De VVAK viert in 2018 haar honderdste verjaardag en ontvangt het predicaat 'Koninklijk'

De VVAK viert in 2018 haar honderdste verjaardag en ontvangt het predicaat ‘Koninklijk’Op 29 juni 1918 werd de Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst officieel opgericht. Bijna precies honderd jaar later, op 22 juni 2018 ontving de vereniging het predicaat ‘Koninklijk’.Een aantal notabelen, liefhebbers en kenners van Aziatische kunst besloot in 1918 een vereniging te stichten met het doel grotere bekendheid te geven aan hoogwaardige Aziatische kunst, de belangstelling ervoor te stimuleren en de wetenschapsbeoefening op dit gebied te bevorderen. Tot op de dag van vandaag zijn dit nog steeds de belangrijkste doelstellingen van de KVVAK. Enkele jaren na de oprichting werd een begin gemaakt met het verzamelen van een collectie Aziatische kunstvoorwerpen van hoog niveau.De collectie telt momenteel ongeveer 1.850 objecten en geniet internationale bekendheid. Deze verzameling is sinds 1952 (tevens het oprichtingsjaar van de Nederlandse Vereniging van Vrienden van Ceramiek en Glas) in bruikleen bij het Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. De samenwerking met ‘het Rijks’ zorgt voor continuïteit in de collectie en goed beheer. Anno 2018 is de collectie van de KVVAK de beeldbepalende kern van de presentatie Aziatische kunst in het Rijksmuseum, en vormen de leden een grote groep van betrokken liefhebbers.In 2013 opende het nieuwe Aziatisch Paviljoen in het museum, waar delen van de collectie in volle glorie zijn tentoongesteld Modern and Contemporary Studie

Value accruement and dwindling of an iconic Chinese export painting: a journey

In the 19th century Chinese export paintings had a strong appeal to foreigners, who were in China because of maritime trade. Harbour views, like those of Macao, Bocca Tigris, Whampoa and Canton, are still signifiers of the historical China trade in our time. This important category of Chinese export paintings must be analysed not just as simple representations, but also as commodities whose value and meaning were accrued through specific and economically forms of exchange. In some cases, we can trace the journeys of these artworks and detect their impact on patterns of consumption. In doing so, we will see that the paintings accrue value through the social processes of accumulation, possession, mechanisms of artistic circulation and cultural exchanges. By mapping a cultural biography of an iconic harbour view, this chapter shows that the value of this transcultural artwork lies in its movement and connected interpretations.FGW – Publications not associated with a particular research are

'Sensitive plates' and 'sentimental keepsakes': the social life of reverse glass paintings: from Canton to Leiden

Chinese export painting had a strong appeal to foreign powers active in China and neighbouring Asian countries in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. As a result, today, Chinese export paintings can be found in eighteen public collections in the Netherlands. These collections have an historic, an artistic and a material value and are closely related tot the overseas historical China trade. These integrated economic relations produced, among other things, integrated art objects such as paintings, which, as a result of their representative and social functions, over time formed a special artistic phenomenon, an a shared cultural visual repertoire with its own (EurAsian) character.This article focuses on the social life of two cohdrent collections of reverse glass paintings from China in the collection of Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden.Having disentangled their provenance, Van der Poel draws some careful conclusions about the degree of importance and, consequently, the extent to which she notices any value accruement and value dwindle of these sets of artworks in their lenghty afterlife. It is clear that these commodified artworks with their cohesive values make this painting genre distinctive and a class in its own right.Modern and Contemporary Studie

'If it is beautiful, it will endure on every level'

Article in The Portrait on the Asian Art Society in the Netherlands and its art collection, conserved at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.Modern and Contemporary Studie

China Back in the Frame. A comparative study of Canton, Whampoa and Macao harbour views in the Leiden Museum of Ethnology and in the Guangzhou Museum

This article presents a brief overview of research results deriving from the investigation of a group of 18th and 19th century export oil paintings from China in the collection of the National Museum of Ethnology n Leiden. The oils were compared with a group of reverse glass paintings in the same collection, moreover in part depicting identical scenes. Furthermore, are the look-a-likes in the Guangzhou Museum related to the Leiden ones. To which extent do the Leiden pictures differ from the Guangzhou ones with the same subjects. The article provide some findings about dating and technical styles.Modern and Contemporary Studie

Made for trade - Made in China. Chinese export paintings in Dutch collections: art and commodity

The starting point for this study is that for a large part of their existence, the paintings belonging to this genre have primarily been seen as export articles without intrinsic artistic value. This fact, and the fact that they cannot be unequivocally classified, explains why this genre has, for a long time, not received the attention it deserves. The label ‘exportware’, though, does not exclude that these paintings can also be approached as ‘art’. They have an historic, an artistic, and a material value, which, as a result of their representative and social functions, over time formed an artistic phenomenon in its own right, and a shared cultural visual repertoire with its own (Eurasian) character. In order to draw conclusions about the appreciation of the extensive and historically valuable eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese export paintings in Dutch public collections, this multidisciplinary research follows the entire trajectory of this specific transcultural painting genre in sixteen museums, from the production two centuries ago to the current position. At work in this trajectory are mechanisms between people, institutions and the paintings, which increase or, indeed, diminish the appreciation of this time- and place-specific art.Modern and Contemporary Studie

Travels in Tartary: Decoding Ten Export Winter Landscapes

The Chinese export paintings collection of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden includes ten winter views in Tartary painted on canvas. That these ten paintings have never before been studied as a group has inspired the present author to conduct research into their origins, the findings of which are presented in this article.Seven of the ‘winter views in Tartary' in the Leiden museum were made on commission for the Hague lawyer and collector Jean Theodore Royer (1737-1807) and are dated to before 1807. While assembling his Chinese collection, Royer was assisted by Ulrich Gualtherus Hemmingson (1741-99), who worked for the VOC in Canton from 1765 to 1790. Hemmingson or his intermediaries purchased items directly from the workshops in Canton. Part of the Royer Collection was also purchased in the Netherlands, where a huge variety of Asian objects was available. While it is not known how Royer came to acquire the ‘winter views', that he also wanted a set of winter landscapes for his Chinese research collection is undisputed. In 1816, six of the paintings were rehoused in the Royal Cabinet of Rarities, where the director, Reinier Pieter van de Kasteele (1767-1845), titled them ‘Six winter views in Tartary painted on canvas'. The seventh view was added later. The Guide to Viewing the Royal Cabinet of Rarities (Handleiding tot de bezigtiging van het Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden) provides a schematic and geographical classification of the Cabinet (van de Kasteele, 1824). Here, too, the six winter landscapes are specifically mentioned. In 1883, the paintings were relocated to the National Ethnographic Museum, now the National Museum of Ethnology, in Leiden. The other three paintings were acquired, probably between 1824 and 1860, from the collection of the Royal Cabinet of Rarities, established in 1816 by King Willem I (1772-1843), on the basis of the Royer Bequest of 1814, which included 3,000 Chinese and Japanese objects.Modern and Contemporary Studie

East and West meet in Chinese export art

East and West meet in Chinese export artChina played an important role for the Netherlands in the ‘overseas world’ as long ago as the seventeenth century. According to Tristan Mostert and Jan van Campen, authors of a book on Sino-Dutch relations since 1600, entitled Zijden Draad. China en Nederland sinds 1600, ‘no country or region appealed more to the imagination and never before had expectations of wealth and trading opportunities run so high’.[1] Like their American, British and other European contemporaries, the Dutch all came back from their commercial adventures in China or their years spent in the Netherlands East Indies, for example, with Chinese art objects specially made for export. These were generally luxury goods produced to order from materials unknown in Europe at the time. The decorations, colours, and excellent craftsmanship with which these ‘exotic’ luxury goods were made drew great admiration and aroused people’s curiosity about their country of origin, in what was at the time the almost impossibly distant China. Besides westerners’ fascination with Chinese export art, according to the deputy director of the Guangdong Museum, this transcultural exchanged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also prompted a dialogue between Cantonese and European culture. ‘The encounter and dialogue brought a new form of civilization and created a new fashion, forming a new taste of culture, bringing a curiosity of the civilization of mankind.’[2][1] Mostert & Van Campen 2015, 19.[2] Preface to exhibition catalogue Chinese export fine art in the Qing Dynasty from Guangdong Museum 2013, 008.Modern and Contemporary Studie

The Asian Art Society in the Netherlands. A centennial celebration

The Asian Art Society in the Netherlands: A Centennial CelebrationTHE ASIAN Art Society in the Netherlands (VVAK) was founded on June 29th, 1918 by a handful of men, who were keen to stimulate interest in art from Asia and to bring together art lovers in that field.[i] Ten years later, the organisation decided to start its own museum, which opened in 1932. Now—100 years after its foundation—the objects assembled by the Asian Art Society form the mainstay of the Rijksmuseum’s Asian art collection, and its members form a large group of dedicated enthusiasts.[i] P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, “Asian Art in the Rijksmuseum”, in Asian Art (Rijksmuseum collection book), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2014, pp. 8-23; M. Draak, “Chronicle of the Vereniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst”, in P. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ed., Asiatic Art in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1985, pp. 9-27; M. Fitski, “Japanese Art in the Westendorp-Osieck Collection”, Arts of Asia, Vol. 38, no. 4, July-August 2008 issue, pp. 48-57.Modern and Contemporary Studie