Beauty in pursuit of pleasure: 19th-century Chinese export watercolours on pith depict a variety of idealised, attractive women. Ifan Williams traces the sources for these popular images, which appealed to western audiences as representations of the sophistication and exoticism of Chinese civilisation

Paintings on pith--also erroneously known as 'rice-paper'--come within the general classification of Chinese export watercolours. Although they may deal with the same subjects as the more prestigious paintings on Chinese-manufactured paper or paper imported from Europe, pith as a material makes very different demands on the painter and a very different style evolved to deal with the medium.

Pith is cut from the inner spongy tissue of a small tree, Tetrapanax Papyrifera, which is native to south-west China and Taiwan. Most came from trees growing in the wild and, although the cutting was highly skilled, pith was cheap because when the cut sheets were dried and trimmed no other process was necessary before the paint was applied. Pith has a cellular structure and the gouache used by the painters sits on the surface, giving a brilliant effect more akin to embroidery or mosaic than to the type of watercolour fashionable in Europe. Because the paint did not spread, great delicacy in detail was possible, showing for example the antennae of a butterfly, painted with a single hair. However, the nature of the medium meant that washes were difficult to apply. A picture of young women playing a board game illustrates the problem (Fig. 1). It looks as though the wall behind the girls has suffered from the damp in their pavilion by the lake.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Pith had been used to make artificial flowers from the third century AD and for many centuries was an ingredient in Chinese medicine. (1) It came into use for painting in the 1820s, perhaps as a result of the enormous expansion in China's overseas trade at the beginning of the 19th century. The material allowed the painters on the waterfront to offer inexpensive souvenirs to the sailors and traders who came to Canton (now Guangzhou). We know a little about some of the painters, in the main those who also produced large-scale portraits or port scenes in oils and on manufactured paper, destined for the boardrooms of the trading companies and the homes of sea captains and company managers. (2)

Most of the cheaper export paintings were produced in studios, often by teams of jobbing craftsmen in a production line under the direction of a recognised artist. Even knowing which studio a particular picture comes from does not necessarily mean that the named painter had a hand in it. Usually it is only the quality of the painting that indicates that the master has been at work. A painting of a mandarin's wife in court dress by the prolific artist Tingqua illustrates the exquisite detail that could be achieved on this miniature scale (Fig. 2). (3) Single standing figures like this are very common, usually without any background, although in the more opulent versions they stand on an ornate carpet.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Many of the faces on Chinese export paintings are standardised and simplified. The blandest of these, often adapted to western taste, give the whole genre a poor reputation. In the case of imperial portraits and pictures of 'beauties', no imperfections were to be shown. It was even thought improper to suggest any shading or shadows on the imperial face (making for some difficulty when western artists came to work in the court of Emperor Qianlong). The idealising nature of such pictures is demonstrated by a portrait described as 'Wong Leung, Empress of China' when sold by Sotheby Parke Bernet in Hong Kong in 1977. This is presumably Lung-Yu, chosen by her aunt to be Kuang-hsu's bride. Perhaps we should have some sympathy with the artist trying to make something of this sunken-chested, long-faced, buck-toothed girl. (4) The more appealing ladies are described by Craig Clunas as inhabiting 'the mythical world of China viewed as a land of sensuous mystery and sybaritic delight, one component in the western construction of an image of "the East"'. (5)

Yet there are images on pith that derive from classic Chinese art. Pictures of young women playing 'Chinese chess', as in Figure 1, are directly reminiscent of a similar group in an imaginary re-creation of A Spring Morning in the Han Palace, of about 1590, by Ch'iu Ying (National Palace Museum, Taipei). Wen C. Fong comments: 'Reflecting popular Ming interest in surface pattern and colourful design, Ch'iu's female figure, not unlike a denizen of Utamaro's ukiyo-e world in Edo Japan, is more an exquisite mannequin than a study of character. Ch'iu Ying ... begins with an ideal egg-shaped contour, adding eyes, nose and mouth on a flat surface. Ch'iu's decorative approach to figure and portrait painting had a lasting influence on later Chinese art; indeed his colourful palace ladies became a stock theme in later Ming and early Ch'ing decorative arts'. (6)

At some time between 1709 and his accession in 1722 as Yongzheng Emperor, the young Prince Yinzhen ordered a folding screen of 12 panels showing beautiful young women in solitary contemplation in tasteful surroundings. They were to form a screen to go around his couch in the garden residence given to him by his father. Although previously thought to show favoured concubines, it is now apparent that they are not based on any particular young women. When, after his accession he had discarded the pictures, he himself called them meiren, a term for idealised 'beautiful women' in a well-established genre of Chinese painting made for male delectation. (7)