VICTORIA, BC.- Beginning this month, you can see China through the eyes of a 19th century Westerner at an exhibition of nearly 100 Chinese export paintings. T
he Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is showcasing the paintings, the majority of which were from the collection of Sir James Brabazon Urmston, who worked in China for the British East India Company in the 1800s.
Visualizing a Culture for Strangers: Chinese Export Paintings of the 19th Century, opened October 24, 2014, and runs until January 4, 2015 in the AGGV’s Founders Gallery.
“One of the paintings is among the Gallery’s most important donations of 2013 because of its extreme rarity and its wonderful provenance,” says Barry Till, the AGGV’s Curator of Asian Art. The painting is of a Chinese Jewish trader or merchant, and dates to around 1820. “To the best of my knowledge, it is the earliest known painting of a Chinese Jewish individual,” says Till.
Chinese export paintings were produced in trading ports for sale to Western customers and were imported to Europe and America in great quantities. They were how Westerners saw China.
A substantial number of the paintings were recently donated by the heirs of Sir James Brabazon Urms “It is an outstanding donation,” says Till. “The paintings were given by Hugh Hamilton and his children of Vancouver, who inherited them from several family generations dating back to Sir Brabazon Urmston.”
The pieces in the exhibition depict a range of life from urban and rural China through scenes of trade, production, agriculture, punishments and execution, festivals, religious activities, and portraits of royalty and the general population.
