A remarkable album of 169 Chinese delicate and finely executed watercolors, evidently put together following an important commission during a period of vigorous trade with Europeans, dating to a time when Chinese goods were in high demand.
The drawings fall into a number of distinct groups: the first depicts figures and of those, the first six show women and children in combination or alone, while the remainder show women and children making music; after these come musical instruments, then four pictures of men playing instruments; next comes a group of pictures of birds, followed by a number of pictures of other animals including butterflies and other insects, centipedes, crabs, spiders, lizards and snakes; and finally, pictures of fish and eels. In total there are fifty figure drawings, twenty-eight musical instruments, nineteen birds, twenty-four fish and forty-eight other animals.
The figures are full of charming interplay, they generally show a lady with a child or younger companion, or occasionally two ladies of similar age, sometimes they appear to be engaged in a lesson and it is tempting to imagine a sequence for many of them and to read the series almost like a picture book; one wonders whether they are drawn from live models, for although the figures may be merely generic, the recurrence of a handful of recognizable faces and their characterful and lively depiction render that plausible.
The instruments are much larger, taking up the best part of the sheets; the hand responsible for the figures is extremely fine, the details are beautifully and delicately executed. The nineteen watercolors of birds which follow are superb and also take up entire pages in the majority of cases, they are exquisite: detailed, sharp and almost jewel-like in their coloring. The group of pictures of insects and other terrestrial animals show greater variation of style: some are similar to the birds, some have a drier quality, more like chalks or pastel (though still executed in watercolor), and a number are distinguished by the inclusion of the animal's shadow. This last trait is found in the majority of pictures of spiders, beetles, snakes and lizards, and they share a softer, hazier style and a darker palette. The drawings of fish, finally, include some similar in style to these, but are mostly executed in the glittering, well-defined style found in the images of birds. A measure of order has been introduced into the otherwise disparate group of animals other than birds and fish, which are arranged broadly speaking from small to large. There is a delight in the pure observation of living things, depicted for their own sake, which is characteristic of Chinese watercolours of this period; no background and little contextual detail is included.
However, some of the animal drawings, particularly of the fiercer types, show them interacting in a natural manner, bristling and ready to attack or defend themselves.
Interestingly, this album does not contain paintings on pith, the most economical support from a Chinese perspective and therefore cheaper, as well as desirable to Europeans because of the enamel-like quality it lends to the finished image; rather, the first portion of drawings are on thin 'chine' stuck down onto the European wove album sheets, and the others are painted directly on wove. The latter group are probably later, after trade was opened more widely in the 1840s, while those on 'chine' would have been relatively expensive, in comparison to pith paintings; they are all of high quality and large, again a mark of contemporary relative high value.
From 1757, when China first opened to foreign trade through the one trading port of Canton (Guangzhou), such works of art rapidly grew in popularity throughout Europe, accelerated yet further from 1842 when the treaty of Nanking forced the Chinese to open to further trade through other ports including Shanghai and Hong Kong. Factories devoted to such export paintings were established in these areas, usually producing unsigned work such as the sheets in this collection.
Unlike other export figure drawings, such as an album depicting noble ladies playing instruments in the National Library of Russia, they are not displayed against a background, contextualised within a scene as in the European pictorial tradition. Elements of stylistic cross-fertilisation such as this are often found in export painting; in this case however, the style of all the drawings is more classically Chinese.
Within China itself, where a hierarchy of traditional art practice had been established over hundreds of years, scenes of everyday life, flora and fauna fell into a popular but little valued category. To Western eyes, however, they were highly desirable exotica, executed with delicacy and skill, an easily transportable and affordable souvenir of a distant land and very foreign culture.
The first group depicts figures and of those, the first six show women and children in combination or alone, while the remainder show women and children making music. After these come musical instruments, then four pictures of men playing instruments. Next comes a group of pictures of birds, followed by a number of pictures of other animals including butterflies and other insects, centipedes, crabs, spiders, lizards and snakes; and finally, pictures of fish and eels. In total there are fifty figure drawings, twenty-eight musical instruments, nineteen birds, twenty-four fish and forty-eight other animals. A tally is jotted down in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand on the front fly-leaf and a shelf-mark on the back fly-leaf. The figure drawings are on chine and the majority, those showing women and children playing instruments, are numbered in pencil in top right 1-40, with Chinese characters in the top left corner; as the Arabic numerals are in some cases cut off where the chine is lacking, they were clearly numbered before being pasted onto the album sheets. One of the preceding six drawings has the Chinese character in lower right instead; four of them are numbered 70-73 and apparently comprise a portion from a separate and larger sequence; another one is marked with the letter 'e' in top right instead of a number, and therefore seems to fall into the same group as the final four figure drawings of men playing instruments, which are bound in after the series of isolated instruments, marked a-d and also bearing the Chinese characters in lower right rather than the top corner.
The instruments are much larger, taking up the best part of the sheets, and often a distinguished by having a rectangle in the lower left corner of the chine cut away, which probably bore a Chinese inscription. The hand responsible for the figures is extremely fine and perhaps different to that seen in the more sweeping style of the instrument pictures, although where they occur the details are beautifully and delicately executed, suggesting that this may rather be a matter of subject than approach.
The nineteen watercolours of birds, which follow, are superb and also take up entire pages in the majority of cases, though drawn directly onto the album sheets.They are exquisite: detailed, sharp and almost jewel-like in their colouring.
The group of pictures of insects and other terrestrial animals show greater variation of style: some are similar to the birds, some have a drier quality, more like chalks or pastel (though still executed in watercolour), and a number are distinguished by the inclusion of the animal's shadow. This last trait is found in the majority of pictures of spiders, beetles, snakes and lizards, and they share a softer, hazier style and a darker palette.
The drawings of fish, finally, include some similar in style to these, but are mostly executed in the glittering, well-defined style found in the images of birds. A measure of order has been introduced into the otherwise disparate group of animals other than birds and fish, which are arranged broadly speaking from small to large. There is a delight in the pure observation of living things, depicted for their own sake, which is characteristic of Chinese watercolours of this period; no background and little contextual detail is included. However, some of the animal drawings, particularly of the fiercer types, show them interacting in a natural manner, bristling and ready to attack or defend themselves. The figure drawings are full of charming interplay. They generally show a lady with a child or younger companion, or occasionally two ladies of similar age; sometimes they appear to be engaged in a lesson and it is tempting to imagine a sequence for many of them and to read the series almost like a picture book. One also wonders whether they are drawn from live models, for although the figures may be merely generic, the recurrence of a handful of recognisable faces and their characterful and lively depiction render that plausible. Scenes include a child lighting a small firework while a lady prepares to sound a pair of cymbals; another blowing a shell while a lady beats a drum,;two ladies dancing, one holding a tambourine and the other a flute; and two women, one older than the other, both playing stringed instruments like lutes.
Provenance: the bookplate of George Folliott probably relates to an amateur who built himself a modest mansion at Vicars Cross outside Chester and died in 1851. His house contained a top-lit gallery designed to display part of his collection, which included a small Rembrandt portrait of a man, as exhibited in 1847 and subsequently verified when the larger portion of his collection appeared for sale through Sotheby's in 1930. A descriptive catalogue from 1828 of the collection belonging to Mr William Harwood Folliott, of Chester, who was most probably a relation, includes a miniature portrait of 'G. Folliott' and a couple of landscape watercolours by the same. It also included stuffed animals, drawings of flowers and birds, and several albums including 'Large Book, weight 48lb, containing 321 Prints, many of which were brought from the Continent by Mr Folliott. Foreign travel and an interest in acquiring works on paper, including natural history, clearly ran strong.
This is a rare and exceedingly attractive testament to a number of strands of European culture at the middle of the nineteenth century: travel, the taste for the oriental, and an interest in the natural world and its categorisation.
A full list of plates is available upon request.
