Pair of Chinese Export Bird Watercolors, Canton Natural History Paintings

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Pair of Chinese Export Bird Watercolors, Canton Natural History Paintings
Circa 1800–1820

This pair of Chinese export natural history paintings … Read more Pair of Chinese Export Bird Watercolors, Canton Natural History Paintings
Circa 1800–1820

This pair of Chinese export natural history paintings was executed in watercolor and gouache on paper by studio artists at Canton in the early nineteenth century, each sheet presenting a bird study in a landscape setting of the kind made for Western merchants and naturalists of the China Trade.

One sheet shows a single bird of pigeon type perched on the branch of a slender leafing tree. Its breast and body are painted in soft blue-gray with finely stippled feathering, the head capped in black and the wings and tail in slate, with a white eye ring and a coral-red bill and legs. A rocky bank and a green hillside of low shrubs complete the ground. The sheet is inscribed at the upper right with a two-character Chinese name beginning 天 (tian, “heaven” or “sky”).

The companion sheet shows a pair of brown birds with rufous flanks and pale eye rings on the gnarled, moss-spotted limb of a leafless tree, one looking upward from the lower branch while the other peers down from above. Beneath them are a grassy foreground, rounded shrubs and a group of blue garden rocks in the scholar’s-rock manner. It is inscribed at the upper left with a three-character Chinese name beginning 山 (shan, “mountain”).

The inscribed names are the painters’ own vernacular labels rather than scientific nomenclature, and the pictures combine an observer’s attention to plumage with the flat, decorative placement of the Chinese bird-and-flower (huaniao) tradition. Both are presented in green silk mats within modern dark wood frames with gilt inner moldings.

As a pair, the paintings suit a library, dining room, study or entrance hall, and their green mats sit comfortably in traditional, English country or Asian-inflected rooms; they would also anchor a larger hang of natural history pictures.

Dimensions (each, framed)
Height: 15 inches (38.1 cm)
Width: 16 inches (40.6 cm)
Depth: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good. The colors remain remarkably fresh and vibrant, with no significant foxing or water damage visible.

References
Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours, Victoria and Albert Museum Far Eastern Series (London, 1984), p. 89, for a comparable study of a hawfinch.
Judith Magee, Chinese Art and the Reeves Collection (London: Natural History Museum, 2011), for the Canton natural history drawings commissioned by John Reeves.

Historical Context
Between 1757 and 1842 Canton was the only Chinese port open to Western trade, and from the late eighteenth century the European and American merchants resident there commissioned local studio painters to record the birds, plants and insects of southern China. The best-known patron was John Reeves (1774–1856), East India Company tea inspector at Canton from 1812 to 1831, whose commissions were sent to Sir Joseph Banks, the Horticultural Society and other patrons in London and are now largely in the Natural History Museum, London.

Trained in the fine-line gongbi manner of bird-and-flower painting, these artists adapted their technique to Western expectations, rendering plumage in dense opaque color while keeping the open grounds and decorative placement of Chinese painting; most bird studies of the period show either a single specimen or a pair, as here. Much of the work was painted on imported English paper, often watermarked J. Whatman, which can help date an individual sheet.

Ref: NY5937B-mrr See less