Painted by fire: Jean Theodore Royer's Chinese enameled plaques - Collection from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - Critical Essay

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2004 by Jan Van Campen

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Still, if the plaques were made primarily for European buyers in Canton, we must consider what Europeans would have understood of the images. They would at least have recognized the Pearl River delta, as it was the only part of China that they were allowed to see. During the trading season, they were restricted to a district outside Canton and were in principle cut off from the company of women. They could see the courtesans in their boats, but unless they wanted to risk their lives, they had to stay away from these floating bordellos. However, the comprador, the Chinese contact person for the factorij (trading post), could arrange visits from women to the Western enclave. In addition, the Europeans were regularly invited to visit the pavilions and gardens on the opposite side of the river, which were partly owned by the Chinese traders with whom they did business. (20) Pavilions by the water's edge and charming women in boats, as depicted on the plaques in Plates X and XI, were therefore decorative subjects that Westerners could connect to their Chinese experience.

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However, the choice of subject matter prevents the Royer plaques from being specifically appropriate for the Western market, for, in general, the Cantonese workshops catered very directly to Western taste. Literary depictions, such as images from The Western Wing, hardly appear on porcelain made for export after 1720 because they were not understood in Europe. This had not previously been a problem (for a long time the more exotic an object was, the better), but in the course of the eighteenth century, interest in such decoration waned. Depictions of Chinese people remained popular, but as isolated decorative elements or in genre-type depictions that fitted the European fantasy of China. Thus, it cannot be assumed that the Chinese workshop that made the Royer plaques had an eye to Western buyers.

On the other hand, literary subjects and depictions of the courtesan culture were suitable for Chinese customers, who could readily understand them. Many Cantonese workshops manufactured for both Chinese and Western customers, and assuming a strict division between export art and art for the domestic market is not always satisfactory. It is important to remember that not all Chinese art and applied art intended for the domestic market was made for the highly educated and sophisticated elite and, therefore, in the taste associated with this upper class. The trade in fine and decorative arts had been increasing dramatically since the seventeenth century, due to the rise of an affluent middle class. In the eighteenth century the workshops in Canton acquired fame among the Chinese too as places where art of high quality was made, from expensive paintings to everyday prints, often incorporating new and exotic elements from the West. The combination of a Chinese scene in a typical European form (in terms of the format and the frame) and the occasional obvious appearance of the Pearl River, by which Canton, the center of exotic entertainments, was indicated, gives the plaques a tension that would have made them attractive, exotic objects for Chinese customers.