To outline what I will explain in greater depth hereafter: among the Chinese glass paintings that were imported for the decoration of Thai Buddhist temples in the first half of the nineteenth century, close copies are relatively rare, exact copies are even rarer, while the great majority of paintings consist of compositions that depict the same subject matter but differ in the particulars of detail and arrangement. The latter might better be described as "variations on a theme" rather than as copies, but such variations together with closer copies can often be found within the same set, so together they comprise a broader spectrum of copying practices. The story of the hundred or so unauthorized copies of Gilbert Stuart's portrait of Washington demonstrates that the Chinese glass-painting workshops were well equipped to rapidly produce large numbers of identical copies of an image, if this is what the purchaser requested. That they did *not* do so in the case of most of the glass paintings that made their way to Siam, but took a more flexible and varied approach to copying, indicates that different expectations and priorities were in play, specifically an aesthetic that prized variations on a common theme.

In most cases, the sets of glass paintings in Bangkok's temples comprise a group of images based on a single theme, such as the bird-and-flower genre (Wat Pho *wihan*, Wat Suwannaram), abundant antiquities (Wat Arun, Wat Kanlayanamit, Wat Phichaiyat), or *Sanguo yanyi* (Wat Nangnong, Wat Thepthidaram). Within these coherent sets, only a few can be shown to have employed identical compositional templates, while the majority of the images follow the same compositional type while differing in structural details. The fact that some images *do* share the same compositional template suggests that these templates were available and part of standard glass-painting practice. This makes it less likely that the unique compositions within each set of pictures are *actually* unique, and more likely attests to the wide array of templates available to the artists.

# **The Wat Pho Pictures**

The framed pictures in the Ordination Hall of Wat Pho (Wat Phra Chetuphon) provide a useful case study for a variety of copying practices connected with reverse glass painting, ranging from the synchronic (workshop production employing shared compositional templates, compositional variations on common themes) to the diachronic (serial iterations of popular iconography, modern mechanical reproduction). With trios

**1** Interior of the Ordination Hall of Wat Pho, Bangkok, Thailand. Photograph by Ninara of Helsinki, Finland, 28 December 2016. CC BY 2.0.

of images affixed to each of sixteen columns supporting the hall's high ceiling, they also comprise the largest extant set of Chinese reverse glass paintings that can still be found in a Thai Buddhist temple (fig. 1). The immense prestige of this temple and its popularity as a tourist destination means that the paintings are maintained in relatively good condition and are available for public viewing (although they are hung very high overhead and some are inaccessibly positioned around the sides and back of the large altar).

Of the forty-eight framed images in the Ordination Hall of Wat Pho, only one picture is wholly unique in both subject matter and composition. It is a landscape featuring four animals, two of them mythological.4 The remaining forty-seven images are all either copies of various sorts, or variations on a theme, and may be sorted thematically into seven groups based on subject matter:

**2** Layout of the columns in the ordination hall of Wat Pho (not to scale). A trio of pictures is affixed to each column. A *Samkok* scene tops each trio. The guide below describes the two bottom pictures and gives the page number to the illustration in Bunchob 1999.

L8. Ships (L + R), 233 R8. Dutch Folly (L + R), 234 L7. Canal (L), Ships (R), 241 R7. Dutch Folly (L + R), (see 234) L5. Canal (L + R), 231 R5. Factories (L + R), 235 L4. Praya Grande (L + R), 230 R4. Ships (L + R), 238 L3. Factories (L + R), 229 R3. Factories (L + R), 237 L2. Canal (L + R), 228 R2. Canal (L + R), 239 L1. Macao isthmus (L + R), 227 R1. Ships (L + R), 240

L6. Praya Grande (L), Canal (R), 232 R6. Animals (L), Macao isthmus (R), 236

This list is an oversimplification, because "same template" simply means that there is some degree of direct correspondence between the compositional structures of the images in question, but the specific degree of correspondence varies markedly, often within the same thematic group, because of the range of different copying practices at play. Here is the full list of the kinds of copying I have identified among these pictures, and some of the scenes in which they are most clearly exemplified:

Before we begin a detailed examination of the pictures, a brief word on their grouping and installation will be helpful (fig. 2). Affixed to the sixteen large internal columns of Wat Pho's Ordination Hall in groups of three, the images occupy custom gilt frames that organize them into a pyramidal arrangement. At the vertex of each trio is a fight scene from the Chinese literary epic, *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* (known in Thai and referred to hereafter as *Samkok*)*.* The two images at the base are almost all images of Macao, Canton, and the Pearl River Delta (fig. 3).5 The consistency of this organizational pattern establishes a visual and thematic unity throughout the installation.

That copies were prevalent among the Wat Pho pictures was not something that those who organized the installation attempted to hide. On the contrary, the abundance of copies is boldly emphasized by the fact that on eleven of the sixteen columns, identical pictures are paired together in the bottom row of the trios, and a preference for thematic similarity is still evident when exact matches were not possible. In the case of the *Samkok* pictures, even those that do not share the same template are all so similar

**3** This example, from the third column on the left (L3), demonstrates how the pictures are framed together in trios, with a battle scene from *Samkok* at the vertex of each set of three.

**4** Detail of the *Samkok* scene from the vertex of the trio on column L3.

to one another as to be effectively indiscernible without close examination. Every one of the fight scenes centers on the encounter between a pair of warriors on horseback flanked by several foot-soldiers wielding shields, weapons, and banners (fig. 4). To one side or the other are white military camp tents of a style used in the Qing dynasty.6

## **Samkok**

The fact that nine different templates were used for the sixteen *Samkok* images demonstrates that the glass painters had access to a great variety of slightly varying options, even though the resulting compositions are extremely similar even in the cases where different templates were used. In cases where the templates were the same, the background and figures are structurally identical, but still vary in small decorative details, such as the precise hue and pattern of the clothing characters wear and the banners they hold aloft. But for the most part, the color of the costumes and even the horses' coats are consistent between pictures made from the same template, suggesting that the artists exercised only a minor degree of creative latitude in the production of the Wat Pho pictures. It should also be noted that the five surviving glass paintings at Wat Thepthidaram (from what must have once been a much larger set, judging from the number of empty frames) are sufficiently similar to the *Samkok* images at Wat Pho to suggest a common origin, but only one of the five is a battle scene of the same type: the others are also from *Samkok*, but show more diplomatic encounters. This underscores the suggestion that the Wat Pho pictures were deliberately selected for their visual similarity, because the workshop must have had other types of scenes available in their repertoire.

# **Ships**

The group of pictures that demonstrates the most variability within a common theme is the representation of ships navigating the Pearl River Delta. This is a particularly intriguing group because of the many types of vessels represented, both Chinese and foreign (primarily British), often in the same scene. In a few cases, these images have a visual artifact not observed elsewhere in the Wat Pho set: a painted border of dark blue with a lighter-hued inner edge surrounds the image within the physical frame, closely resembling the matting one might find surrounding a framed print. These borders are most evident in the images that give primary focus to a specific large British ship, and hint that these images might have been copied from contemporary ship portraits of Western origin (fig. 5). The other images of this group have no central focus, nor a compositional strategy in common, but depict a variety of ships and scenery. Prevalent in this group, together with a variety of Chinese craft and full-rigged Western sailing ships, are some Western vessels fitted with both sails and steam-powered paddle wheels. This was a transitional hybrid design that first appeared in the region in 1829.7 The presence and prominence of this type of ship in the Wat Pho pictures (they also appear in the Foreign Factories and Macao scenes) suggest that these images most likely date from the 1830s or 1840s, consistent with the period during which the King of Siam, Rama III (r. 1824–1851), renovated numerous temples in Bangkok with Chinese design elements, including Wat Pho, and embellished them with reverse glass paintings.

# **Foreign Factories**

The paintings of the Foreign Factories of Canton are those that most emphatically link the Wat Pho paintings with the broader scope of Chinese export art. This image type can be categorized in two ways. Synchronically, in relation to one another, these images are a fascinating study in the variability and perhaps modularity in the use of templates. Diachronically, in relation to the broader iconographic tradition of the

**5** Trio featuring a pair of early hybrid steamships, located on column R4.

Foreign Factories scene, the images represent a late and highly condensed version of the salient features.

All six paintings of the Foreign Factories share the same template for the background, though since this is a depiction of a static row of buildings, it may be incidental to the scene rather than a deliberate design choice (see fig. 3). The foreground consistently depicts the Dutch Folly half out of frame on the far right, and the surface of the river crowded with a number of Chinese and Western vessels. This is where the pictures become especially interesting, because in regard to the specific type and arrangement of the boats, two pairs of pictures (hence four of the total six) are identical—sharing the same template for the entire scene—and the remaining two pictures differ slightly from both pairs as well as from one another. In one of the pairs, the two pictures are so completely identical in all respects, including discolorations that appear attributable to age, my suspicion is that one of the two is a mechanical copy.8 But the other pair appears to be original glass paintings that were made by hand from identical templates, because there are noticeable variations in the smallest details, such as the arrangement of figures and foliage. Thus, the Foreign Factories group presents us with a similar situation as the *Samkok* pictures: whereas it might have been simpler to consistently use an identical template for all the images of the same type, instead multiple templates were employed even though the differences between them are minimal in terms of the overall visual impact of the images.

Images of Canton's foreign factories are excellent candidates for deeper study of copies, because variations of this stock image proliferated across decades, within a variety of

**6** Trio featuring Macao's Praya Grande, located on column L4.

different media. Early versions of the image date back to the middle of the eighteenth century, and appear plain and naturalistic. By the turn of the nineteenth century the scene was frequently painted in gouache, oil, and other media including glass, and artists increasingly condensed and elaborated the view to make it more exciting, enlarging the size of the buildings, filling the river with a wide variety of ships, and even compounding the scene with other popular local sights, such as the Dutch Folly and the five-story pagoda, that were not actually visible from that vantage. This compounded version of the scene is distinctly the predecessor for the iconography used the Wat Pho painting, with one peculiar anomaly. The Wat Pho images of the Foreign Factories consistently place the Dutch flag between that of Denmark and the United States, transposing its usual position with that of the Spanish flag seen in all of Crossman's examples.9 If indeed the Dutch flag was never historically in this position, this might be a copying error that subsequently proliferated throughout this particular workshop.

# **Macao**

Among the glass paintings in the *ubosot* (Ordination Hall) of Wat Pho are six images of Macao based on two different templates, with three representations of each. One template depicts a narrow isthmus view of Macao's foreign settlement, the other features the Praya Grande (fig. 6). Two matched pairs of each image type are paired together in the bottom row of their respective trios, reinforcing the preference for matching like with like that runs consistently through the installation.10

**7** Trio featuring Macao's isthmus, located on column L1. The picture in the lower left appears to be a mechanical reproduction of the lower right-hand picture on L6 (see Bunchob 1999, 236), exactly reproducing the crack in the glass, but the tones of this image are distinctly faded.

Like the Foreign Factories, the Macao pictures participate in both diachronic and synchronic modes of copying. Diachronically, both the Macao isthmus and the Praya Grande are the heirs of an established iconography for each scene, though in these pictures it has been greatly simplified and condensed. Evidence of mechanical reproduction in the case of one of the isthmus scenes (copied from another of the three), also falls into the diachronic mode (fig. 7). The remaining two isthmus scenes and all three of the Praya Grande pictures fall into what I am calling the synchronic mode, i.e., they appear to have been copies of the same generation produced together in a workshop using identical templates, but discernible through tiny incidental variations: differences in the array of sails or flags on ships; subtle discrepancies of foliage; the inconsistent coloration, number or position of human figures.

# **Canal Scene**

The final group that I want to discuss are the pictures that I am tentatively calling a "Canal scene, foreign enclave." With eight pictures sharing the same template, this scene makes up a significant proportion of the Wat Pho pictures (fig. 8). My supposition is that it is likewise a scene from somewhere in the region of the Pearl River Delta, in keeping with the general theme of the set, but I have yet to find a predecessor for

**8** Two examples of the "Canal scene," details of the pictures on the lower left from R2 (here top) and L2 (here bottom).

the iconography that would help identify the specific place represented. The architecture is very similar to that depicted in the Foreign Factories and Macao scenes, but in all cases the buildings are so simplified and stylized that it seems safer to regard them as a schematic abstraction than a careful study of place. The clothes and hair of the tiny figures suggest that they are meant to represent Europeans, and the most distinctive clue is the Danish flag on the central boat, a modestly-sized vessel with a furled sail on a single mast, and some bundles of cargo in the stern. This might suggest a location near the Danish Factory, were it not for the presence of light-haired women, as foreign women were prohibited from entering Canton. Two smaller boats on either side are operated by standing figures maneuvering their craft with long poles, and this detail, plus the constructed appearance of the waterway, suggests that it is a canal, albeit a very short one that ends abruptly after traversing only enough distance to accommodate about five buildings on either side. Perhaps in time we will identify the place depicted. In the meantime, we can compare all eight versions to one another. Six of the eight are installed together in matched pairs.11 The two that are not paired appear to be mechanical reproductions of one of the original glass paintings, given that they precisely reproduce not only its trivial details, but also the large crack that runs vertically at a slight diagonal through its center (see fig. 8, whose lower image appears to be the original of the reproductions on L6 and L7). All the matched pairs are probably from the original set: though they were painted from an identical template, telltale tiny variations pervade the placement and costume of the figures and the smallest details of foliage and architecture.

# **Conclusion**

Through both imagery and installation, the Wat Pho pictures demonstrate that copying was integral to the production and reception of this set of glass paintings. In regard to production, the numerous templates identifiable among this set attest to their widespread usage in glass-painting workshops. The existence of multiple, highly similar templates for popular scenes such as *Samkok* and the Foreign Factories satisfies a visual aesthetic that privileges the variation of minor details within a thematically and compositionally unified structure. The same aesthetic principle is characteristic of a great many of the temple murals commissioned by Rama III, who was likewise the patron of Wat Pho's renovations in the 1830s. At Wat Pho, this visual aesthetic of variety within unity is reinforced by a regular pattern of installation that highlights and calls attention to the proliferation of copies among the set. Modern eyes jaded by mass production might dismiss the artistic value of copies, but in Third Reign Siam (1824– 1851), the ability to acquire large sets of very similar pictures must have been an admirable novelty. It is tempting to wonder if the distinctive aesthetic of mass-produced Chinese glass paintings—variations of detail within a unifying thematic and compositional structure—could have inspired the prevalence of a similar aesthetic in the era's mural paintings.

in the book is, if I have correctly assessed the matter, identical to the trio on page 234. However, after comparing the illustrations in the book with my own photographs, I began to suspect that the trio on page 234 is the mechanical reproduction of the trio not shown, rather than vice versa. Note how the frame on page 234 subtly differs from all the others; it has a slightly different design and shinier gilding, with bright red paint in the crevices to highlight the gold. It is also apparent from the identical patterns of wear that the two images of the Dutch Folly in the bottom row of the trio on page 234 were mechanically reproduced, either one from the other or both from a prior image. From a comparison with my own photographs, it does appear that the trio omitted from *The Ubosot of Wat Pho* is identical in imagery to that depicted on page 234, but in an older frame congruent with the rest of the set.

# **Bibliography**

ARTS DEPARTMENT 1992

Arts Department, *Pictorial Book of Wat Phra Chetuphon.* Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 2535 [1992].

BLUE 1973

A. D. Blue, "Early Steamships in China," *Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society* 13, 1973, 45–57.

#### Maitreechitt 1999

Bunchob Maitreechitt (ed.), *The Ubosot of Wat Pho,* Bangkok: Amarin, 1999.

#### Cao 2015

Maggie Cao, "Washington in China: A Media History of Reverse Painting on Glass." *Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life,* 2015. *<*http://commonplace.online/article/washingtonin-china-a-media-history-of-reverse-painting-on-glass/> (accessed on 28 July 2020).

Chang 2015

Michael G. Chang, "The Emperor Qianlong's Tours of Southern China: Painting, Poetry, and the Politics of Spectacle," *The Asia-Pacific Journal* 13:8:3, 23 February 2015.

< https://apjjf.org/2015/13/8/Michael-G.-Chang/4288.html >.

#### Crawf urd 1830

John Crawfurd, *Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts of Siam*

*and Cochin-China; Exhibiting a View of the Actual State of Those Kingdoms.* Vol. I, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.

#### Crossman 1972

Carl Crossman, *The China Trade: Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver and Other Objects.* Princeton, NJ: Pyne Press, 1972.

#### Patt erson 2016

Jessica Lee Patterson, "Chinese Glass Paintings in Bangkok Monasteries," *Archives of Asian Art*  66:2, 2016, 153–185.

#### Richardson 1970

E. P. Richardson, "China Trade Portraits of Washington After Stuart," *PMHB* 94, January 1970, 95–100.

# **10 REFLECTING ASIA** THE RECEPTION OF CHINESE REVERSE GLASS PAINTING IN BRITAIN, 1738–1770

Patricia F. Ferguson

#### **Abstract**

Chinese reverse painted glass mirrors have eluded a concise chronological study. Most histories are based on the dating of the European frames in the absence of any other key diagnostic features, artist's signatures or inscribed dates, yet these decorative paintings were frequently reframed as tastes changed over time, discarding their original hardwood and lacquer frames which may have offered critical information. This paper relies on archival material in the form of auction advertisements, historic house provenances, and documents from the English East India Company to establish that Chinese painted mirrors or looking glasses were imported into England as early as the late 1730s, and in the process identifies features associated with a specific early workshop. The documentary evidence underscores the agency of the maritime elite in the patronage of these novel luxuries, during their peak period of production from 1740 through 1770.

#### **Keywords**

Decorative Art, Country House, Chinese Reverse Painted Glass

### **Acknowledgments**

I would like to thank the following for their assistance: Thierry Audric, Olivia Fryman, Kee Il Choi, Patrick Conner, Paul A. Van Dyke, Tessa Murdoch, Emile de Bruijn, Helen Lloyd, Ffion George, Helen Persson, and Gemma Roberts.

Chinese artists painting on European plate-glass mirrors for the domestic and export markets was a remarkable cultural exchange. Executed in European style oil paints and frequently depicting genre scenes of "authentic" Chinese interiors and courtly figures in landscapes with parallels in contemporary European painting, these images challenged the trope of condescending imaginary chinoiseries. When reframed in Europe with elaborate giltwood frames in the rococo taste, the result is a distinctive hybridity that defies easy classification (fig. 1). As a result, the subject has been little studied within the arts of China or even histories of the export trade that is until the

recent publication of Thierry Audric, *Chinese Reverse Painted Glass, 1720–1820: An Artistic Meeting Between China and the West* (2020). Most authors, including Audric, frame its production and consumption within the period 1750 to 1800.1 However, British auction advertisements, private accounts and records of the Honourable English East India Company (HEIC), confirm that exports of Chinese "glass paintings" had clearly begun by the late 1730s and increased in the 1740s, yet there are almost no published examples attributed to this early period.2 In order to develop further its early history and chronology, this paper surveys examples of Chinese reverse glass paintings with important documentary provenances in historic collections in the United Kingdom, including The National Trust, and, relying heavily on Audric's corpus, identifies several diagnostic features associated with a specific artist or workshop(s), which supplied English-speaking merchants in the earliest decades of its production.

# **English Looking Glass Abroad**

From 1720, skilled artisans in China, specifically Canton (now Guangzhou), had developed a new technique of painting in reverse on imported European glass mirrors by scrapping away the silvered reflective coating made from an amalgam of tin and mercury (or quicksilver) following drawn designs. Initially, it may have been a clever reuse of costly mirrored glass that had loss some of its silvering during transport caused by

**2** Large mirror assembled from seven panels, overpainted with Marotesque baskets of flowers and foliage in oil paints by Jean-Antoine Monnoyer, London, 1710–1720, overall dimensions including frame 186 x 158.5cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, W.36:1 to 3-1934.

damp leading to the corrosion of the tin. In Europe, the technique of reverse painting on glass has a long tradition, but was relatively rare on expensive mirrors, known as "looking glasses." The earliest reference to the technique in China appears in 1722, when a dignitary, possibly from Canton, sent mirrors painted with "flowers along the edges" as tribute to the Kangxi emperor; subsequent tributes, in 1731 and 1733, also mention floral motifs on painted glass, but examples have yet to be identified.3 These early designs evidently appealed to the Emperor and his courtiers, but they may in fact represent the taste of wealthy Canton merchants and officials, the so-called "port barons," for whom the work was initially created and where the technique originated. By the early eighteenth century, England had moved from a second-rate glass producer dependent upon continental sources to a level of world domination as an exporter. As early as 1709, HEIC documents record ship captains bound for China requesting permission to include looking glasses as part of their private trade; these may have been given as gifts to Canton officials or directly exchanged with local merchants for Chinese trade goods.4 In 1711, John Gumley (1672–1729), a leading London supplier of mirrors and pier glasses, sent £100 of looking glasses to India on *Tyrall* to be sold in China; the venture was not successful however.5 By the 1720s, there were numerous references to HEIC ship captains and supercargoes including "looking glasses" as part of their private trade.6 These English mirrors may have resembled those forming a large mirror, c. 1710–1720, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (fig. 2).7 In dimensions frequently found among Chinese glass paintings, seven rectangular panes of glass were assembled to form a large mirror. Its ornamental design of floral festoons, attributed to the painter Antoine Monnoyer (1672–1747), also has parallels to a group of Chinese designs with vertical garlands (fig. 9), however, the English mirror was painted in oils on the front of the glass, a fugitive technique, rather than the reverse.

# **Early European Documentary References to Chinese Painted Looking Glasses**

The earliest mention in the HEIC archives identifying Chinese reverse glass paintings arriving into England was in January/February 1738/1739, when Captain Robert Bootle (ca. 1694–1758), of the *London* (1723–1739), an East Indiaman, returned from China with "6 Glass Pictures, 10 Tales," along with a large quantity of Chinese furniture: "18 Rosewood Chairs, 1 Ditto table, 2 Ditto Cabinets, 105 Tale," and "5500 Prints, 330 Tales."8 As part of his private trade, the glass pictures and furniture may have furnished his home in Hatton Garden, London, or else been acquired on behalf of others, such as his elder brother, the MP and attorney Sir Thomas Bootle (1685–1753), who had only recently built Lathom House, a grand Palladian mansion in Lancashire. While Robert Bootle later became a director of the HEIC, his younger brother Matthew (d. 1747), sailed to Canton in 1744–1745 as commander of the *London*; both could have acted as agents for their eldest brother's affluent and influential clients, who included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Somerset, and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.

In Canton, high-ranking agents of the HEIC would have socialized with their equals in the Swedish East India Company (Svenska Ostindiska Companiet or SOIC), which included many British-born employees, the Dutch East India Company, the Danish Asiatic Company (Asiatisk Kompagni or DAK), and other foreigners. Their latest acquisitions of curious Asian luxuries must have influenced their shared tastes.9 In 1738/1739, the Scotsman and SOIC supercargo, Charles Irvine of Drum (1693–1771) recorded the purchase in Canton, as part of his private trade: "for 18 painted glass with lacquered frames paid to Quouqua at 2 taels 2 maes each, 39.600 Taels" and "for 6 painted glass with Rosewood frames paid to Quouqua at 2 taels each, 12.000 Taels."10 Quouqua was a Canton artisan or shop owner, who offered a selection of lacquered or rosewood frames along with painted mirrors. The suffix *qua* (or *guan* in Mandarin) at the end of his name, associates him with hundreds of other Hong merchants licensed to trade with foreigners, who had purchased civil degrees, and had the right to be called "Mandarin," which raised their social status.11 Until his return to Aberdeen in 1757, Irvine traded internationally on behalf of merchants in London, Paris, and Amsterdam.12

Until recently, the only other named Canton glass painter from this early period was "Siou Sing Saang" described by the architect Sir William Chambers (1723–1796) in *Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils* as the "celebrated Chinese master."13 The architect had apparently employed him to paint examples of Chinese dress on glass, providing the inspiration for the costume plates in his

**3** *Woman Smoking by a Window with a Boy and a Parrot*, Canton, mid-eighteenth century, reverse glass painted mirror with giltwood frame, inscribed "Present af Fru Grave till E.P:s" (Gift of Mrs. Grave to E.P:s), overall dimensions 49× 39cm.

publication. Chambers was in China twice with the SOIC in 1743–1745 and 1748–1749, when he must have seen the richly detailed costumes in reverse glass painted genre scenes and landscapes. In a paper on Cantonese artisans and merchant, Paul Van Dyke has proposed that "Siou Sing Saang" is the business name used by "the famous Chinese painter Laqua" (*Chineserne berömde malare Laqva*); his shop and residence was identified on a Swedish map of Canton dated 1748–1749.14 Chambers had conversations on gardening with "Lepqua, a celebrated Chinese painter," which van Dyke, suggests is another spelling of Laqua; the artisan was clearly active between 1740 and 1760, however, no work has as yet been attributed to him.15 Who, for example, painted figures 3 and 4, stylistically of the 1740s to 1760s, but representing two very different hands or workshop(s)?

Evidence of the process of commissioning early painted mirrors appears in a letter dated 17 March 1740.16 It was written in Gothenburg, Sweden, by another Scotsman Hugh Campbell (d. 1754), a major shareholder and a director of the SOIC, to Charles Irvine, supercargo of the *Ridderhus (Riddarhuset)* about to embark for Canton. The letter requests "2 pairs of painted looking glass of the model herewith send you." It may have been for portraits, as there is a small group of full-length portraits of Europeans associated with the SOIC, executed around 1740, which include a pair of portraits

**4** *Chinese Couple in an Elite Interior*, Canton, mid-eighteenth century, reverse glass painting within a japanned toilet mirror frame, London, 60× 53cm, Lazenby Collection, Marble Hill House, English Heritage.

of John Pike and his wife, ca. 1743, now in the Sjöhistorika Museet, Stockholm.17 A former servant of the HEIC, Pike (act. ca. 1725–ca. 1751) was a supercargo in the service of the SOIC and made five trips to China between 1732–1744/45; he sailed on the *Calmar* to Canton in 1741–1743, when his portraits may have been ordered.18 Campbell's commission is contemporary with Pike's portrait, and he may have provided a watercolor drawing, miniature on ivory, hand-colored-engraving or a combination of sources as a model.

Another portrait from the SOIC group is of a seated gentleman in a red jacket and a white wig, clearly from the same workshop as the Pike portraits, if not by the same hand; now in the Richard Milhender Collection.19 Audric has speculated that it is the Scottish merchant and entrepreneur Colin Campbell (1686–1757), brother of Hugh Campbell.20 In 1731, Colin Campbell cofounded the Swedish East India Company and was its first director; he visited Canton numerous times between 1732 and 1747, and worked with Pike*.* Colin Campbell's will mentions that he owned "pictures on glass."21 A comparison of the depiction of the faces in these three portraits, the objects on the table and the treatment of the trees with their foliage resembling broccoli-like florets with fine extended branches sometimes with white flowers, are typical diagnostic features of an unidentified workshop active in the 1740s and 1750s (see fig.1).

Among the early documentary references for the English appreciation of Chinese reverse glass mirrors, cited by Audric and others, is the description, dated 1763, of "painted looking glasses from China" found in the White House, on the outskirts of London at Kew, a British royal residence remodeled in the 1730s by the architect William Kent (1685–1748), deputy surveyor of the King's Works.22 In his *Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surry; The Seat of Her Royal Highness The Princess Dowager of Wales* (1763), Chambers described, the largest space, The Gallery, a long room on the principal floor of the White House designed decades earlier for his Royal Highness, Frederick, Prince of Wales. It was "hung with grotesque paintings and children in theatrical dresses by the late John Ellis. The chimney piece and all the furniture are from designs of Mr. Kent; and on the piers between the windows are four large painted looking glasses from China."23 The White House was demolished in 1802, and these mirrors have not been identified in the Royal Collection; however, the four large Chinese "looking glasses" may have been in the royal household for decades. On 24 May 1747, Benjamin Goodison (ca. 1700– 1767), royal cabinetmaker to George II, billed the Prince of Wales for supplying "Four Carv'd frames for ye Indian glafses & painted & Guilt: & fitting & fastening ye Glafses to ditto: at 20 guineas each, 84:0:0."24 The four "Indian glasses" were presumably the "four large painted looking glasses from China" acquired in Canton during the 1745/46 season or earlier, perhaps commissioned as a gift for the Prince of Wales by the directors of the HEIC.25

Another early reference to Chinese painted mirrors in England was recorded in 1764 by the French lawyer, Jean-Baptiste-Jacques Élie de Beaumont (1732–1786), who was visiting Walpole House, on Paradise Row, in Chelsea, then a rural retreat; it was formerly owned by the late Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), Britain's *de facto* first prime minister between 1725 and 1742.26 In 1759, the property had been acquired by the wealthy merchant, member of parliament (1765–1774), and art connoisseur George René Aufrère (1715–1801). Élie de Beaumont's description of the house and its estate captures the fashion for all thing Chinese in elite homes in the mid-eighteenth century:

The Chinese furniture, the tiles, the hothouses, the bird menagerie and particularly the pheasants from China are all very worthy of attention, but I especially admired the mirrors sent from England to China and brought back with Chinese paintings done on the reverse of the mirror, with as much precision as if they had been done on the top.27

The mirrors may have belonged to Walpole; however, the house and its contents were offered for sale following his death, on 13 April 1747, and Aufrère, an important wealthy collector, may have acquired them through other networks.

# **The Second-hand Market for Chinese Reverse Painted Looking Glasses in Britain**

British newspaper advertisements announcing auction sales provide yet another important resource for the reception of Chinese reverse glass paintings in England. Between 1–11 March 1748, the *General Advertiser* announced the upcoming London auction on 9 and 14 March 1748, of the "genuine Oriental Curiosities and other Valuable Effects of Richard Martyn, Esq; deceased, late Supercargoe to the Honourable the East India Company," which included "A large Collection of Chinese Paintings, some on Looking–Glafs Plate"28; his final voyage to Canton was in 1743 as supercargo of the *Haeslingfield*. The sartorial Martyn, as evidenced by the large wardrobe of rich wearing apparel trimmed with gold plate buttons, had collected Chinese paintings on paper, such as views of the river in Canton and processions, as well "Portraits of the different Habits of the Chinese, from the Emperor down to the peasants,"29 a subject which had also interested Chambers. By 1748, mirror paintings were desirable commodities warranting mention in a costly advertisement aimed at the auction-going *beau monde*.

East India Company captains and supercargoes were the source for these luxury goods. Their purchases were typically commissioned by London merchants and private customers, or to furnish their own homes. On 16 March 1761, the *Public Advertiser* announced the dispersal by auction of the collection of "curious Chinese Paintings on Glafs," belonging to the late Captain Benjamin Fisher (d. 1760), of the *Drake,*  an East Indiaman, who had died six months before on his return voyage from Canton. The auctioneer noted that the goods were collected over several voyages, Fisher having sailed to Canton in 1751–1752 and 1754–1756. An anonymous sale in the same broadside on 20 March 1761, highlighted "some curious and large India Paintings on Plate-Glass, of the Chinese Nobility," along with "India pictures of Landscapes, &c., for Hangings."30 The auction of the household furniture of Thomas Saunders (1713–1775), removed from his country seat at Brill House, Oxfordshire, announced in the *Public Advertiser* on 26 October 1776, "magnificent Rofewood Desks and Book–cafes, the Fronts of which are adorned with Chinese Paintings on Plate Glafs." Examples of Chinese-made padouk or rosewood English-style bureau-cabinets with pairs of Chinese painted mirror panels in the upper sections, typically date from the mid-eightenth century.31 Between 1750 and 1755, Saunders had been the governor of Fort St. George (now Chennai, formerly known as Madras, in Tamil Nadu) and may have acquired such furniture in India, commissioned by HEIC agents. Wealthy British expatriates working in India were obvious consumers of glass pictures, which, unlike paper, were not consumed by pests.32

# **Historic British Collections with Chinese Reverse Painted Looking Glasses**

The above maps up to the 1750s the documentary evidence for the increasing availability of Chinese reverse glass painted mirrors, new and second-hand, offering context for the examples found in historic English collections. Saltram House, in Devon (The National Trust), near Portsmouth, a significant naval and merchant port, has one of the richest collections of Chinese decorative art and chinoiserie interiors with Chinese wallpaper, furniture in the Chinese Chippendale style, and two large sets of Chinese

**5** *Two Women Reading by the Water's Edge*, Canton, 1745–1755, reverse glass painting with giltwood frame, London, ca. 1757, overall dimensions 106× 66cm, Saltram House, Devon.

painted mirrors.33 The first, a set of eight were framed around the same time as some of the Chinese wallpaper was installed: one of the mirrors has been found to be backed with a sheet of wrapping paper, inscribed, "bird & fflowers cut out /of India paper for filling/ in vacancys in other paper /March 1757" (fig. 5).34 The set comprises six large mirrors (106 by 66 centimeters) and two smaller, and all are mounted in identical elaborate giltwood rococo frames with slight variations in the design of the smaller two. The mirrors and wallpapers were part of the remodeling in the 1750s of Saltram under the heiress Lady Catherine Parker (1706–1758), who had married John Parker (1703–1768). The set may have furnished one or perhaps two rooms in the manner of continental miniatures cabinets, such as the Millionenzimmer, Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, or Miss Leigh' Bedchamber at Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, both dating from the 1760s.35 With the exception of one three-quarter length portrait of a single female beauty, all seven depict full-length groups of relaxed and naturalistic figures using perspective and shading to create depth and volume. They were clearly executed in the same workshop, probably by the same hand or hands, between 1745 and 1755. These depictions of young women, sometimes with children, each with distinct costumes, coiffures, and jewelry, indicating their ethnicity and social status—Han and Manchu, courtesans and concubines—in landscapes with the same foliage of rounded florets and

**6** *Man and Woman on a Terrace*, Canton, 745–1765, reverse glass painting with gilt lacquer frame, overall dimensions 46.8× 42.2cm, Saltram House, Devon.

protruding flowering branches depicted in the Pike portraits of the early 1740s. Only one picture depicts a male figure, a fisherman, in conversation with a coquettish female maidservant, possibly based on a popular drama. None of the eight scenes are duplicates, but similar scenes from the same workshop with the distinctive foliage are found elsewhere, so they are not unique works of art.36 An example repeating the scene of the two woman reading was formerly in the collection of the Stirlings of Keir and Cadder, Glasgow merchants and Jamaican plantation owners (fig. 1).37 The vases of flowers and bowl of fruit on the ledge in both again recall details in the portraits of the Pikes and of Colin Campbell.38 It was possibly acquired by Archibald Stirling of Keir (1710–1783), who made his fortune in India, between 1735 and 1748. Wealthy Chinese merchants with a global outlook may have been the intended market for this genre, influenced by exotic European art.

The second set at Saltram includes six smaller reverse painted mirrors (46.8 by 42.2 centimeters) clearly by a different hand or from a different workshop, but probably of roughly similar date, ca. 1745–1765 (fig. 6).39 Each depicts an elegant woman intimately posed with elderly or overweight men, perhaps Daoist immortals such as Li Tieguai or alternatively scenes from popular dramas, which may have been more erotic in tone. Margaret Jourdain and R. Soame Jenyns suggested that these early examples were for

**7** *Elegant Woman with Chickens by the Waters' Edge*, reverse glass painting, Canton, mid-eighteenth century, carved giltwood overmantel frame made by John Linnell, after a design by Robert Adam, c.1767, dimensions of mirror 134 × 175 cm, Osterley Park, Hounslow.

Chinese consumption and may have decorated *maison tolérée,* or theaters.40 Such risqué scenes may have been read by Europeans as a type of Hogarthian Harlot's Progress. While again, none are duplicates, they are not unique and similar examples appear elsewhere, often with their original Chinese gold-painted lacquer frames.41 Whether purchased from a London merchant or commissioned through HEIC agents based in nearby Portsmouth, the large set is a powerful comment on Lady Catherine Parker's cultural and commercial networks.42

At Osterley Park, in Hounslow, a large mansion house just west of London, described in 1772 as having been furnished with "a profusion of rich China and Japan I could almost fancy myself in Peking,"43 there is just one Chinese reverse painting on mirrored glass (fig. 7).44 It is installed in the Yellow Taffeta Bedchamber, the principal guest room on the first floor, where it is set into an early neoclassical overmantel frame, carved and gilded by John Linnell (1729–1796), after a design executed in 1767 by the architect Robert Adam; it is en suite with a larger unpainted pier glass on the opposite wall between the windows.45 The painted overmantel mirror was recorded in the 1782 inventory of Osterley, as "An India Painting on Plate Glass with an elegant carved and gilt frame."46 Osterley was owned by a banking dynasty, the Child family, directors of the HEIC since the early 1700s, which allowed them to place orders for commodities

**8** Overmantel glass with three Chinese reverse glass paintings, mid-eighteenth century, pine with oil gilding, London, Jean-Antoine Cuenot, 1753–1756, width 206cm.

through the captains or supercargoes they invested in as their private trade. In 1769, James Christie advertised an auction of Captain Frederick Vincent (d. 1785), late commander of the *Osterley* (1757–1770), an East Indiaman merchant ship, which included "some high finished paintings on plate glass."47 Francis Child (1735–1763) was one of four owners of the *Osterley*, when Captain Vincent sailed to Canton in 1757–58, 1760–61, and 1768–69.48 The painted mirror may have been acquired by Francis Child before 1763, and after his death in 1767, it was installed in its fashionable Adam-designed frame by his brother, Robert Child (1739–1782), who succeeded him and inherited the estate.

Its horizontal format, rarely found among the "floret" group, includes an elegantly dressed lady seated by the waters' edge on low rockwork with chickens in the foreground and buildings in the distance.49 It is similar to three examples at Arundel Castle, West Sussex, incorporated into an elaborate rococo giltwood framed overmantel mirror (fig. 8).50 The Arundel versions are "conversation pieces" with multiple figures of Mandarins and servants, a type associated with Audric's Music-Poetry group. The frame was supplied to Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686–1777), between 1753 and 1756, by the carver Jean Antoine Cuenot (act. 1744–1762), to decorate Norfolk House, in St. James's Square, removed to Arundel in the 1930s. It was identified as a "Chimney Trumo Glass Frame" by Cuenot and furnished the "intirely Chinese"51 dressing room, as it was so described in 1756, of Mary Blount, Duchess of Norfolk (ca. 1712–1773).52

At Harewood, home of the Lascelles family, Earls of Harewood, near Leeds in Yorkshire, there was also just one Chinese mirror painting. It was set into an overmantel in the State Bedchamber in a giltwood frame made by Chippendale around 1770–1772.53 It was described in an 1819 guidebook as "Over a most beautiful ornamented chimneypiece of white marble, is an elegant Indian glass, adorned with their king, queen and attendants."54 It was actually formed of two mirror paintings: a Chinese noblewoman seated on a chair with female attendants on a veranda overlooking a lake and another of a Chinese nobleman resting on a daybed with male attendants in the same setting.55 These representations of wealthy Canton "port barons" recall the "Indian Paintings … of the Chinese Nobility" offered for sale in 1761. English cabinetmakers were presumably supplied with costly Chinese painted mirrors by their patrons in the same way they were supplied with panels from Oriental lacquer screen to be refashioned as veneer on case furniture. The pair of mirrors at Harewood may have been made a decade or two before Chippendale's frame was added.

In early literature on Chinese reverse glass paintings, the half-dozen examples at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, are often cited as the earliest recorded, presumed to have been acquired in Canton in 1743 by Admiral Sir George Anson (1697–1762), 1st Baron Anson of Soberton, during his famous circumnavigation of the globe, 1740–1744.56 However, there is no evidence the Admiral Anson purchased them and if he did, it may have been after 1747 when he claimed his prize money and became enormously rich. They may have furnished his London townhouse in St. James's Square or Moor Park, Hertfordshire, his country seat, the contents of which were left to his elder brother Thomas Anson (ca. 1695–1773), of Shugborough, the family estate.

An inventory of Shugborough in 1842 lists examples in a garden pavilion, known as the Chinese House, built in 1747: "2 Chinese Looking Glasses, 4 small looking Glasses."57 However, earlier accounts by visitors suggest there were many more glass pictures in the house. In 1763, Phillip Yorke describing his recent visit to Shugborough, noted in the Mansion House "the apartment within is furnished with Chinese taffeta and paper and adorned with the prettiest Chinese paintings I know of in England."58 A country house tourist, John Parnell, had remarked in 1769, that there were "Indian Pictures & china cases & other Elegant Pices of Chinese workmanship"59 in the Chinese House and on 23 June 1779, Peter Oliver (n.d.), following a visit to Shugborough, recorded, "the Pictures were not crowded, but were in Taste; many in the Chinese Style, & 2 in particular were painted on thick Glass, finely executed & animated."60

The largest and most impressive, are a pair of mirror paintings depicting "Chinese Nobility," identical mirror images of a seated Mandarin and two attendants on a garden terrace, beneath a festoon border of beribboned flowers, within ornate carved and partly gilt Chinese rosewood frames after European designs (fig. 9).61 Stylistically, and in format, they are similar to a pair at the Rijksmuseum depicting the estates of rich Canton merchants located on the banks of the Pearl River, dated to 1755–1770.62 A pair matching the description of the Shugborough pair were sold at an auction held by Messrs. Christie and Ansell, in London, on 10 February 1780, highlighted in the *Public Advertiser* as "two superb paintings on Plate Glass of large Dimensions."63 The sale was held to clear the contents of the store of Robert Carr (1739–1786), captain of

**9** *Seated Nobleman with Attendants on a Terrace*, one of a pair, reverse glass painting, Canton, mid-eighteenth century, carved rosewood with gilding, dimensions of mirror 119.4× 86.3cm, Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire.

the *Greenwich,* a merchant vessel in the service of the HEIC during the 1770–1771, 1771–1773, and 1776–1777 seasons*,* sailing only as far as Bombay or Madras. Offered individually in the sale catalogue as "A most beautiful high finished Chinese Painting on Plate Glass, buildings, figures, &c., embellished with festoons of flowers, size 34 inches by 47, in a carved and partly gilt frame," they were sold together for £26.5.0 to "Anson."64 The buyer was perhaps the Admiral's nephew, George Adam Anson (1731–1789), who inherited the estate in 1773. Carr, who appears to have lived large (at his death he had substantial debts of £13,000), may have purchased the framed mirrors second-hand in Bombay or Madras.65

# **Conclusion**

As early as the 1740s, elite English consumers were able to acquire Chinese reverse glass painted mirrors. The documentary evidence underscores the agency of the maritime elite in the patronage of these novel luxuries during their peak period of production from 1740 through 1770. As the novelty of their original painted lacquer or carved rosewood frames waned, they were later reframed to integrate with changing fashions. Large overmantel mirrors installed above the chimneypiece became a feature of high-status bedrooms, when more elaborate assemblages of Chinese painted mirrors were created. With the rise of neoclassicism in the 1760s, European and Cantonese merchants increasingly replaced mirrors with less expensive plain glass, and with greater frequency began to copy European copper-plate engravings as design sources, as the once fine art became commodified.

Offering an alternative "authentic" universe to European rococo chinoiserie, the Chinese artists captured the minutiae of elite Chinese life in exquisite detail, embroidery, hair ornaments, costume and jewelry, rarely observed outside of China, yet with the exception of William Chambers, these realistic portrayals appear to have had little direct impact on European material culture. Chinese painted mirrors were probably as rare in the eighteenth century as they are today. Thierry Audric's corpus and research, the conference in Romont in 2020, and this subsequent publication, have opened up the study of Chinese reverse painted glass mirrors to a new generation of scholars and there is much to be explored: identification of Chinese print sources found in woodblock prints (*Gusu*) from Suzhou; analysis of the ethnic jewelry, costumes, and coiffures; interpretation of the popular dramas or novels inspiring these works of art; and ultimately establishing the various workshops and the anonymous artists that produced them. Whether acquired new, second, or even third hand, in original Chinese frames or refashioned for the British interior, with subjects that appealed to both Chinese and British elites, displayed in private to express one's openness to other global cultures and acquired through powerful commercial networks, it's clear that Chinese reverse painting on English glass is worth looking at, as both a reflection of Asia and of ourselves.

### **Bibliography**

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Thierry Audric, *Chinese Reverse Painted Glass, 1720–1820: An Artistic Meeting Between China and the West*, Bern and New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2020.

#### Barczewski 2014

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#### Bryant 1988

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#### Cormack 1960

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#### Cousins 2015

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East India Company 1926

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# **11 JAPANESE REVERSE GLASS PAINTING** THE OTHER EAST ASIAN TRADITION

Hans Bjarne Thomsen

#### **Abstract**

The essay outlines the Japanese tradition of reverse glass painting, looking at both textual evidence as well as extant objects from the three early modern production centers: Nagasaki, Osaka, and Edo. A knowledge transfer from Dutch and Chinese traditions of reverse glass painting initially took place through the city of Nagasaki, where a number of local artists received aspects from both traditions and created a new genre of Japanese art. In time, this art form spread to other parts of Japan, where it took on themes typically seen in Japanese visual media, such as beautiful women, kabuki actors, and landscapes. The inter-medial connections to the woodblock prints became a key part of the Japanese tradition of reverse glass painting and, with the advent of new media in the latter part of the nineteenth century, photography became incorporated into the art form.

#### **Keywords**

Japan, intercultural transfer, intermedia transfer, Nagasaki, photography, kabuki

### **Introduction**

Although Chinese reverse glass paintings have been at the forefront of Western-language examination of the non-Western reverse glass painting, this was by no means the only tradition, as evidenced by the essays in this volume.1 Other traditions appeared across Asia, and in East Asia, Japan stands as a notable example. The following essay will trace the history and development of reverse glass painting in Japan, with an emphasis on textual sources, extant paintings, and their intercultural aspects. The points of connection to other media, such as Japanese woodblock prints, will be examined, both as inspirations for the paintings, as well as how reverse glass paintings came to inspire woodblock print designs. It will be demonstrated that Japanese reverse glass painting became a vibrant Japanese art form that flourished within networks of cross-media interchange and cross-cultural borrowings.

 OpenAccess. © 2023 Hans Bjarne Thomsen, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110711776-013

In the case of Japan, as in other Asian cultures, the techniques of reverse glass painting as well as the first physical objects came from Dutch and Chinese traders. Over the succeeding centuries, Japan developed its own tradition and eventually came to influence the production of reverse glass painting in other countries, such as Indonesia. Despite the arguable importance of the Japanese tradition of reverse glass painting, a genre of which involved notable artists such as Shiba Kōkan 司馬江漢 (1747–1818) and Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760–1849), examples of the Japanese art form have not been described in Western literature.2 I hope that the discussions of the multicultural traditions of reverse glass painting in this volume will lead to further research on the neglected local traditions of reverse glass productions across Asia.

In contrast, Japanese reverse glass painting has long been discussed in Japanese sources, where an extensive scholarly literature exists on the topic. Twentieth-century scholars, among whom Uchida Rokurō 内田六郎, Ono Tadashige 小野忠重, and Misumi Sadakichi 三隅貞吉 stand out, provide important scholarship on the topic, especially prior to World War II.3 After the war, the interest among Japanese scholars has been more sporadic, and publications have mostly appeared in the form of exhibition catalogs illustrating examples from important Japanese collections, such as that of Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art. Such exhibitions have often shown reverse glass paintings in combinations with related art forms, for example, *doro-e* 泥絵4 paintings and *mingei* 民藝 folk art, or in combination with examples from China and the West.5

The Japanese names for the reverse glass paintings reveal their complex cross-cultural background and receptions. During the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, they were called: *gyokuban abura-e* 玉板油絵 (alternatively written 玉盤油絵), *ruri-e* 玻璃絵 (alternately *harie*), or *gakagami* 畫鏡 all taken from Chinese precedents. In addition, they were also called *biidoro-e* ビイドロ絵 from the Portuguese "vidro," or "glass." And *garasu-e* 硝子絵 (nowadays written ガラス絵), borrowing from the Dutch word for "glas."6 The names were used more or less interchangeably through their history in Japan. Since the war, the tendency has been the *katakana* version of *garasu-e*, namely, ガラス絵. 7

In early modern Japan, there were three major centers of production: Nagasaki, Edo (later renamed Tokyo), and Osaka. In addition, toward the end of the nineteenth century, some reverse glass paintings were also made in Nagoya.8 These will be examined in a chronological order. First, let us deal with the introduction of the art form to Japan.

# **Origins and Early History, Documentary Traces**

As with the case of China, the first examples of reverse glass paintings were brought by the Dutch as a tribute to country's rulers.9 In the year 1663, a mission led by Hendrik Indyk went to the Shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna 徳川家綱 (1641–1680), bringing the following gifts:

Following this initial point of contact, limited to a smaller number of persons in the inner court of the Shogunate, Dutch, and later Chinese, traders brought reverse glass paintings to Japan via the trading port of Nagasaki, where the two groups of foreign traders were allowed to set up trading posts with separate harbors. In due time, likely during the latter half of the eighteenth century, local production ensued.12

11

And it was logical for the Japanese production to take place in Nagasaki, which became a veritable melting pot of cultures, with Chinese, Dutch, and Japanese inhabitants. It was foremost a trading city where many foreign objects entered the country.13 It was also a place for education and pioneering studies in languages, arts, and medical studies through close contact with foreigners.14 Lastly, it was also a manufacturing center with many artists and artisans active in multiple media: lacquer, glass, porcelain, woodblock prints, and so on—creating objects destined for foreign and domestic markets.15 There was also a glass workshop in Nagasaki, the Tamaya 玉屋, often mentioned in the texts left by the Dutch traders.16

The first documentary mention of a domestically produced reverse glass paintings comes from a note, written in the seventh month of 1779:

a local Nagasaki merchant tried to bring four Japanese-made glass paintings to the Dutch traders in Dejima. When searched by the guard Kamoike Aizō, one of the four was found to be an erotic painting.17

In other words, by this time, local artists were making reverse glass paintings for Dutch inhabitants of Dejima, likely painted on imported glass. This is followed by the written records of the painter Shiba Kōkan on his visit to Dejima in the tenth month of 1788, recalled in a text written fifteen years later:

the [Dutch] captain showed me into the room. In a room the size of twenty tatami mats, glass paintings in square frames were lined up on the wall below the supraporte. Below these, chairs were lined up.18

This note is accompanied by a figure of the room, which includes numerous images in frames and a glass chandelier. He continues his narrative with an episode on his way back to Edo, when on his return from Dejima, he stopped at the place of his friend in Okayama:

Tenmei 9 [1789], the ninth day of the second month, a rainy day. I drew a wax painting on a sheet of glass. The connoisseur Suikizaemon could not believe his eyes and declared it to be like a godlike act.19

The above record shows that the artist had been taught the techniques of drawing on glass, likely during his sojourn in Nagasaki. It also demonstrates access to sheets of glass and other equipment. In fact, Shiba Kōkan writes in the same text that he taught the techniques of making sheets of glass to manufacturers of glass in Nagasaki, Osaka, and Kyoto during the same trip.20

This is an important development, as the Japanese did not make glass sheets at this time, a prerequisite for the creation of reverse glass paintings. In fact, the early Europeans residents in Dejima commented on the lack of sheet glass and windows in their writings. For example, Carl Peter Thunberg writes of his stay in Japan during 1770–1779:

[the Japanese] … are likewise acquainted with the art of making glass and can manufacture it for any purpose, both colored and uncolored. But window glass, which is flat, they could not formulate formerly. This art they have lately learned from the Europeans… . There are no glass windows here [in Japanese homes], nor have I observed Mother-of-pearl or Muscovy talk used for this purpose.21

For although the Japanese were making glass objects since the eighth century (Nara period), the production did not include sheets of glass. With the arrival of Europeans and the display of glass windows in the Dejima buildings,22 demand rose for sheet glass, and the Dutch merchants were repeatedly asked to provide glass sheets, as can be seen from their records. For example, a series of records from two years (1786– 1787) describes:

The Governor, through Kosaku, asks for three white glass panes and receives one large and various small panes. (14 February 1785)

The Governor, through Kosaku, again asks for glass panes. (18 August 1785)

The Governor, through the son of Kosaku, this time requests and receives two large glass panes, 2 *waaiers* long and 1.5 wide. (June 1786)

The Governor, through Kosaku's son, receives panes of glass (23 December 1786).23

In a way, it is not surprising that Shiba Kōkan should be applying himself to the new techniques, as he was one of the first domestic artists to create copperplate etchings, a technique he based on the information in imported Dutch textbooks.24 Yet it begs the question of the source of his knowledge of reverse glass painting: possibly he was taught by one of the Dutch traders in Dejima or from reading Dutch textbooks on painting techniques, or through close observation of actual paintings.

The same attention to objects brought in by the Dutch can be seen in an 1800 publication, *Records of Things Seen and Heard in Nagasaki*. 25 Across several pages, a "surgeon's box" is carefully illustrated, including detailed images of the reverse glass details, which are labeled:

This object is made of brass, reinforced with lead. The central part is made of glass. Below the glass paintings are Dutch characters, also written on glass.26

The idea of combining reverse glass painting with furniture and other three-dimensional objects, as seen in this object, became a widespread phenomenon in Japan as well, where such paintings were combined with boxes, lacquer bowls, netsuke, ceramic bowls, and a variety of other media, as will be seen below. At around this time, we can also see from the documentary records in Nagasaki that various local artists started to make their names as producers of reverse glass painting.

A key reference exists by Katsushika Hokusai within his drawing manual *Illustrated Book: The Essence of Coloring* (*Ehon saishiku tsū* 絵本彩色通) from 1848.27 In this woodblock-printed book, Hokusai closely describes the process of creating a reverse glass painting:

The careful and accurate description of the process indicates that Hokusai not only knew the process of creating reverse glass paintings, he likely also took part in their production. In fact, he also designed woodblock prints with reverse glass paintings as key parts of his design.29

# **Origins and Early History, Local Traditions**

The tradition of the reverse glass paintings in Japan was located in a limited number of locations, mostly Nagasaki, Osaka, and Edo (later Tokyo). While Nagasaki objects were luxurious and few and created mostly on imported glass sheets from the late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century, the Osaka and Edo examples were large-scale productions of reverse glass paintings of greater variety created on domestic glass from the early nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century.

As mentioned above, the history of reverse glass painting in Japan starts in Nagasaki, due to the proximity to foreigners and their product. Examples from both Europe and Chinese seem to have been available as model objects and presumably the techniques of reverse glass painting were also received from the foreigners, whether via word or texts. It is therefore not surprising that the first extant example from the eighteenth century depicts foreigners, specifically Dutch men and women in exterior and interior scenes.

A particularly striking example from the Hamamatsu Municipal Museum or Art may serve as an example (fig. 1). A central panel describes a Dutch couple and servants in a garden setting. Striking aspects of the work includes the elaborate Western-inspired gilt wooden frame as well as the intricately cut and painted glass side panels. This is clearly a luxury product, a feature that distinguishes the early Nagasaki production, with their imported glass and finely painted images, created with gold and other costly pigments. They were made as exotica, with an emphasis on foreign, non-Japanese elements. The intent seems to have been to create a Western impact—the Western aspects were not suppressed, but instead accentuated as their selling point.30

As described by Misumi Sadakichi, there is good reason to attribute this work to Araki Jogen 荒木如元 (1765–1824), since this and several other reverse glass paintings closely resemble paintings on paper by the artist.31 In fact, a number of key Nagasaki painters are recorded as having created reverse glass paintings. Of Ishizaki Yūshi 石崎 融思 (1767–1846) it is recorded that: "He learned the technique of foreign painting techniques from his father Genyū [Araki Genyū 荒木元融 (1728–1794)] and created oil painting on the back of glass, in addition, he learned from westerners the technique of adding mercury to the back of glass for making mirrored surfaces."32 As for the above-

**1** Araki Jogen (1765–1824), attr., *Image of Strolling Dutch Men and Women* 和蘭人男女逍遙図, around 1800, reverse glass painting, 66× 50cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0046.

mentioned Jogen, records state that he "was able to sneakily gather the techniques of glass painting from Yūshi and learned how to create Western paintings."33 In other words, there is a variety of documentary evidence for the early production of reverse glass painting by known Nagasaki artists.

A number of such reverse glass paintings exist, but unlike later paintings created in other locations, they were not mass-produced, but created one by one as luxury objects, perhaps as presents from Nagasaki officials to higher levels of Japanese society—according to the early modern tradition of gift giving from the various domains to the *shogunate, daimyo*, and other powerful persons in the central government.34 An intriguing object with connections to contemporary events can be seen in fig. 2. Here, a ship flying Russian flags is approached by smaller boats carrying the Dutch flag. We might ask ourselves, what is a Russian boat doing in the Nagasaki harbor when the port was closed to any other foreign ships than those from Holland and China? On closer examination, it becomes clear that this refers to a specific historical event. In the summer of 1804, the Russian vessel *Nadezhda* arrived on the shores of Japan as a diplomatic mission led by Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov (1764–1807), in an ultimately futile attempt to open the Japan market to Russian trade. After six months of Dutch-mediated discussions, the Japanese government asked the Russian ship to leave the port.35

**2** Anonymous, *Russian Boat and Dutch Cutters* ロシア船とオランダのカッター, 1804, reverse glass painting, 45× 56cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0055.

Upon comparing the painting with other images of the ship *Nadezhda*, the similarity is striking.36 In other words, images on the reverse glass painting created in Nagasaki were not just of idealized scenes of nature or foreigners; they could also include actual historical events.

The reverse glass paintings were not only intended to be hung on walls; other formats were also created, such as the peep box seen in fig. 3.37 This ingenious construction includes panels inside painted glass and painted wood. Through the glass lens at the top, a landscape painting, placed at the bottom of the box, could be seen, as if through a distant telescope. The drawer at the bottom was designed to contain a variety of landscape paintings.

It would be a mistake, however, to attribute all influence to Western sources. In fact, a number of glass paintings at the time show clear receptions from Chinese visual culture, such as fig. 4, showing a golden pheasant against flowering peony blossoms in the tradition of Chinese bird-and-flower paintings. Here, too, we see touches of luxury with the outlines of the bird done in gold pigments. Befitting the multicultural city of Nagasaki, the visual connections point toward the Dutch as well as the Chinese.

Summing up the characteristics of the early reverse glass paintings made in Nagasaki, we may say that they were images of foreigners and their ships, and that they were

**3** Araki Jogen (1765–1824), attr., *Peep Show with Reverse Glass Panels Featuring Western Men and Women* 紅毛男女のガラス絵をはめた 覗眼鏡, around 1800, reverse glass paintings and paintings on wood and paper, peep box with glass lens and drawer, 33× 28cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gk0006.

**4** Anonymous, *Peonies and Golden Pheasant* 牡丹と 錦鶏鳥, early nineteenth century, reverse glass painting, 30× 36cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0069.

**5** Totoya Hokkei (1780–1850), *Foreign Goods from the Hikita Shop in Osaka* 大阪疋田唐物 from the series *The Three Cities* 三都之内, early 1820s, woodblock print (*surimono*), ink and color on paper *shikishiban*, 19.8× 17.7cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Horatio Greenough Curtis, 37.337.

made on fine, in imported glass, with fine details and expensive pigments including the use of gold and elaborate frames. In other words, they were objects of luxury, and not of mass production.

During the early nineteenth century, the development moved to two centers in central Japan, namely, Edo and Osaka. No longer were images of Dutch foreigners or Chinese-inspired birds and flowers the main themes, but, instead, images of beautiful Japanese women, kabuki theater actors, and landscapes came to predominate.

Early modern production of glass objects started in earnest in Nagasaki, from where a Kume Seibei 久米清兵衛 traveled to Osaka and established a shop Harimaya 播磨屋 in Osaka in Tenman Tenjinja-mae天満天神社前in 1751, where he produced his own glass works. Glass objects, mostly lamps, toys, and other decorative objects, produced by Kume were then sold in Edo by Kagaya Kyūbei 加賀屋久兵衛, who set up his own glass-producing workshop. Later, Kazusaya Ryūsaburō 上総屋留三郎 (1821–1893) also set up a shop in Edo where he sold imported objects, along with domestic objects from Nagasaki and Osaka. We may get an intimation of what was sold in such a shop from a *surimono* print by Totoya Hokkei 魚屋北渓 (1780–1850), entitled *From the Three Cities: Hikiya Karamono Shop* 三都之内 大阪疋田唐物 (fig. 5), where we see exotic ob-

**6** Follower of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, *Cat and Woman by Brazier* 猫と火鉢に寄る女, mid-nineteenth century, reverse glass painting, 24× 35cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0084.

jects for sale, such as peacock feathers, mechanical fountains, and a reverse glass painting of a Western woman.38

It stands to reason that the production of reverse glass paintings followed soon after. We know of some Edo practitioners of the genre, such as Shiba Kōkan and likely Hokusai, but almost all of these objects remain anonymous.

Many of the paintings produced in Osaka and Edo bear close connections to the Japanese woodblock print traditions, with the similar compositions, names of the actors and courtesans, titles, and even series. At the same time, there was also a certain degree of simplification when compared with prints, as seals of censors and publishers were missing, as were print techniques such as *bokashi* (gradation) and *karazuri*  (blind printing), due to the natural restrictions of the medium.

Fig. 6 depicts a beautiful woman next to *naga-hibachi* brazier, smiling at her pet cat in the process of cleaning itself.39 Following the traditions of *bijinga*, prints of beautiful people, some lines (such as the red outlines of hands, arms, and face) are quite delicately drawn, with interesting brush effects at her hairline, and the fascination with textiles is fully evident. As in woodblock prints, large portions of the composition are given to layers of different textile patterns, depicted flat on the surface.

**7** Anonymous, *Ichikawa Sadanji and Onoe Kikugorō Playing the Parts of Benkei and Ushiwakamaru* 弁慶と牛若丸に扮する市川左団次と尾上菊五郎, 1890, reverse glass painting, 61× 31.4cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0153.

Kabuki actor images also became popular, and not only in single images, but also in sets of two and three paintings, mirroring the diptychs and triptychs of actor woodblock prints. Fig. 7 is a good case in point: a pair of paintings depicting the battle on Sanjō Bridge between Benkei and Yoshitsune. The paintings also depict the names of the actors who play these roles, and by looking at the combination of actors and roles, it is possible to deduce exact information, including date, actor identities, and the name of the play.40 In this case, as with the Russian ship, the subject matter was of contemporary relevance.

One of the more elaborate and unusual object types created in Osaka as well as in Edo/Tokyo are the landscapes (fig. 8). Here, too, there are points of connection with the contemporary print culture, with titles such as "famous views of," "eight views of," "Tōkaidō stations of," and so on. The emphasis is on travel rather than static views, and the paintings are often peopled with detailed figures that under closer inspection turn out to be tiny cutout photographs, pasted on the inside of the glass. It is easy to imagine how the medium of photography that enjoyed great popularity at the time would have added to the interest and salability of these reverse glass paintings. In addition, an unusual range of painting styles are used to creating striking contrasts within the

**8** Anonymous, *Combined Eight Views of Ōmi* 近江八景一覧, late nineteenth century, reverse glass painting, 75× 50cm, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gd0079.

paintings: between the photographs, the painfully exact architecture of the buildings, and the roughly brushed details of the landscape, such as trees and hills. Some details are added after the pigments had dried, for example, a sharp tool was used to scratch lines within the tree trunks in order to add texture. Another unusual aspect is the thinly sliced mother-of-pearl used mostly to enhance architectural features. As a result, the landscape becomes a striking study of contrasts between media and styles. On some landscapes, such as the present painting, layers of differently painted glass are placed on top of each other, giving a distinct three-dimensional effect.

Although woodblock prints and reverse glass paintings share many points in common, there were also significant differences. On the one hand, prints allowed greater detail and thus more information to be incorporated into the images, in addition, accuracy of lines and colors were greater with prints. On the other hand, reverse glass paintings were more durable and did not fade when exposed to light. In this way, the paintings could be used for more than a season.

For the reasons of durability, the reverse-glass-painted medium gained functions not available to woodblock prints: for example as votive plates to place under the eaves of shrines where they were exposed to intemperate weather, or, as we see in (fig. 9), as shop signs that remained bright and attractive, despite exposure to the elements. The above shop sign for the cosmetic Komachisui 小町水41 in the Osaka store Kawashita

**9** Anonymous, *Shop Sign for Komachisui with Reverse Glass Painted Panels* 硝子絵をはめた小町水看板, late nineteenth century, wood, pigments, and lacquer with reverse glass painted panels, Hamamatsu Municipal Museum of Art, Gk0013.

Chōyōdō 川下朝陽堂, features a multimedia display: painted details, two reverse glass panels, carved calligraphy, and seals highlighted with red and gold, with black lacquer base on a metal-reinforced wood base. The durability of the colors in the glass paintings made them ideal participants in such multimedia shop signs.42 Over time, reverse glass paintings came to be used as box covers and incorporated into porcelain cups or lacquer trays.43

As for the Edo artists who participated in their design, we know of a few, for example, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and his students Ochiai Yoshiiku 落合芳幾 (1833–1904).44 But not only did artists participate in the creation of reverse glass paintings, they also incorporated them into woodblock print designs. This was most often seen in *surimono*, long the place for displaying still lifes of exotic and luxurious objects. In addition to the *surimono* print seen in fig. 5, we have prints by Suzuki Gako 鈴木鵞湖, Hokkei, and others.45

# **Domestic vs. Foreign**

In contrast to Chinese reverse glass paintings that were often made in response to the orders of foreigners and exported in large numbers, very few Japanese examples created in the early modern era were sent out of Japan. The examples that can be

**10** Utagawa Sadahide (1807–1873), *A Yokohama Shop for Imported Goods* 横浜唐物店の図 from the series *Pictures of Merchandise for Sale at Yokohama* 横浜売り物図会の内, 1860, woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 36.5× 25.4cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 11.39178.

found in Western collections were typically those brought back by collectors who had lived a long time in Japan, such as the examples collected by Franz von Siebold in the Five Continents Museum of Munich.46

That the intended audiences were mainly Japanese can also be seen in the Japanese inscriptions that often appear on the paintings, or the typically Japanese formats such as shop broadbills, and even in Japanese topics such as kabuki actors. In time, they also became products sold in Yokohama, as can be seen in this woodblock prints by Gountei Sadahide 五雲亭貞秀 (1807–1878/79) who describes reverse glass painting as one of the exotic products that can be bought in Yokohama (fig. 10).47 The image on the right, which is clearly labeled "reverse glass painting" 玉板油絵, is a bird red macaw (Ara tricolor) in a bird-and-flower design. The painting could even have been intended to describe an import from China, along with the other objects, in this case, "a colored copper-plate engraving" 銅板絵彩色 with an image of a Western mother and child, in an elaborate Western-style frame.

During the mid-nineteenth century, another merchant, Kagaya Kyūbei 加賀屋久兵衞, described above as one of the first merchants to produce and sell glass objects in Edo, began to advertise himself as a "Specialist in Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese Glass Objects." A woodblock printed broadsheet advertisement circulated by the store from the mid-nineteenth century features dozens of different glass objects made and sold at the store, and, if one looks closely, one can also detect reverse glass paintings of the landscape type among the great variety of available glass objects.48

With the opening up of trade from Japan across East and Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century, foreign markets for Japanese reverse glass paintings started to appear. Notable there was Indonesia, or Dutch East Indies, to where a trade was established and many extant objects currently exist, especially the Japanese landscape models, of a type that were mostly free of Japanese cultural meanings.49 Yet, excepts for such isolated cases, Japanese reverse glass paintings mostly remain in Japan and for this reason have gathered little attention on the world stage.

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Sasaki Seiichi 佐々木静一, "Indoneshia garasu-e chōsa I, II" インドネシア硝子絵調査 Ⅰ, Ⅱ [Survey of Indonesian Reverse Glass Paintings I, II]. *Tama Bijitsu Daigaku Kenkyū kiyō* 多摩美術 大学研究紀要 3 (1987).

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Uchida Rokurō 内田六郎, *Garasu*e 硝子絵 (Reverse Glass Painting), Tokyo: Sōrinsha 双林社, 1942. Yanagiya 1927

Yanagiya Garō柳屋画廊 (ed.), *Misumi Sadakichi shozō biidoro -e, doro-e tenran mokuroku* 三隅貞吉所蔵ビイドロ絵、泥絵展覧目録 (Exhibition Catalog of Reverse Glass Painting and *Doro-e* from the Collection of Misumi Sadakichi), Tokyo: Yanagiya Garō柳屋画, 1927.

# **12**

# **"IN ALL OF BEIJING, THERE ARE NO MORE THAN FOUR PAINTINGS ON GLASS THAT WOULD FALL WITHIN OUR CONSIDERATION"** CHINESE REVERSE GLASS PAINTINGS FROM

CZECH COLLECTIONS AND THEIR CONTEXTS

Michaela Pejčochová

### **Abstract**

Chinese reverse glass paintings were sought after during the 1920s and 1930s by European dealers who operated in Beijing and other cities. Through exhibitions of Chinese art, they reached a number of European collectors and became a sensation among the wealthy, who decorated their homes with them. The collectors were not only the nouveaux riches, but also prominent artists of the period, who otherwise maintained strict stylistic and theoretic criteria for their own works. This paper presents the little-studied Chinese reverse glass paintings that survive in Czech collections. It discusses their origin, means of their acquisition, contexts of their original reception, as well as their acquired meanings once brought to Europe by their new owners. It looks specifically at the attention given to these artworks by Czech avant-garde artists, who collected them as part of their interest in "primitive art" and made them a source of inspiration for their own creations.

### **Keywords**

Chinese reverse glass paintings in Czech collections, Chinese art collection at the National Gallery Prague, collecting Chinese reverse glass paintings in the West, Vojtěch Chytil (1896– 1936), Josef Martínek (1888–1976), European modernism and Chinese reverse glass painting

# **Introduction**

In Central Europe, much as in other parts of the European continent, collecting Asian art was a favorite pastime of the nobility since the times of the Emperor Rudolf II Habsburg (r. 1576–1612).1 Collections of Chinese and Japanese porcelain were part of the cabinets of curiosities in noble mansions around baroque Bohemia and Moravia, and Japanese lacquer became a welcome novelty slightly later.2 Similarly, Asian reverse glass paintings were included in the collections of Asian objects in the Central-European region (historically designated as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, i.e., Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, most of which today constitute the Czech Republic), albeit slightly later than in Western Europe.

"In all of Beijing, there are no more than four Paintings on Glass that would fall within our Consideration" **195** OpenAccess. © 2023 Michaela Pejčochová, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110711776-014

Although some of the reverse glass paintings might have featured in the local aristocratic collections and are now lost, the earliest ones preserved to this day were collected toward the end of the nineteenth century by a new type of collectors. These were the newly emerging Orientalists, who specialized in the study of Asian languages, philosophy, and material culture, as well as the nouveaux riches—collectors from industrial and entrepreneurial circles who did their best to catch up with aristocratic collecting of the previous decades. The latter even bought some of the chateaus and palaces from their previous owners or built luxurious villas with lavish interior decoration, where the reverse glass paintings had their place alongside an array of Chinese decorative objects.

The reverse glass paintings extant in Czech collections at the moment, however, mostly originate from a still later collecting period. During the 1920s and 1930s, travelers and adventurers set off to Asia and brought back artworks and objects of material culture that included Chinese and Japanese paintings, sculptures, objects of ancient art, and a number of applied art and handicraft objects, including reverse painting on glass. The National Gallery Prague (NGP) collects eight Chinese reverse glass paintings, whose origins can be traced to several of these interwar period sources.

The present essay will discuss in detail the context of the acquisition of these reverse glass paintings, the situation of their original owners, and the role they played in the collecting of Asian art in the period in question. It will elaborate on the remarkable phenomenon of Chinese reverse glass painting as a sensation among modernist artists, who chose to place them alongside African, Chinese, Tibetan, and Japanese sculpture and a number of other non-European art and curio objects in order to decorate their residences. Some even became inspiration for their own creations. So far, Chinese reverse glass painting in Czech collections has been very little studied, and there has been even less study regarding the history and the contexts of their collecting. This essay hopes to provide the preliminary outline of their typology, function, and mainly the framework for understanding their reception and appreciation during the early decades of the twentieth century.

# **Collecting Chinese Reverse Glass Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Orientalists and Industrialists**

The earliest extant reverse glass painting in a Czech collection was owned by Rudolf Dvořák (1860–1920), the first professor of Oriental Studies at the Charles University in Prague and the founder of Chinese Studies in the interwar Czechoslovakia.3 The painting is presently housed at the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African, and American Cultures, which is part of the Czech National Museum, and was most probably acquired from one of the local curio shops at the turn of thenineteenth andtwentieth centuries.4 This painting in its original Chinese frame likely depicts a scene from a popular novel or an event from the biography of a legendary Chinese official (fig. 1). The figures of eight gentlemen and an attending lady, situated in an open veranda with a view of the

**1** *Meeting of Dignitaries in Court Dress on a Terrace*, China, reverse painting on glass, 74× 54cm, National Museum – Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, 18418.

surrounding garden, are dressed in colorfully depicted official robes, both civil and military. The opulent decorativeness, which can also be seen in the furniture, textiles, and vegetation around the hall was no doubt the primary incentive for the acquisition of such a painting by an early twentieth-century scholar who had an avid interest in Asian art. The colorful execution, with a range of typical details, represented the purported image of the Chinese people and their activities in the popular imagination of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was likewise favored by early collectors with ethnographic interests in Asian cultures.

During the same period, Chinese reverse glass paintings were also collected by rich entrepreneurs who profited from the industrial boom in Central Europe. Among these were the founders of one of the first large department stores, Max Breda (1863–1914) and David Weinstein (1874–1939), who started the Breda & Weinstein company in the northeastern metropolis of Opava. They invited the architect Leopold Bauer (1872– 1938) from Vienna to build a department store inspired by American modern architecture, which was, with its eight floors and a ground plan of 1,500 square meters, the biggest shopping mall in interwar period Czechoslovakia. Sadly, the Breda and Weinstein families had to flee upon the takeover of the region by the Nazis in 1938 and their properties were confiscated. Among the possessions of Max Breda's son Pavel and his wife Ilona that were seized from their flat in Opava were books with rare engravings and "Chinese paintings on glass."5 These objects were unfortunately not found during postwar attempts to restore their legitimate ownership by tracking down objects lost during wartime looting. The presence of the Chinese reverse glass paintings in the household of a rich industrialist, however, shows that collecting strategy was yet another way in which the wealthy businessmen of the interwar era took inspiration from aristocratic and artistic circles. Similar situations are also documented in other European countries. We can find, for example, a casual literary note referring to the Garsington Manor in Oxford where "the scarlet drawing-room glowed with Chinese paintings on glass."6 The house was a luxurious home of Lady Ottoline Morell (1873–1938), known as a rich and influential celebrity of the artistic and intellectual circles of her day. It can be assumed that many more apartments, villas, and manors of the day were decorated in this way, both in Great Britain and on the European continent, some of which only survive in photographs and written descriptions.

# **Three Paintings with Unknown Origins: A Couple in Official Dress and a Monastery in Southern China**

The Chinese reverse glass paintings in the NGP collection can be roughly divided into three groups, each with a different origin and original collecting contexts. Firstly, there are three paintings of an unknown origin, which include a *Military Officer in Formal Attire* and a *Lady in Formal Attire*, obviously a pair that most likely came to Europe together (fig. 2). They are of the type often seen in the chateau and castle collections in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, representing a curious and peculiar "other" for the European viewer. The military officer is clad in a colorful armor and an elaborate hat with a neck cover, holding a quiver with a dozen of arrows decorated with the symbol of *yin* and *yang*, which signify his military identity. The lady wears a formal "dragon robe," which was customary for an official's wife during the occasions when the couple appeared together in public, as the lady, although herself not a dignitary, was entitled to the rank held by her husband. The lady doesn't have a rank badge on her chest, which would point to the rank her husband held, but only shows a stylized and much embellished dragon head on her robe, which differed from the regulations of the official dress code at court. She is also wearing the long "court necklace" and a tiara that was typically worn by noble ladies in the late imperial China.7

The faces of the military officer and the lady in the formal attire are painted using the typical mixture of Chinese and Western stylistic elements. The original flatness of the Chinese portraiture can still be felt from the imperfections like the awkward position of the man's eyes, but the shading is nevertheless utilized to a certain degree to suggest a round shape of the face and enlivens the features of the person. The lady has a comparatively more Chinese appearance, but areas of darker and pink color can also be seen in her face, suggesting a kind of Western modeling.

Due to their supposed origin in or in the vicinity of Guangzhou, these two works were cataloged as "Cantonese reverse glass paintings" when they arrived in the NGP

**2** *Military Officer in Formal Attire* and *Lady in Formal Attire*, China, reverse painting on glass, 48.2× 33cm and 47× 32cm, NGP, Vm 2985 and Vm 2986.

collection. Their origin is, however, not very clear—they were transferred to the NGP in 1962 from a depot, where the property confiscated from the former aristocrats and entrepreneurs had been gathered after the communist takeover in 1948. This means that they must have been part of a private person's collection, but unfortunately the information about their original owners is lost. We can only surmise that the paintings were part of the decoration of a noble mansion, alongside porcelains, lacquers, and other luxury objects collected by the aristocracy and later also by the well-off industrialists around Central Europe, such as the Breda family mentioned above.

Further, the reverse glass paintings in the NGP collection include a painting of the dramatic landscape in southern China with a coastline, where Chinese as well as Western ships anchor in front of a complex of buildings (fig. 3). The painting's origin is again unknown. It was bought in an antiquarian shop for the NGP collections in 1985 and no references to its previous owner are preserved. It is, however, remarkable for the fact that the exact location depicted in the painting is recorded there. In the top left corner three characters, *Huadi jing* 花地景, can be seen, and the stone gate in the bottom left part of the painting carries four characters, *Da tong yan yu* 大通煙雨. This identifies the building complex as the Datong Monastery (*Datong si* 大通寺) in Guangzhou by the Huadi River. This was a place much favored by late Qing dynasty merchants and foreigners alike for its beautiful natural scenery and great vistas. It is therefore no surprise that the site became a subject of a commemorative reverse painting

**3** *Datong Monastery in Guangzhou*, China, reverse painting on glass, 35.5× 51cm, NGP, Vm 5905.

on glass, with ships in the foreground and buildings of the monastery against the ruffled mountain peaks taking up the main part of the picture. It might be a rare surviving view of the monastery, where a famous Well of Mist and Drizzle (*Yanyu jing* 煙雨井) was admired as one of the local scenic spots before the temple was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of Guangzhou and later urban expansion of the city in early twentieth century.

# **Paintings Acquired by the Collector and Art Dealer Josef Martínek**

The second group of three paintings from the NGP collection was brought to Czechoslovakia in 1931 by the collector Josef Martínek (1888–1976). One of those few travelers and adventurers who spent lengthy periods of time in China from the late imperial time until the Republican period, Martínek amassed a sizeable collection of Chinese and Tibetan antiquities and sold parts of it in Europe. He organized a number of exhibitions in London, Prague, and other European cities, and set up three shops in Czechoslovakia—two in Prague and one in the spa city of Karlovy Vary—during the 1930s. In one of his articles, Martínek claims that he brought numerous new items of Chinese art in the summer of 1931. The paintings on glass no doubt belonged to this group, as he only showed this type of artwork in late 1931 for the first time.

In the catalog of his 1931 exhibition titled *The Exhibition of Chinese Art – Collection of J. Martínek*, there are twelve Chinese reverse glass paintings marked out in a separate

**4** *Lady in a Summer Dress*, China, reverse painting on glass, 48× 36cm, reproduction from Martínek 1931, Cat. No. 572, whereabouts of the original presently unknown.

category, each with a title, dimensions, and a precise dating. One of them is the *Lady in a Summer Dress*, dated to the Qianlong period (1736–1796), the whereabouts of which are unknown today, but its reproduction is preserved in the catalog (fig. 4).8 Although it might not have survived, it was remarkably close in its style to the two paintings that are now kept in the NGP: *A Lady with a Fan* and *A Lady with a Book* (figs. 5–6). They are all very similar especially in the rendering of the ladies' faces, hands, and clothes, but also in the emphasis on text and calligraphy, which can be seen on the framed panes in the background of the lost painting and in the book and on the fan in the hands of the ladies on the surviving paintings.

The fan carries a standard seven-syllable poem, which is written neatly, without awkward characters or mistakes, which can often be found on Chinese export art, and thus can be easily deciphered. In the book, two lines of characters are visible that identify its contents as the famous *Romance of the Western Chamber*. The prominent use of text creates a certain literary atmosphere in all these paintings, together with books depicted in the corner of the room in the lost painting and other paraphernalia of literati. In contrast, such items were completely absent from the pair of paintings of the military official and a lady in official dress. The style of writing in the three paintings from Martínek's collection is markedly similar and we can thus assume that these originated from the same workshop.

Furthermore, there is a third picture in the NGP collection that came from Josef Martínek: a painting of *Two Boys*—perhaps residents of one of the Christian missionary

**5** *Lady With a Fan*, China, reverse painting on glass, 51.5× 37cm, NGP, Vm 5536.

**6** *Lady With a Book*, China, reverse painting on glass, 51.5× 37cm, NGP, Vm 5537.

convents, where the reverse glass painting started to be produced in the eighteenth century, or possibly just a variation on the classical Chinese topic of children at play (fig. 7). This painting is executed in a slightly different, but still closely related painting style.  Their lips are painted in a similar way as those of the beautiful ladies, but the faces are much rounder, and we can see delicate shading used to render a convincing three-dimensional expression. The painting can be most probably identified with the one called *Boys* in Martínek's 1931 catalog, which is regrettably not illustrated, but has exactly the same dimensions as the painting preserved in the NGP.9

There were eight more paintings exhibited by Martínek in 1931 with the following titles: "573. *Leisure* (Qianlong Period), 574. and 575. *Theatre Play* (Daoguang Period), 576. *Lady With a Child* (Daoguang Period), 580. *Lady* (no dating given), 581. *Lovers*  (Daoguang Period), 582. *Lady With a Watch* (Daoguang Period), and 583. *Two Ladies* (Qianlong Period)."10 These are now lost, and we can only hope that some of them might still resurface in a private collection, where they have perhaps survived unnoticed until now. It is also obvious from the preserved examples that the dates given

**7** *Two Boys*, China, reverse painting on glass, 40× 30cm, NGP, Vm 5538.

by Martínek in his catalog were very optimistic and were probably set by the Chinese dealers he bought the artworks from. Rather than originating in the Qianlong or Daoguang periods, the extant reverse glass paintings of beautiful ladies were most likely produced in the Republican period, during the very time Martínek traveled to China to acquire works for his exhibitions.

# **Paintings Acquired by the Painter, Art Teacher, and Collector Vojtěch Chytil**

The third and final group of Chinese reverse glass paintings from the NGP collection came to Europe around 1930 with yet another important collector of Asian art: Vojtěch Chytil (1896–1936), who was a painter and spent several years in China in the 1920s, where he taught European painting at the Beijing Fine Arts Academy.11 At the same time, he made a name for himself especially by collecting works of modern Chinese ink painting by such masters as Qi Baishi 齊白石 (1864–1957), Chen Banding 陳半丁 (1876–1970), and Xiao Sun 蕭愻 (1883–1944), including a number of interesting but nowadays completely forgotten artists. In a pioneering attempt to put these on a par with the much-admired ancient Chinese painters, he amassed a collection of several hundred modern Chinese ink paintings that is to this day one of the most significant collections in the West. Had it depended solely upon him and his interests, Chytil

**8** *Fortress on a Hill*, Japan (?), reverse painting on glass, reproduction from Chytil 1931, dimensions and whereabouts of the original presently unknown.

would no doubt have devoted his energies fully to exploring the works of the young and older modern Chinese painters, and concentrated on acquainting the West with them. During the decade between 1928, when Chytil mounted his first exhibition of his Chinese art collection in Prague, and his death in 1936, he organized more than twenty exhibitions in a number of cultural centers around the Central Europe, such as Prague, Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, and even as far as London.

However, when we study his career more closely, it becomes obvious that his efforts to spread the name of modern Chinese ink painting in Europe met with a lukewarm response at best. Sadly, the collectors of his era, rather than buying a brand-new Qi Baishi, asked Chytil to bring back from his acquisition trips to the Far East old Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist sculpture, ancient paintings, and paintings on glass by the so-called Chinese primitive painters. As testified by archival evidence, Chytil often purchased these based on orders placed specifically by his friends and clients.

An authentic report about the demand for these paintings is provided by Chytil himself in his letter to Bedřich Feuerstein dated 8 February 1931: "In all of Beijing, there are no more than four paintings on glass that would fall within our consideration. We discussed this with you in detail at that time, and there is no delivery. A collection from Shansi [Shanxi 山西] Province is expected to arrive in about two weeks' time."12 In another letter, Chytil reports on further developments: "The situation is worse with

**9** *Lady With a Flower*, China, reverse painting on glass, 51.5× 46.5cm, NGP, Vm 1899.

paintings on glass. I bought three very original ones: two landscapes and one portrait. Otherwise it is all 'junk' or kitsch!"13 It is obvious that in the early 1930s, old paintings were in high demand and Chytil worked hard to acquire such paintings in China, whether singly or in whole sets. He operated mainly in Beijing, but mentions deliveries from the Shanxi province, where some of the reverse glass painting workshops obviously operated during the interwar period.

After Chytil's return from Beijing in mid-1931, ten reverse glass paintings featured in his next exhibition, some marked as belonging to his own collection and offered for sale, and two marked as part of the collection of the architect Josef Havlíček.14 Chytil had also previously sold a Chinese painting on glass of a Madonna icon to a client and was interested in borrowing it for the exhibition in 1931.15 In the illustrations part of Chytil's 1931 catalog we can find two reproductions of paintings on glass, one of a Chinese girl with a flower and one of a landscape, which is most probably Japanese (fig. 8).16 Two of the paintings that originate in Chytil's collection survive now in the NGP. These are the *Lady With a Flower* (fig. 9), which came from the collection of the

painter Emil Filla and was received into the NGP from Filla's widow after his death, and the *Girl With a Flower*, which was reproduced in the catalog as mentioned above. NGP bought this painting from the heirs of the architect Bedřich Feuerstein (fig. 10). The remaining paintings from the dozen recorded in the 1931 exhibition catalog are lost.

# **Chinese Reverse Glass Painting and Czech Modernism**

From the archival evidence and the acquisition history of the NGP pieces, it is obvious that Chytil sold a number of Chinese reverse glass paintings to painters, sculptors, and architects active on the Czech art scene in the interwar period. The question thus arises: Why did these paintings appeal to so many modernist artists, and what was it that led the stark proponents of such styles as Cubism and Surrealism in painting, or functionalism in architecture, to collect these works of popular art? The list of artists

who owned reverse glass paintings brought from the Far East by Vojtěch Chytil includes the painter Emil Filla (1882–1953), whose importance for the development of modern painting styles in Czech art was sometimes compared to that of Picasso for French modernism.17 Further, Chytil was close to the architect and stage designer Bedřich Feuerstein (1892–1936), who spent some time in Japan, visited Chytil in China during his Japanese sojourn, and whose approach was influenced by Far Eastern art most directly.18 Some reverse glass paintings were also in the collection of Josef Havlíček (1899–1961), who in turn became famous by constructing gigantic functionalist buildings in Prague and other cities in Czechoslovakia, which were praised as daring and hugely innovative by such luminaries as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. To understand the importance of Chinese reverse glass paintings for these artists, we have to look more closely at the artistic development during the first decades of the twentieth century.

From the mentions in Chytil's exhibition catalogs and related archival sources, it becomes clear that reverse glass paintings were referred to as "paintings by Chinese primitives" or "Chinese primitive paintings" during the early decades of the twentieth century. This was not to say that the paintings were considered primitive in the sense of a simple or uncivilized manner of execution, but rather that they were classified as belonging to the works that inspired European primitivism, one of the movements in modern art. As Tomáš Winter shows in his groundbreaking study of the reception of non-European elements in Czech art before World War II, a formalistic, aestheticizing approach started to prevail in the treatment of non-European works over the earlier ethnographic approach during the 1910s.19 The objects were taken out of their original context and understood purely on the basis of their form, treatment of space, movement, or color. The collections of the advocates of the primitivist movement and their sources of inspiration were a heterogeneous mixture of old European and non-European works of different periods and styles: Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque art, African, Oceanic, and Pre-Columbian creations, works from different Asian countries, as well as folk and naïve art.20 These works of art were not understood in terms of artistic expression; rather, they were seen in terms of form and subject matter. In the work of modern artists, the mixture of these sources was recast into individual artistic styles, distinct for each of the above-mentioned personalities.

Moreover, when organizing the first exhibitions of the Czech primitivists, the curators of the exhibitions included not only the newest creations of the avant-garde artists, but also a number of their sources of inspiration, making it a curious assortment of old and new, local and foreign.21 For example, the third exhibition of the Group of Fine Artists (a formation of modernist artists that introduced cubism in the Czech milieu during the short period between 1911–14) included a wide selection of French and German contemporary works by modern artists side by side with Gothic sculpture, a large set of popular paintings on glass of European origin, folk carvings, and ceramics.22 In this way, it becomes obvious that, for the emerging modern styles, folk paintings on glass (initially from different European regions) belonged to the stimuli that the artists turned to for directness, simplicity, and unaffectedness, which represented for them a remedy for the faults of empty academicism.

Emil Filla was one of the leading members of the Group of Fine Artists and a prominent proponent of Czech Cubism. It is thus not surprising that he was, among others, inspired by folk paintings on glass, which influenced his oeuvre even more strongly in later periods, especially in regard to his Expressionist and Fauvist works.23 While Filla and his colleagues from the Group of Fine Artists collected mainly Czech, Bavarian, or Slovakian paintings on glass in the 1910s, the opportunity to acquire Asian counterparts arose with the pioneering Chinese art exhibitions brought to Czechoslovakia by Vojtěch Chytil during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Chinese paintings on glass in fact featured more than one of the aspects that fueled the modernist imagination: the simplicity, flatness, and directness of the use of color, common in popular painting in any culture, combined with the exotic imagery and symbolism of Asian art.

As for the architects Bedřich Feuerstein and Josef Havlíček, they engaged not only in designing modern buildings, although these represent their most abiding legacy, but both architects were also part of groups of avant-garde artists, such as the Mánes Fine Arts Union (where Filla, too, was a leading member), and created drawings, sculptures, and other types of artworks besides their architectural designs, exploring the wide range of primitivist ideas and sources mentioned above. It was thus more in these disciplines—such as in Feuerstein's Symbolist stage designs or Havlíček's Cubist sculptures—that they took inspiration from folk paintings on glass, including Asian ones. The purist interiors projected by Feuerstein or functionalist constructions built by Havlíček are most likely not directly connected to Chinese reverse glass painting from their collections, but represent other extreme directions of their modernist attitudes, including countless experiments with form and space.

Based on the approaches described above, the Chinese reverse glass paintings became important parts of the collections of Czech modernist artists. In this way, the otherwise marginal genre of Chinese art gained popularity as a highly specific category of collectibles, quite distinct from their earlier role as an object of ethnographic appreciation or simply a decorative work of art.

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# **REGIONAL RECEPTIONS OF REVERSE GLASS PAINTING**

# **13 REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE MIRROR** WESTERNERS REINTERPRETED IN EARLY CANTONESE GLASS PAINTING

Patrick Conner

### **Abstract**

As seen from the auction records of the Swedish East India Company, a number of Chinese reverse glass paintings were brought back from Canton to Stockholm in the 1740s—probably including the portraits of the supercargo and investor John Pike and his wife. In their wake came reverse glass portraits of the Swedish king and queen, followed by comparable portraits of the British royal family and (in the early nineteenth century) presidents of the United States. The creative and selective role of the Chinese artists is considered.

#### **Keywords**

Portrait, auction, Swedish, royal, freemason

# **The Swedish Auctions**