The Late Qing Dynasty, Guangzhou Export The Painting Trade, Production And Set Pieces

The subject of this thesis is China trade paintings during the late Qing dynasty. The objective of the thesis is to study the characteristics of the paintings as trade goods and the economic aspects of them. The thesis covered 3 major aspects: export of the paintings, production of the paintings and receiving the order. To be more specific, the thesis included the study on categorization of exported paintings, the study on the size of export in terms of the amount and the gross value of the paintings, the study on the price of individual painting. And the thesis details the business environment and the work environment of painters and workshops who were engaged in production of trade paintings and characterizes the demand for the paintings out of customer-order-based production in terms of different subjects of the paintings.The methods used in the study in the thesis are data analysis approach, sample analysis method and case study method. Data from historical files of Canton maritime customs office were analyzed. More than 1,000 paintings were sampled from the trade paintings from 9 different painting books and one exhibition and analyzed. The thesis also presented categorization of subjects of the sample paintings. The works and the business environment of workshops engaged in production of trade paintings were analyzed based on a case study on Lamqua workshop.Based on the analysis of historical files from Canton maritime customs office, the thesis clarifies details of trade paintings export through Canton during the early sixties of 19th century including the categories of exported paintings, the amount, gross value, and price of them. The study also researched trends in export in the early 1960s. The thesis analyzed details of some identified painters in the sample including their active period, their painting style, the amount of their paintings, and relocation of their workshops. Through categorization of subjects of the sample paintings, the thesis discovered that different subjects of paintings like reproduction paintings, portrait paintings, landscape paintings, and urban lifestyle paintings had been attributed to clients' different demand. It also discovered that the close relation between a specific subject of painting and a specific demand had been changd by the mutual influence of specific subjects and specific demands. Based on the presumption that Lamqua, a both successful painter and successful workshop owner can be the representative case of painters and workshops engaged in trade paintings industry, analysis of his commercial activities reveals the business situation of the painters or the workshops. Basic study about the economic aspect of trade paintings was made in the thesis.