Carl Gustav Ekeberg and the invention of Chinese export painting

Magazine Antiques, March, 1998 by Kee Il Choi, Jr.

Views of the Pearl River sites were an artistic by-product of the highly complex commercial relations that grew up between the Chinese and the Western merchants.(1) Traditionally, the study of these paintings has focused on establishing chronologies for late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century port scenes and occasionally on identifying an artist.(2) Until now, little attention has been paid to the design sources, both Chinese and European, that contributed to the formulation of stock designs, from which finished paintings were created in China by anonymous artisans in workshops organized around the concept of the assembly line.(3) This article focuses on three engravings of Pearl River sites and their influence on the history of export painting.

Even had he not undertaken his tenth voyage to China, between 1769 and 1771, as captain of the East Indiaman Finland, and not subsequently published a detailed, illustrated account of that trip, Carl Gustav Ekeberg (1716-1784) would still have the reputation as one of his century's most experienced and capable China hands.(4) Originally trained as a chemist and physician, this disciple of the great Swedish botanist Linnneus rose rapidly within the ranks of the admiralty of the Swedish East India Company Between 1742 and 1777, he participated in twelve voyages to China, five of them as captain, simultaneously playing the roles of mariner, merchant, diarist, naturalist, and draftsman. In 1761 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, for which he kept journals and made studies during his various voyages.(5) The best known of his journals, Ostindiska resa (East India journey), was published as a series of letters addressed to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1773 and theta in a German edition in 1785.(6) The Swedish edition contained seven engravings after Ekeberg's drawings of the progress of the Finland from Goteborg to Canton. Three of these depict sites on the Pearl River delta: Canton, Whampoa, and the Boca Tigris [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1-3 OMITTED].(7)

While Western views of China, especially engraving, had been in circulation for well over a century, the publication of Ostindiska resa appears to represent the first time that this particular combination of views on the Pearl River was promoted. By the end of the century, they, in combination with a view of Macao, would become a staple of the trade in export painting.

By the last quarter of the eighteenth century a plethora of engravings and drawings - from bookplates to social and topographic views to studies for the shapes of vessels - had been brought to China for use as designs for the decoration of works of art, especially on porcelain.(8) They also furnished the artisan workshops of Canton with an ever-growing record of Western scenic conventions, such as the use of fixed-point perspective and shading - the whole idea of "a graphic two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional thing."(9) Inevitably, they had a gradual and subtle influence upon the aesthetic sensibilities of the craftsmen of Canton, especially in the later eighteenth century. Indeed, it could be argued that had Ekeberg been a more significant or imaginative artist, he would probably have had less impact than he did. He took a distinctly descriptive, detached tone in his work, sought clarity, and presented the facts. He meant to be, and was, totally reliable as a source of information, not only to his European audience but also to the Chinese artisans who encountered his engravings.

Ekeberg's View of Canton [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED] is the earliest, clearly datable view so far identified, either Chinese or European, of the fully developed foreign factory site in Canton.(10) In the engraving the factories are seen as a narrow strip of mostly European-style buildings, some marked by national flags, about a thousand yards in length on the banks of the Pearl River in the western suburbs of Canton. Canton itself is accurately depicted as the great ancient walled city it was, with White Cloud Mountain in the distance and, in the foreground, the Dutch and French folly forts.(11) Ekeberg's words and engraving impart a sense of the foreign factories as a place apart, separated physically and politically from the city. Describing them, he wrote:

The suburb, which is situated along the eastern and southern sides of the town, is wider at its western end; it is here that the Europeans have their factories, which are separated from the river by a broad, paved street of about 18 alnar [about ten meters].... The house sites run upwards from the riverside, and earlier had houses built in the Chinese manner, but some time ago the owners have allowed the Europeans to arrange them after their own taste and conveniences, and to adorn them with windows of glass instead of dim sighted ones from mother of pearl, with dividing walls instead of wooden fences and with piaster ceilings instead of coverings with mats pasted with paper. The nations have since then competed in making the interiors pretty and the facades beautiful. Towards the river, each factory has its covered balcony, where one in the hot season can be cooled by the fresh breed. Inside the factories there are secure vaults for money, and cellars and adequate storage for incoming goods and even for outward goods for several days, as well as pretty halls and chambers, etc., etc. The buildings are much more fire-safe than the old ones, which several times have been exposed to disastrous fire, especially in November 1743, when, within a single night, the Swedish and Danish factories, together with several hundreds of other houses, were reduced to ashes. For that reason every factory has now got an expensive fire engine.(12)