Tingqua (1809-1870), Six scenes taken in Canton: Lamqua's studio; Howqua's garden; A Hong merchant and his family at home; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming with an...
Tingqua (1809-1870)
Six scenes taken in Canton: Lamqua's studio; Howqua's garden; A Hong merchant and his family at home; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming with an attendant serving tea; and A palatial water garden with ladies gaming
bodycolour heightened with gum arabic on paper
the first 183⁄4 x 231⁄2in. (47.6 x 59.7cm.)
the second 183⁄4 x 243⁄4in. (47.6 x 62.9cm.)
the third, fourth, fifth and sixth 183⁄4 x 241⁄2in. (47.6 x 62.2cm.)
in carved and decorated Cantonese frames
Six unusually large sheets by Tingqua depicting the extravagant houses and gardens of the wealthy Hong merchants such as Howqua at Honam (another version of 'Howqua's garden' is in the Peabody Essex Museum for which see C.L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, Woodbridge, 1991, p.193, colour plate 68), and one of Tingqua's brother Lamqua's shop in Canton, an image discussed by Conner in 1999:
'Illustrated on the cover of this magazine is a remarkably vivid and highly detailed picture of what is - on the face of it - the Canton studio of the artist Lamqua, whose studio (like that of his younger brother Tingqua) lay close to the Western "Factories" in the narrow alley of Chinese shops known as New China Street. We see painters hard at work in the foreground, and the walls hung with pictures, whose subjects can be made out even within the small dimensions of the painting. But how much can we infer from this interior scene about the particular practice of Lamqua? For several near-identical versions of this picture are known, most of them with the name "Tingqua" inscribed in large capitals on the upper centre panel. The recently-discovered version illustrated here is close to those other versions in all details except that the word "Tingqua" has been replaced by "Lamqua". The idealised quality of other Chinese export paintings, for example those depicting the production of tea, cotton, silk and rice, might already have led us to suspect that this scene was not so much a description of a specific premises as a generic and somewhat stylised representation of a Cantonese export studio, hung with a typical range of stock paintings for sale, ... ' (P. Conner, op. cit., p.56)
six (6)
Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.
Provenance
Private Collection, France.
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Tingqua (1809-1870)
Six scenes taken in Canton: Lamqua's studio; Howqua's garden; A Hong merchant and his family at home; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming; The interior of a Hong merchant's house with ladies gaming with an attendant serving tea; and A palatial water garden with ladies gaming
bodycolour heightened with gum arabic on paper
the first 183⁄4 x 231⁄2in. (47.6 x 59.7cm.)
the second 183⁄4 x 243⁄4in. (47.6 x 62.9cm.)
the third, fourth, fifth and sixth 183⁄4 x 241⁄2in. (47.6 x 62.2cm.)
in carved and decorated Cantonese frames
Six unusually large sheets by Tingqua depicting the extravagant houses and gardens of the wealthy Hong merchants such as Howqua at Honam (another version of 'Howqua's garden' is in the Peabody Essex Museum for which see C.L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, Woodbridge, 1991, p.193, colour plate 68), and one of Tingqua's brother Lamqua's shop in Canton, an image discussed by Conner in 1999:
'Illustrated on the cover of this magazine is a remarkably vivid and highly detailed picture of what is - on the face of it - the Canton studio of the artist Lamqua, whose studio (like that of his younger brother Tingqua) lay close to the Western "Factories" in the narrow alley of Chinese shops known as New China Street. We see painters hard at work in the foreground, and the walls hung with pictures, whose subjects can be made out even within the small dimensions of the painting. But how much can we infer from this interior scene about the particular practice of Lamqua? For several near-identical versions of this picture are known, most of them with the name "Tingqua" inscribed in large capitals on the upper centre panel. The recently-discovered version illustrated here is close to those other versions in all details except that the word "Tingqua" has been replaced by "Lamqua". The idealised quality of other Chinese export paintings, for example those depicting the production of tea, cotton, silk and rice, might already have led us to suspect that this scene was not so much a description of a specific premises as a generic and somewhat stylised representation of a Cantonese export studio, hung with a typical range of stock paintings for sale, ... ' (P. Conner, op. cit., p.56)
six (6)
Please note this lot is the property of a private individual.
Provenance
Private Collection, France.
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
