Chinese School, 19th Century

According to the independent art consultant, art historian and former assistant curator at The China Trade Museum, Kee Il Choi Jr.,  "(this is) a quite well-known Chinese export painting long thought to be a view of sericulture (the production of raw silk by raising silkworms). It is actually a view of 1820 showing aspects of the cultivation and processing of cotton, an extremely rare subject, known previously only through two sets of watercolors, one at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, England, the other in a US private collection. Comparisons with these watercolors confirm key details, such as the types of looms, spinning wheels and other implements employed in the processing of the yarn. The loom depicted is bow-shaped, and the device used to stretch the yarn terminates in a ball pegged to the ground. In addition, the overall composition is strikingly similar to the view of cotton production in the National Museum in Copenhagen. That larger, earlier and more didactic view belongs to a monumental series of four cultivation/production oil paintings that include tea, porcelain and silk. These Copenhagen paintings originated in the same workshop that produced the great tea trade painting which is now in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Sotheby's is grateful to Mr. Kee Il Choi Jr. for his assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.