The Givenchy Chinese Export Tea Production Paintings

THE GIVENCHY CHINESE EXPORT

TEA PRODUCTION PAINTINGS

THE GIVENCHY CHINESE EXPORT

TEA PRODUCTION PAINTINGS

QING DYNASTY, QIANLONG PERIOD, 1736 – 1795

CIRCA 1780

With thanks to: Marie Ma, Professor Paul A. Van Dyke, Karina Corrigan (Peabody Essex Museum) and Benjamin Asmussen (Maritime Museum of Denmark) who have helped me tell this story.

It gives me great pleasure to present to you a catalogue dedicated solely to a recent acquisition, ‘The Givenchy tea production paintings’. Bought in 2022, from Christie’s Paris, Hubert De Givenchy Collectionneur, Manoir du Jonchet.

The call from Camille De Foresta of Christie’s Paris only came a day before the sale asking me if I had seen this set of paintings, which, deliberately I hadn’t..., as after the last two previous years of enforced inactivity inflicted upon us all I was trying not to buy anything. However, when I clicked on the link and took a look at the quality of the paintings, I realised then I had to try and buy them! The size, colours and degree of preservation of this 18th century set was the best I had ever seen! Furthermore the paintings had a few ‘hidden’ secrets which this catalogue will reveal to you later.

I had seen the landmark ‘A Tale of Three Cites’, Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, Three Centuries of Sino-British Trade in the Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s Exhibition in 1997, which had spurred my interest in Chinese Export Art whilst at Sotheby’s. Remembering in particular the Crewe family set of twenty-three tea production paintings included in the exhibition. My slightly hazy memory of this set had somewhat embellished them, but when they suddenly re-appeared in November 2021, and had been miraculously re-united with the missing 24th painting from that set, I had a very good comparable for the Givenchy set just to realise how good they were! Truly exceptional!

Now, all of the paintings have been taken out of their frames, inspected, researched and cleaned, all part of the cataloguing process which you will see here. Two of the paintings, no. 22 and 23 are worthy of further note, as they depict scenes showing the trade between European and Chinese tea merchants. The inscriptions on the tea chests have been translated, revealing their secrets too! No. 23 recording the name of the Mandarin Chen Zuguan’s (also known by his trade name Chowqua) tea trading company.

This is a rare documentary insight into some of the merchant names behind the global tea trade, and brings to life the British East India Company documents which record the trade with the Mandarin Quiqua and his family for over seventy years during the peak of the China Trade of the 18th century.

I hope you will enjoy the journey that this colourful set of twenty-four paintings illustrates, from the idyllic tea plantations amongst the mountains of Fujian to the deals being done by Chinese and Western merchants in the Hongs of Canton (Guangzhou) and their onward journey.

Alastair Gibson MRICS

AN EXCEPTIONAL SET OF TWENTY-FOUR CHINESE EXPORT ‘TEA PRODUCTION’ PAINTINGS

CIRCA 1780

Gouache on European paper illustrating the various stages and processes of tea growing, cultivation, manufacture and production, including two rare views of Western and British East India Company merchants overseeing the packing and weighing of chests of tea, each clearly displaying the East India Company ‘bale mark’ and inscribed in Chinese with the ‘Yuanquan Hang’ tea trading company, the paper bearing various watermarks for ‘Strasbourg bend and lily’ and the names D. & C. Blauw.

Dimensions: Each gouache 43.5cm by 55.5cm, within later frames, 50cm by 62cm

Provenance: Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy, (1927 - 2018) (24)

This magnificent large-scale set of 24 paintings is arguably the finest of its type to come on to the market in many years. Its most recent history is associated with the renowned French fashion designer Count Hubert Givenchy (1927 - 2018) (fig.1) where they hung in the Indian-inspired ‘Tree of Life’ bedroom at his 17th century estate, Chateau du Jonchet, Centre Val-de Loire, France. (fig.2)

The Chateau featured in many interior design books and magazines during the early 1980’s when Givenchy was at the height of his designing career. See Vogue, October 1982 (fig.3)

Unfortunately, there is no record of when Givenchy bought the set of paintings. They were sold at Christie’s Paris, 17th June 2022, lot 782 when the Chateau and its contents were sold. The lot was described as ‘CHINESE SCHOOL, 19TH CENTURY, TEA CULTIVATION AND PRODUCTION, A SET OF TWENTY-FOUR, GOUACHE ON PAPER, GLAZED AND FRAMED’.

The auction house had based their comparable on another 19th century set of paintings, sold at Christie’s King Street, London, 7th November 2019, lot 37, catalogued as ‘CHINESE SCHOOL, CIRCA 1820, TEA PRODUCTION - A SET OF TWELVE, (48.8cm by 59.7cm) which realised £90,000.

Count

Taffin de Givenchy, 1927 - 2018

Chateau du Jonchet, Centre Val-de Loire

Northern France

Hubert James Marcel

The ‘Tree of Life’ bedroom, Chareau du Jonchet, photographed by Karen Radkai and illustrated in Vogue, October 1982

The Givenchy set were framed and glazed when we received them and on closer inspection ten of the paintings needed some delicate cleaning of the beautiful translucent skies where the white pigment had slightly oxidised. So we took them all out of their frames for further inspection, which lead to an exciting discovery - rather than being painted on Chinese paper, they were all on European paper, bearing the watermarks for D & C. Blauw.

Dirk & Cornelius Blauw were from an important family of Dutch papermakers, who began making paper in 1621. They operated five wind-powered papermills in Zaanstreek province of North Holland and survived for over 250 years under many names. They were well known for the quality of their paper, and it is known that the Dutch and British East India Companies exported the paper to be used in their trading posts throughout Asia.

In The Paper Purchases of the Dutch East India Company’s Amsterdam Chamber in the Early Eighteenth Century, published in The Paper Trade in Early Modern Europe: Practises, Materials, Networks, (pp.244 - 265), 2021, Frank Birkenholz comments on the VOC’s acquisition of paper for its overseas trading “Based on the analysis of the Amsterdam Chamber’s account books from the decade of 1710-1720, it can be concluded that dealing with this VOC department was a profitable activity for paper suppliers. Within this period of time, the Amsterdam Chamber purchased more than 12,998 reams of writing and printing paper of various sizes, which amounts to 6,499,000 paper sheets in total... for the total amount of 111,448 guilders and 13 stuivers. The Amsterdam Chambers was a large and profitable client, and thus partly facilitated the early modern paper trade. Conversely, the early modern paper trade enabled the VOC’S expansion overseas, because paper was the foremost epistemic instrument and communication medium of this long-distance corporation.”

The VOC consisted of six Chambers (Kamers) in port cities: Amsterdam, Delft, Rotterdam, Enkhuisen, Middleburg and Hoorn. Amsterdam and Middleburg were by far the most significant Chambers in terms of importance and trade, and based upon Frank Birkenholtz calculations on the paper acquired alone by the Amsterdam Chamber over a ten year period, the VOC was a significant client for the Dutch and French paper trade and supporting their overseas activity in requiring good quality European papers to be used for record keeping which was a major boost to the Dutch and French paper industry at that time.

D&C Blauw watermark

Strasbourg bend watermark

The present set of paintings is an extant example of the interaction of global trade between Europe and China. Karina Corrigan, of the Peabody Essex Museum comments: “Chinese export albums such as this served as silent ambassadors to Europeans hungering for more information about this distant country. They provided glimpses into the Chinese landscape, views that would have been inaccessible even to European merchants in China whose movement was highly regulated... Chinese artists working for foreign clients in the eighteenth century typically worked in gouache on paper. Gouache, a medium composed of ground pigment suspended in water, was favoured for its ease of application and the brilliant hues it produced”. (1)

Carl L. Crossman, also comments: “The most desired watercolour in a series was the one which depicted a western merchant or supercargo in a wonderful period dress negotiating with the Chinese merchants.” (2)

The present set is unusual in that it has two paintings - number 22 and 23, that depict Western merchants.

Painting no. 22 is a rare documentary painting, which records Western and British East India Company merchants and Mandarin officials overseeing the unloading, grading, tamping down and re-packing of tea into chests bearing the bale mark of the British East India Company, the heart-shaped device with ‘VEIC’ surmounted by the numeral 4. The rows, from left to right, are marked as the highest quality tian zi hao (天字号, heaven rank) tea on the left, through the di (地, earth), xuan (玄, dark), huang (黄, yellow) down to the lowest quality yu (宇, universe) rank on the right. These characters were chosen to signify the first five ranks because they make up the first two lines of the first stanza of Qian Zi Wen (千字文, The Thousand Character Classic ), a mnemonic poem comprising exactly one thousand characters, each used only once which can be sung, much like an "alphabet song.”

Painting no. 23 is also a rare documentary painting, which records the British East India Company engaged in buying tea from the Tea Trading Company, ‘Yuanquan Hang’, a factory operated by the Chinese merchant Chowqua. It is an unusually detailed painting as it records on the tea chests details of the trade between the Chinese and the East India Company merchants, recording in part names, weights and bearing the name ‘Yuangqun Hang’ and the bale mark of the British East India Company, the heartshaped device with ‘VEIC’ surmounted by the numeral 4.

Another interesting painting is no. 13, which depicts boatmen on shallow river crafts in the Bohea mountains, now known as The Wuyi Mountains or ‘Wuyishan’. Tea was transported by land and by river by tens of thousands of coolies, who carried the tea over the Bohea mountains and placed it on shallow river crafts to be transported to Poyang Lake, where it was then transferred to deeper river crafts for its journey along the Gan Jiang river, through the Danxia mountains and down the Beijiang river to Canton.

Chowqua, (Chen Zuguan) circa 1705 – 1789, was the son of the Mandarin Quiqua, whose family was involved in the tea trade with European merchants at the Hongs of Canton (Guangzhou) and Amoy (Xiamen, Fujian) over a period of seventy years. It was a highly competitive business, one that was financed by the foreign merchants and required the Chinese merchants to have a good network up country in Fujian to get access to the finest tea which was in demand, particularly by the French.

According to Paul Van Dyke, in Merchants of Canton & Macao: Politics and Strategies in EighteenthCentury Chinese Trade, “In 1742, the Danes listed eight of the top merchants in Canton, and placed Mandarin Quiqua in fifth position”. Chowqua was connected with the Yuanquan Hang from 1760 and rose to prominence in the 1770’s after a period in the Co-hongs.

Van Dyke further mentions “In 1763, the Dutch mentioned that Chowqua had connections to a supply of top grade Bohea tea. The VOC officers found his product even better than the larger houses, which indicate that he maintained the connections his father had established with inland suppliers many years earlier... Chowqua, however, had gained access to tea from an area that traditionally produced the best Souchon (a type of Bohea). He was the only one of the six small merchants in the Co-hong who was able to acquire such good tea, which helped him compete with the large houses”.

Van Dyke illustrates a similar painting in plate 10.9. which also records the packing of tea for the Danish Asiatic Co. in Chowqua’s ‘Yuanquan Hang’ (fig.4). Van Dyke comments: “I was actually able to date it to November/December 1783, by matching up the numbers on the chests, the name of the ship (abbreviated on the chests), and the Danish records. 1783 was the only year that Chowqua sold more than 2,000 chests of Bohea to the Danish ship Cron Princen af Danmarck”. This painting provides a rare glimpse inside his factory. A lantern is inscribed with the characters for the Yuanquan Hang. The painting was in the Martyn Gregory Gallery, London, Treaty Port Scenes, 2007 - 2008, catalogue 83. No. 61, pp.66-67, and now resides in the Danish Maritime museum, Elsinore. (3)

The British Library holds extensive records of the India Office Records (the archives of the administration in London of the East India Company and the pre 1947 government of India) and several of Chowqua’s shipping lists of the period are available. One of his ‘Batavia Junks’ was captured by Captain McClary of the British East India Company in 1782 during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, (1780 - 1784) as it was flying a Dutch flag and the cargo was thought to belong to the Dutch. The majority of the shipment is tea, although it is interesting to note that porcelain ‘chinaware’, rhubarb, cassia (cinnamon), tutenague (paktong) were also being traded by Chowqua. BL: IOR G/12/76, 1782.09.09, P.85.

Chowqua died in 1789, suggesting that these Givenchy paintings must date to the early 1780’s.

Van Dyke comments: “I would guess that this painting is also from the 1780s. These types of detailed scenes did not begin to appear until the 1770s, and reached their peak in the 1780s and 1790s. By the early 1800s, these paintings had become so commonplace that they began to take on a more generic form, in that the details of specific companies and ships began to disappear. In that way, the paintings could be sold to anyone”.

He further comments that because the paintings are very detailed and specifically displaying the mark of the EIC, he would guess that they were commissioned by an EIC officer.

In conversation with Kerry Taylor, (a London-based costumes specialist) the East India Company officials illustrated here show men’s costumes dating from the 1770’s. They bear some resemblance to the Danish Asiatic Co. officials who wore similar black tricorn hats and three-quarter length blue jackets. Also in the Victoria & Albert Museum Collection, London an Indian painting of a seated East India Company official, by Dip Chand (circa 1760 - 1764) smoking a huqqa pipe, accompanied by three attendants is wearing a similar red-coated uniform with tricorn hat. IM.33.1912.

I would suggest, the combination of the D. & C. Blauw watermarked paper, the circa 1770 costumes, the documentary Danish Asiatic Co. painting and its link to the Cron Princen af Danmark in 1783, the Givenchy paintings are therefore of a similar date, or perhaps fractionally earlier, circa 1770 - 1780.

This predates the Christie’s auction catalogue dating by 20 - 30 years.

Such a later set, illustrated and discussed by D .S. Howard in ‘A Tale of Three Cities’, Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, Three Centuries of Sino-British Trade in the Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s, 1997, cat no. 28, pages 36-37, circa 1790, by repute acquired on Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China in 1792-4 illustrates more generic views as van Dyke suggests, with the tea warehouse only displaying one western merchant and no identifying details of any kind on the tea chests being packed.

Other later sets of paintings can be found in the Guangdong Museum, (set of 12), the China National Tea Museum, Green Gold Exhibition, (set of 11) 11th June - 17th October 2021. In Europe The Robien Collection has an album of twenty-six views of tea production, dating to the mid 18th century, and in America an album of twenty-four images is preserved at Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusett, US (56.428), Amanda Lange. Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, 2005, pp.65-77.

A high ranking East India Company Official with two Mandarin Officials

Portrait of an East India Company Official

By Dip Chand, circa 1764

Portrait of an East India Company Official

By George Willison, 1775

The heart-shaped motif, a ‘balemark’ which was used to identify the East India Company’s products became a symbol of good luck, with the company’s initials surmounted by the figure four symbolising ‘Agnus Dei - Lamb of God’ and it was widely in use throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

The ‘V’ originates from the latin for ‘Vnited’ as the company was also named ‘United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies’.

The company logo appeared on a wide variety of products from bales of linen and silk, to coinage produced by the East India Company used by both the English and Dutch companies.

East India Company, Madras Presidency, Soho Mint, Northern Circars, dated 1794

Image courtesy of Noonans, London

Photo credits:

1: Givenchy photo portrait

2: Chateau du Jonchet, Centre Val-de Loire, Northern France

3: The ‘Tree of life’ bedroom, Chateau du Jonchet, photographed by Karen Radkai and illustrated in Vogue, October 1982.

4: View of Chowqua’s factory showing the marking and weighing of tea chests for the DAC ship Cron Princen af Danmark. Circa 1783, now in the Maritime Museum of Denmark.

Literature reference:

1: Karina Corrigan, The Robien Collection, Musee des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, (794.1.617-1 a-26)

2: Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade, Woodbridge, 1997. Colour plate 59. Page 176.

3: Paul A. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in EighteenthCentury Chinese Trade, Hong Kong University Press, 2011, chapter 10, pl.10.09.

Professor Paul A. Van Dyke is a full professor and doctoral tutor in the Department of History at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

THE TWENTY-FOUR PAINTINGS

1: PREPARING THE GROUND FOR A NEW FUJIAN HILLSIDE TEA GARDEN

Thirteen workmen overseen by an official, preparing the ground ready for planting a new tea garden, two terraces prepared and being planted by three men, a waterfall providing a bountiful supply of water for irrigation, in the foreground a crouching workman drinking from a porcelain cup from a pool below The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

2: PLANTING A NEW TEA GARDEN

Seven workmen planting young seedlings in freshly prepared seed beds with irrigation channels, before a small farmstead, the hills of Fujian in the distance

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

3: PROPOGATION OF TEA PLANTS FROM SEEDS

Six workmen sowing Camellia Sinensis seeds in freshly prepared beds within a walled garden

Indistinct watermark to paper

4: WATERING A NEW TEA GARDEN

Six workmen engaged in watering young plants beside a walled compound, in the distance a reservoir and irrigation channel providing the water to the garden

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

5: PREPARATION OF A NEW TEA GARDEN PLANTING BARE ROOT STOCK

Five workmen preparing the ground of a new irrigated tea garden, planting bare root stock with dibbers, an older man supervising from a nearby pavilion

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

6: PREPARATION OF A NEW TEA GARDEN

Five workmen engaged in planting a new tea garden within a compound, an older bearded man smoking a pipe supervising from one building

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

7: LADIES ENGAGED IN THE PICKING OF GREEN TEA LEAVES

Seven female workers busy in the process of harvesting the fresh green shoots, collecting the leaves in small baskets, then repacking into larger baskets for distribution to the drying rooms

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

8: COLLECTING GREEN LEAVES AND DRYING

A workman accompanied by a boy carrying two baskets, four men busy at work sifting green tea leaves from wicker baskets, letting them fall to the ground before being placed in drying rooms, before a small watercourse, in the distance a formal pavilion and a five-storey pagoda on a hill beyond

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

9: LADIES PREPARING TEA PLANT CUTTINGS

Six ladies in two open pavilions beside a newly planted tea garden, preparing cuttings with scissors, attended by two workmen

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

10: GRADING OF TEA

Four ladies in a drying pavilion supervised by a male official smoking a pipe, grading the leaves, another workman carrying empty baskets towards the building, a small riverside bridge in the background, two of the ladies finely dressed wearing long flowing silk robes, with gold and kingfisher feather ornaments to their hair and gold bangles on their wrists, before a marble inlaid day bed

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky.

11: GRADING TEA AND FILLING TEA CANNISTERS

Eight workmen within a walled gated compound shaking tea leaves on purpose-made work benches, grading tea and filling the rattan and pewter tea cannisters on the shelves above

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

12: HARVEST AND GRADING OF TEA

Six workmen, a lady and a child engaged in harvesting and grading tea leaves beside a riverside enclave, a pagoda on an island in the distance

The paper with watermark of D & C Blauw

13: MOUNTAINOUS TEA PLANTATION BESIDE A RIVER GORGE

Boatmen with rafts ready to ferry the tea from mountain plantations in the Wuyi mountains, Fujian, down river to the tea processing merchants in Canton, modern day Guangzhou. An inscribed stele in the foreground inscribed ‘a place to plant tea’, two mountains carved out with shrines, one clearly with a bronze incense burner

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

14: A MONK GUIDING OFFICIALS TO A TEA PLANTATION

A monk wearing a blue robe showing the way to two mandarin officials to a mountainous tea plantation, accompanied by a coolie carrying their belongings, the far shore with a freshly planted tea garden, attended by two workmen

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

15: DRYING AND GRADING OF TEA

Two well-dressed young ladies sitting on the edge of a pavilion complex inspecting tea leaves, placing them in grading baskets to be dried in the sun, attended by five workmen, some carrying baskets

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms

16: ROLLING TEA TWISTS

Four well-dressed young ladies seated in an enclosed tea garden rolling tea twists by hand, assisted by four workmen carrying large circular trays and placing them in the sun to dry

The paper with indistinct watermarks

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

17: POUNDING AND FERMENTATION

Two workmen, six women and a child engaged in the process of crushing leaves with a pestle and mortar and forming them into tea cakes before drying in the sun

The paper with the watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

18: COLLECTING GREEN LEAVES FROM THE DRYING ROOMS

Three ladies and three men carrying baskets engaged in the process of drying tea in a walled compound, tea drying in baskets in the sun, Yixing and monochrome porcelain flower pots on the walls beside them

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky.

19: TEA PLANT PROPOGATION

Ten beautifully dressed young women seated on an open terrace with two pavilions, tying tea plant cuttings with red silk thread to ensure the grafting onto chosen root stock

20: PREPARATION OF FIRE WOOD

Eight workmen gathering and chopping firewood in an open workshop

The paper with watermark fleur-de-lys and D & C Blauw

21: TEA DRYING BAKE HOUSE

Blackened tea being dried/smoked in a cookhouse where the pans are heating on a commercial cooking range, an official inspecting the tea and showing it to a mandarin official, wearing a blue robe and hat with a red plume

The paper with watermark of D & C Blauw

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

TEA-PACKING SCENE AT ‘THE BIG HOSTEL’ WITH EAST INDIA COMPANY OFFICIALS

A large tea warehouse, part of a series of buildings bearing a two-character sign ‘The Big Hostel’, the foreground with a busy scene of the re-packing of tea into European-style tea chests with thirty workmen tamping down the tea into the various crates, each inscribed with the United East India Company heart-shaped bale mark surmounted by the numeral 4 and with Chinese inscriptions, watched upon by two western merchants, one wearing a blue coat and black tricorn hat, the other in a green suit, separated by a red fretwork fence to a storage area, a red-coated high-ranking East India Company official observing the scene below, a Chinese workman just visible with his pole to the right side, loading tea into baskets, the industrious scene all observed by a senior East India Company official holding a slender walking cane engaged in conversation with two Mandarin officials

The paper with watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms

The gouache professionally cleaned, discolouration removed to the sky

23: TEA-WEIGHING AND PACKING SCENE WITH EAST INDIA COMPANY MERCHANTS

A red-coated East India Company official, wearing a tricorn hat seated at a table with a Chinese merchant, writing in a ledger, the mandarin using an abacus, another blue coated western official supervising the weighing of the tea chests on a set of tripod scales, the tea repacked for its onward journey to Europe, each chest inscribed with the British East India Company bale mark, the quartered heart surmounted by the numeral 4, with the capital letters VEIC, ‘United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies’, a Chinese workman in the foreground writing on the cases tea from the tea trading company ‘Yuanquan Hang’, Chinese boats behind loaded with the tea chests ready for transporting to the East India Company ships further down the river at Whampoa anchorage

The paper with watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms and D & C Blauw

24: TEA TRANSPORTATION BY RIVER

Workmen carrying circular tea cannisters through a mountainous landscape to a small river landing, loading the cannisters on to a small sampan, ready for the onward journey, a scholar’s rock on a stone pedestal beneath the tree in the foreground, five other boats moored up the river

The paper with watermark fleur-de-lys coat of arms