Images And Techniques: The Textile Drawings Of Export Paintings In Qing Dynasty

The export painting was a kind of art genre that flourished at Guangzhou areas during the 18 th and 19 th century, which was also an important exporting commodity in the trade between China and the West. In recent years, the export painting gains more and more attention by scholars as a burgeoning field. The export painting is sold to foreign markets that mainly drew by Chinese painters and adopts western painting skills at different degrees. Those paintings are different from Chinese traditional paintings and the Western indigenous drawings, and they have their own taste that popularized during the period of exportation of Guangzhou and declined following the open of five-port trading of China’s South-East coastal areas. Among its numerous themes, it is rare and precious to see the paintings with traditional spinning skills. This kind of painting not only clearly reflects the Chinese traditional spinning skills but also uncovers the temporal social style and features. So it attaches great importance for us to do research on the combination of the export painting and traditional spinning skills under a new way and focalization.In this thesis, I firstly make a description about the history background of the export painting, its rising, development and decline, digging its deeper value and significance, and it has great impact on the trade between China and the West and the communication of different cultures. Then by the analysis of the overview of the traditional textile painting, I review and probe in-depth into working process and procedure of traditional spinning skills. Meanwhile, taking the Picture of Silk Making drew by Wu Jun as an example, I analyze the relations and differences between the Picture of Silk Making and The Silkworm Weaving so that I can make a integrated description of traditional spinning skills. At last, the discussion and research of the export paintings also show the social status, living conditions and the trade towards foreign countries during the period of Qing Dynasty.The whole paper focuses on this special medium called export painting, exploring Chinese traditional spinning skills that showed in export textile painting and social values and importance it reflects. The textile drawing in export painting truly reappears the skill of traditional sericulture and silk reeling in China and the scene of textile printing, which are valuable images to study Chinese traditional spinning skill. At the same time, it has an important reference value for studying the export paintings on the field of social life of Guangzhou areas, communication of different culture and trades between China and the West.