| The subject of my thesis is the interaction of northern European and Chinese art in the period before Chinoiserie, specifically the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when many Europeans engaged Chinese art not merely as a source of decoration, but as a crucial means of comprehending Chinese culture. The materials of my study are primarily illustrated travel books about Asia, the majority of which were printed in Amsterdam and written by Jesuit missionaries, East India Company merchants, and European linguists, among others. My approach to the material is comparative; I consider these European publications and their proto-ethnographic and topographical illustrations in conjunction with similar representations produced in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In addition, I discuss paintings and printed books produced by European missionaries for the Chinese court and literati. These, along with certain forms of Chinese export art, allow me to engage questions about the role of art in conversion, the translation of style across cultures, and the relationship of calligraphy and the history of language to artistic practice.; One goal of my thesis is to bring to the attention of historians of European colonialism a body of similar and comparable Chinese material. Our understanding of the links between art and imperialism are limited if we believe it was only European artists who sought to develop new ways of picturing foreign lands and people in the early modern period. In my thesis, I argue that certain aspects of mercantilism transform the conventions by which both European and Chinese artists represent the experience of travel and cultural difference in image and text. I show how commerce not only alters northern European conceptions of China from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, but also how this transformation is reflected in China's own self-representation in export ware bound for European markets. |
