Chinese Art and Its Encounter with the World: Negotiating Alterity in Art and Its Historical Interpretation

Chapter 2: Cross-cultural dialogue and artistic innovation: Teng Baiye and Mark Tobey

Chinese Art and Its Encounter with the World 78 Ventikou’s discovery of fibrous material over the clay body is intriguing    Q !    which stands out from the body in quite thin layers at certain points, may have been fashioned separately from the body and then placed over it. The braiding and buttons on the clothing also seem to have been made separately and then attached. Such effects would presumably have required   !            clothing seems likely to have occurred in certain other works too — the Van Braam and ‘Garrick’ figures, for instance, suggest this mode of working. Sonnerat’s account of a modeller at work offers some further inconclusive         !Q         !  &              ¢     ’ who alternately polishes it with layers of white and red’.112 Clearly the employment of unbaked clay as a medium is primarily responsible for the rarity of Chitqua’s work today, but the choice of the medium is not without precedent, either in Europe or Asia. Andrea Del Verroccio’s Putto Poised on a Globe (c. 1480, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) is of unbaked clay, for instance, as are the pair of eleventh-century Chinese seated Bodhisattvas in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Unfired clay would have been of particular convenience to Chitqua as a medium while he was working in London, but even in      !  * !     producing an accurate likeness. That porcelain would have proved a less tractable medium in this respect can be suggested by a comparison with a supposed portrait of Madame de Maintenon in porcelain, with painting in enamels and gilt, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection and   †ˆ‹‹†‡‹‹+–™‘`       ƒ merchant in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, dated c. 1765–75 and (rather unconvincingly, I feel) attributed to Chitqua.113 While these works, which are by no means unique in kind, help us to understand what the portrait of Wilkes mentioned by Boswell might have looked like (the Wilkes and ‘Madame de Maintenon’ figures may each have been executed after an imported engraving), they are both much less detailed in their facial   !  %      factor in determining this. Chitqua: A Chinese artist in eighteenth-century London 79 Chitqua’s return to Canton According to Bentley’s account, Chitqua had originally planned to stay in London for several years. Less than a year after Bentley’s letter, however, in August 1770, Gough was reporting that Chitqua ‘returns with the next shipping’, indicating that he had decided to truncate his British stay.114 Gough cites the British weather as a major factor in Chitqua’s decision: ‘He complained much of cold, but had no fire; and preferred the country to London only for quietness from noise for he meets with no insults in the streets. He likes his own climate best’.115 Gough also notes Chitqua’s inability to get the clay he required for his work in England, and therefore a more practical, work-related reason of his early return may also be surmised. One of the most vivid senses we can get of Chitqua as a person comes from a letter he wrote in connection with      !         seems to be the earliest surviving example of a Chinese person writing in|         !  someone who can approach a ship’s captain on his behalf. Two of these ladies remain unknown, although the third was a Miss Margaret Jeffreys, who had written a letter to Lord Hardwicke from Oxford on 5 July 1770 concerning Chitqua (Lord Hardwicke has already entered our narrative as having had an album of Chinese paintings explicated by Chitqua during his stay). Jeffreys’s letter mentions one Gailland, who had been visiting her. Miss Jeffreys assures Lord Hardwicke that Gailland would help recommend Chitqua to a ship’s captain who could take him back to Figure 38 Figure of a European lady (supposed portrait of Madame de Maintenon), porcelain with overglaze enamel colours, Jingdezhen, China. Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Chinese Art and Its Encounter with the World 80 Canton.116 Presumably Lord Hardwicke had conveyed the letter’s contents to Chitqua, thus prompting his own letter to Miss Jeffreys and the two           The text of Chitqua’s letter, which unfortunately is only known from a transcription made by William Whitley, is as follows: The two Wife-Women and the Single-woman Chin Chin Chitqua the China gentleman — and what time they quiere [i.e. ‘want to’] flirt those nice things truly never can forget for him. Some time he make...