Amid the bustling trade routes of the 18th and 19th centuries, a unique artistic genre flourished – fusing commerce with creativity. So-called export paintings depicted quintessentially Eastern scenes, yet their artists used Western painting mediums like oil, gouache and watercolour. Some of these artists were, in fact, Westerners living in the mainland, Macao and Hong Kong. Most were local artists working on commissions for customers in Europe and America.
Export paintings helped shape Western perceptions of China during this period. But they were also highly influenced by the West; explicitly created to appeal to foreign tastes. For example, commissions tended to call for a romanticised vision of the East. Streets more orderly and kempt than would likely have been the reality. Landscapes that were almost impossibly ethereal. These paintings were always imbued with motifs from mythology and folklore. Not only did the imagery cater to the West’s fascination with an ‘exotic’ China, it leant into the lucrative trade opportunities that aesthetic provided.
Hundreds of fine examples of this work are now on display at the Macao Museum of Art (MAM). The exhibition “Focus: Integration of Art between China and the West in the 18th-19th Centuries” is the fruit of a major collaboration between museums in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). The bulk of paintings are on loan from the Guangdong Museum, which staged a very similar exhibition in 2022.
In the Macao iteration, additional pieces were sourced from the Macao Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and MAM’s own permanent collection – making it the biggest exhibition of export art ever displayed in Macao. MAM Director Un Sio San describes the show’s “collaborative spirit” as illustrative of the cultural cooperation currently being fostered within the GBA. “This resonates with the goal behind the alliance of museums,” she noted.
In “Focus”, visitors will find portraiture, landscapes, maritime scenes, botanical imagery and more, beautifully portrayed on paper, silk and glass. While some export paintings did stay in China all this time, many have returned from overseas in recent decades. The local government, for example, has been acquiring export paintings that are relevant to Macao from private collectors and galleries around the world.
George Chinnery’s impact on export art
The Macao run of “Focus” features works by British painter George Chinnery (1774-1852), who had a major influence on local painters in the export art industry. He spent more than a quarter of a century in the city and is buried in Macao’s Old Protestant Cemetery. Chinnery trained at London’s Royal Academy Schools before setting sail for India, where he lived for a couple decades as a leading artist within the Anglo-Indian community. He relocated to Macao in 1825, and spent the final 27 years of his life painting scenes of southern China. While here, Chinnery is believed to have tutored the first Chinese portrait painter ever exhibited in the West: Lam Qua (1801-1860).
Chinnery’s own oeuvre, not itself export art, now serves as a historical record of early to mid-19th century Macao, Canton and Hong Kong. Take his 1834 drawing of the Church of Mater Dei, part of St Paul’s College, in what’s now known as Macao’s historic centre. In this piece, Chinnery captured the church, college and its library just three months before they were destroyed by a fire (in January 1835). His drawing is one of very few impressions in existence of what the 17th-century complex looked like before being reduced to the frontispiece that’s now famous as the Ruins of St Paul’s.
Other Chinnery pieces included in “Focus” depict Tanka people, a distinct ethnic group who spent centuries living in boats along the coast of Macao. The artist took a special interest in the Tanka community, often painting their sampan homes and women garbed in traditional blue dresses and red headscarves. In the 1840s, a selection of his sensitively executed watercolours depicting Tanka women were even exhibited in the UK.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of Chinnery’s birth and visitors stepping into the “Focus” are welcomed by a portrait of him, painted by his likely Cantonese protégé. Lam Qua was a Chinese pioneer in Western-style oil painting and export art specialist. The portrait – a copy of a self-portrait Chinnery himself painted – reveals Lam Qua’s remarkable grasp of Western technique: a striking contrast to the traditional ink and gongbi artistic styles used by most Chinese artists at the time.
Lam Qua and the craftsmen in his workshop worked near the Thirteen Hongs (also known as the Thirteen Factories) along the Pearl River. For almost a hundred years, during the Canton System of Qing China, this was the principal and sole legal site for Sino-European trade. Along with tea, silk and porcelain, export paintings flowed out of China in exchange for silver and other goods.
A Western Merchant (1859), one of the most striking pieces from Lam Qua’s workshop in the exhibition, features a young, dark-haired European man in front of a red curtain and Western-style pillar. “Focus” curator Ng Fong Chao describes the painting as “traditional Western portraiture”.
He sees its realistic imagery, vigorous brushstrokes and background as evidence that Chinese artists were able to achieve “superb mastery of Western oil painting.”
Capturing the customs of Canton
Wallpaper of Street Scenes, meanwhile, is an engrossing gouache painting depicting a fascinating array of activities taking place on one commercial street in Canton – over 200 years ago. Front and centre works a bone-setter, massaging a patient in turquoise trousers. A sedan chair driver dozes outside the clinic, perhaps waiting for the man inside to finish his treatment. Other medicine men work nearby: there’s a street-dentist busy extracting someone’s tooth in the shade of a large parasol, while a traditional herbalist leans on his desk, surrounded by shelves crowded with red-labelled remedies.
The wallpaper also features hawkers selling snacks to hungry passersby and a cobbler diligently mending a pair of shoes (a staple activity in the export art genre). According to Ng, Chinoiserie wallpaper was once very popular with wealthy Europeans and Americans. “It fascinated the Western world with its gorgeous colours, dense composition, superb craft and rich Chinese flair,” he says.
Export paintings stand as a testament to the multifaceted exchanges that characterised the 18th and 19th centuries. These artworks were not just commodities to be traded, but cultural bridges connecting artists and everyday people across continents. Chinese artists – through their adaptability and skill – learned the West’s aesthetic preferences and painting techniques, while incorporating aspects of their own unique artistic heritage. The pieces were cherished by European and American families, adorning their walls for generations to come and inspiring dreams of the Orient.
As such, export paintings have left a lasting legacy of mutual influence between the East and West. MAM’s “Focus” exhibition is a unique opportunity to see a truly remarkable selection of work from this genre, which is on display until 15 September. According to Ng, it’s “a chance that may not come again soon.”
