A LARGE 'CANTON LANDSCAPE' PAINTED WALLPAPER PANEL
Early 18th century
Depicting a riverside scene dotted with elegant pavilions interspersed amidst pine and sage trees, and backed by mountainous range, finely detailed with various scenes featuring fishermen on sampans, official gatherings and boys engaging in leisurely pursuits, mounted and framed.
227cm high x 85cm wide
Footnotes:
十八世紀早期 景色圖屏

Provenance: Previously by descent from Edmund Neel CIE (1841-1933), Secretary, Public Works Department, India Office.

The present lot depicts Canton (Guangzhou) from the south-west. Such panels were originally made as wallpaper and would have been intended for the European market. Following the fashion of European 'chinoiserie', most of the great houses of Europe had at least one room decorated with a Chinese paper, either original or imitation and by the end of the 18th century they could be found in more modest houses. Although many of the earlier papers were used in state reception or bedrooms, they were eventually considered equally suitable for more 'feminine' rooms such as private chambers, boudoirs and bedrooms; see E. de Bruijn, A. Bush and H. Clifford, Chinese Wallpaper in National Trust Houses, Swindon, 2014, pp.1-48. See also Jourdain and Jenyns, Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century, 1950, p. 94, no. 40.

This is from the same set sold Bonhams 2 November 2021, lot 339, of which three are published in P. Conner, The Hongs of Canton: Western Merchants in South China 1700-1900 as Seen in Chinese Export Paintings, London, 2009, pp.27-29 (illustrating three of the four panels)