Chinese watercolours

Folio (436 x 320mm.), 20 original watercolour and bodycolour drawings on native paper, mounted one to a page, mid-nineteenth-century dark red morocco gilt, elaborately tooled in gilt and blind, one or two sheets loose

the condition of this lot is as described in the catalogue description
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A fine early collection. The drawings are all on Chinese paper, suggesting an early date. From about 1800 onwards, the Shanghai artists were generally supplied with English wove paper (often Whatman paper). This collection forms part of what was to become a well-established tradition of almost exclusively anonymous Chinese artists, working in and around the coastal trading ports, producing work for Western patrons, more particularly the members of the East India and Dutch East India Companies. The best of the drawings are arguably a match for anything that Western botanical artists were producing at the time.