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Images of the Canton Factories, 1760-1822: Reading History in Art . By Paul A. Van Dyke and Maria Kar-Wing Mok . Hong Kong : Hong Kong University Press , 2015. Pp. xxii + 125, + 40 unnumbered plates. ISBN 10: 9888313770 , 9888208551 (paperback); ISBN 13: 9789888208555 .
Book Reviews
This book makes a subtle contribution to the dating of Chinese export paintings produced before the Opium War, especially those depicting the foreign commercial premises (the "Thirteen Factories") in Canton. It has been generally believed that Chinese export paintings were used as souvenirs and whether they accurately depicted the buildings and street scenes of the time was not the producers' main concern. Paul Van Dyke and Maria Mok successfully demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case.
William Shang (Shinichi Yasuda) once asserted that dating Chinese export paintings is not an easy task, because they were copied over and over from a number of original templates. As they were not sketched on the spot, they are thought not to accurately represent the actual situation of the time in which they were made. However, he suggested that by examining the variations of some specific elements, it is still possible to ascertain the original production date of the paintings. These elements include pagodas, forts, batteries, and sediments along the Pearl River of Canton.1
In their work, Van Dyke and Mok have made good use of these elements in dating the paintings. In addition, they pay particular attention to the national flags in front of the depicted factories. They find that flags were hoisted as the foreign traders came and occupied certain factories, and lowered at their departure. Taking this into consideration and cross-referencing the diaries and journals kept by the European companies, it is now possible to date the paintings much more precisely than it used to be, a method successfully employed by the authors.
Paul A. Van Dyke is a prolific historian. He has previously published several books on the old China trade in Canton, including Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (2007) and The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845 (2011). He has...