japan along-
side his Japanese paintings. A similar trajectory was taken by Anderson’s
near contemporary, Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908), one-time Professor of
Political Economy and Philosophy at Tokyo University, who formed the
founding collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Art and advised Charles
Lang Freer (1854-1919) when the latter formed his collection at the turn of
the twentieth century (Chisholm, 1963). Accessed through Japanese sources
and scholarship, Chinese painting would gradually be better understood and
appreciated, particularly in America.®
China’s gradual incorporation into the international art market paradoxi-
cally occurred as the country declined politically and economically. In the
decades after 1860, more and more of China was accessible to diplomats,
businessmen, and a range of professionals, and it was through these routes,
not art historians, that a comprehensive knowledge and appreciation of
China’s rich artistic heritage was developed and their market circulation ena-
bled. One of the earliest of these was Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844-1908).
Bushell spent three decades as doctor to the British Legation in Beijing,
retiring in 1899 and while there learnt Chinese and developed an interest
in the arts, aided by a network of Chinese collectors (Pearce, 2005-2006).
60 Nick Pearce

He collected for himself, acted as an agent for the Victoria & Albert Museum
and private collectors back in Europe and America and sold objects through
Christie’s in London. On his return to Britain, he was commissioned to write
the first handbook, Chinese Art, (2 volumes), for the V&A, a pioneering
effort that attempted to present at least current knowledge of a range of
Chinese arts, much of which would have been recognised by indigenous col-
lectors (Bushell, 1904 and 1906).
This pattern of gifted amateurs progressing research and collecting activi-
ties increased rapidly in the decades following the collapse of the imperial
dynastic system in 1911. It went alongside social turmoil as the former
imperial élites liquidated their assets and disposed of their collections in the
years immediately following the Republican Revolution and the building of
China’s infrastructure, most particularly its railways, which cut across areas
of China that had been the burial sites of earlier dynasties. The decades from
1911 to about 1937 witnessed the selling of works of art from both former
imperial and private collections onto the Chinese and international art mar-
kets and this was supplemented by a growing trade in newly discovered tomb
artefacts, never seen before by either Chinese or Western collectors. These
objects would see a reassessment of China and its history both within China
and abroad (Pearce, 2021).
The objects that emerged following the Republican Revolution fuelled the
revival in interest in China’s arts, encouraged by recently discovered archaeo-
logical material. A new group of Western collectors, as with an earlier gen-
eration made up of businessmen and those from the professions, but with
a scholarly interest, pioneered research into these new objects and encour-
aged the emergence of a new type of specialist art dealer who would service
this market. Working with Chinese dealers and agents on the ground, they
would source both objects already in circulation on the antiques market and
those newly excavated (often illegally by peasant gangs). One of the earli-
est specialist dealers was S. M. Franck, situated at 25 Camomile Street near
London’s East India docks. It emerged as a “china merchant” in the late
nineteenth century, but by 1910 had begun to tap into the new market using
in-country suppliers and networks. Franck supplied most of the major col-
lectors during the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, including the great collector
George Eumorfopoulos (1863-1939), other dealers and many museum insti-
tutions, all now competing internationally to acquire this new material. The
intensity of this international competition and the opportunities that dealers
like Franck could offer museums is well illustrated in a memo written by
V&A curator, Albert Kendrick as early as 1910:

This class of ware has hitherto been little known in Europe, only a few
isolated examples having, until recently, found their way into muse-
ums. Public interest in them has been lately aroused by the Exhibition
at the Burlington Fine Arts Club and by that at the Musée des Arts
Décoratifs in Paris. The commencement of railway making in China
 Collecting patterns for Chinese art: 1600-1935 61

has caused the opening up of the early graves and it is vessels found in
these that have been coming into the market...It is understood that the
German and Belgian Governments have recently taken special measures
with a view to sending agents to China and Japan for the purpose of
procuring specimens of this early porcelain. It is most important that
the Museum, which is at present unrepresented in this style, should
make a serious effort to collect specimens of the class named and the
present opportunity is a good one for acquiring an admirable series at
a very modest price.’

During the 1920s and 1930s, the growth in the market for the widest range
of Chinese artefacts saw a concomitant growth in dealers such as C. T. Loo,
Yamanaka, John Sparks, Frank Partridge, Bluett, Tonying, and others,
many with London, Paris, New York, and often Shanghai offices, to satisfy
the demand. One group of collectors and museums called on the services
of a Swedish railway engineer, Orvar Karlbeck (1879-1967), who, having
worked on China’s railway construction and therefore familiar with the
country, embarked upon a series of expeditions between 1931 and 1934 to
acquire archaeological material for what was named the Karlbeck Syndicate
(Jurgens, 2012). Again international in its reach the Syndicate was sympto-
matic of the way in which the Chinese government struggled to either con-
trol or regulate the trade, particularly in antiquities, with collusion by local
peasants and officials, regional warlords (between 1916 and 1926) and the
outbreak of Civil War in 1927 and war with Japan from 1937. Even though
the Nationalist Government had passed legislation on cultural preservation
in 1930 and 1931, it found it difficult to prevent the removal of objects that
today would be considered national treasures (Murphy, 1996).
However, alongside this trade was advancement in scholarship pursued
largely through newly emerging societies made up of scholar-collectors,
a nascent group of specialist museum curators and, in some cases, dealers.
In 1918, the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst (the Society of
Friends of Asian Art), was formed in Amsterdam, followed in 1921 by the
Oriental Ceramic Society in London and, five years later, a similar society
in Berlin, the East Asian Art Society (Gesellschaft fiir Ostasiatische Kunst)
(Steuber, 2006; Wood, 2011-2012). It was through the efforts of these par-
ticular societies that three of the most significant exhibitions of Chinese art
took place: in Amsterdam in 1925, Berlin in 1929, and London in 1935. The
latter exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts was particularly noteworthy
not only because of its size (over 3,000 objects pooled from over 240 indi-
vidual and institutional lenders), and scope (it showcased the fullest range
of Chinese artworks, including newly discovered archaeological pieces), but
because it involved the Chinese government as lender and as co-organiser. The
Executive Yuan, the cultural wing of the Chinese government, worked closely
with the British organisers, who included Sir Percival David (1892-1964)
and George Eumorfopoulos, two collectors and prominent Oriental Ceramic
62 Nick Pearce

Society members, to secure the loan of 984 objects from the Chinese National
Collections with an initial showing of the objects in Shanghai, making it
a truly collaborative effort (Steuber, 2006).
By 1935, as exemplified by the International Exhibition in London, it
was clear just how far a near comprehensive knowledge of China’s art and
cultural heritage (both home and abroad), had come since Europe’s first
contacts. The exhibition also made clear how much material had moved
through the international market and in an unregulated way (Jacobs, 2020).
Not only were many of the art dealers listed above lenders to the exhibi-
tion (most notably C. T. Loo, who is prominently thanked in the Preface to
the catalogue), eagerly showcasing their latest acquisitions, but so were the
newer American museums, the most recent of which, the William Rockhill
Nelson Gallery (now the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), had only com-
menced the formation of its important Chinese collection in 1930 (Cohen,
1992: 103-126). Just five years later, its loans to the exhibition included rare
Song dynasty paintings, ancient jades and bronzes, sculpture and ceramics,
most then and now considered rare masterpieces. Only the war with Japan,
World War II, and another Revolution in 1949 would halt this wholesale
dislocation, allowing China once again to assert control.

Notes
1 This did change over time and by the eighteenth century, ancient porcelains, silk
pictures, and many other categories of objects were collectable as works of art.
2 Writings on calligraphy and painting by the literati are extensive; see Bush and
Shih (1984).
3 For a discussion and translation of Cao Zhao’s Ge gu yao lun, see David (1971). For
a detailed analysis of the later Ming literature on connoisseurship, see Clunas (1991).
4 For an exploration of the expansion in decorative objects in particular and their
deployment during the late Ming and Qing periods, see Hay (2010).
5 There are for example four paintings in the collection of Archduke Ferdinand II
at Schloss Ambras and acquired in about 1580, with bird and flower or figurative
subjects; see Whitfield (1976).
6 In one of the earliest English language books to attempt to explain the princi-
ples, philosophies, and aesthetics of both Chinese and Japanese painting, Painting
in the Far East (1908), by Laurence Binyon, was mediated through Japanese
scholarship.
7 Minute by A. F Kendrick, 29 July, 1910, S. M. Franck & Co. Nominal Papers,
MA/1/F1203, V&A Archive, London.
8 For a first-hand account, see Karlbeck (1957).

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