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The Many Names of Anonymity
Portraitists of the Canton Trade
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
Explores how the function, norms, and meaning of artists’ names in Chinese modernity have been misunderstood.
Challenging contemporary procedures for establishing attribution, chronology, and authenticity in Chinese art, Winnie Wong explores the means, methods, and stakes of recovering the names of an anonymous community of artists. To examine how Western art history has misconstrued and miscategorized names and identities in Chinese art, she looks to conflicting features of modernity: the European attachment of singular names to individuals and their works, and the Chinese use of socially contingent names that often are not attached to material labor and sometimes operate against it. Wong charts the genealogy of this naming problem by bringing to life the artists of the Qing Empire’s trade with Europeans at the port of Guangzhou, centering on a group of portraitists known by names that were recorded in a pidgin language: Chin Qua, Chit Qua, Spoilum, Lam Qua, and Ting Qua.
Many of these paintings survive today, yet scholars have identified only a handful of the painters’ identities. Pushing against Western norms that have shaped our understanding of authorship, Wong reveals that these artists shared names, created works in multiples, and signed their pieces with different names or none at all. This lavishly illustrated volume explores portraiture across media, including unfired clay, reverse painting on glass, watercolor on paper, oil on canvas, and the daguerreotype, to propose new ways of studying anonymity, copying, and the emergence of author names in the Sino-European visual culture of the long eighteenth century.
Challenging contemporary procedures for establishing attribution, chronology, and authenticity in Chinese art, Winnie Wong explores the means, methods, and stakes of recovering the names of an anonymous community of artists. To examine how Western art history has misconstrued and miscategorized names and identities in Chinese art, she looks to conflicting features of modernity: the European attachment of singular names to individuals and their works, and the Chinese use of socially contingent names that often are not attached to material labor and sometimes operate against it. Wong charts the genealogy of this naming problem by bringing to life the artists of the Qing Empire’s trade with Europeans at the port of Guangzhou, centering on a group of portraitists known by names that were recorded in a pidgin language: Chin Qua, Chit Qua, Spoilum, Lam Qua, and Ting Qua.
Many of these paintings survive today, yet scholars have identified only a handful of the painters’ identities. Pushing against Western norms that have shaped our understanding of authorship, Wong reveals that these artists shared names, created works in multiples, and signed their pieces with different names or none at all. This lavishly illustrated volume explores portraiture across media, including unfired clay, reverse painting on glass, watercolor on paper, oil on canvas, and the daguerreotype, to propose new ways of studying anonymity, copying, and the emergence of author names in the Sino-European visual culture of the long eighteenth century.
Reviews
"Engagingly written with a high degree of structural and conceptual integrity, this is a rare book that is groundbreaking while also performing the tasks of authentication and reconstruction of historical context on which the field relies. Wong tackles a subject that has long escaped consideration in art history and museum studies, taking on early modern Cantonese works that have previously eluded in-depth art historical research, while intelligently and efficiently providing necessary background information for readers unfamiliar with the subject.”
— Chelsea Foxwell, University of Chicago“This highly important and original study marks a huge step change in knowledge about its subject, ‘Canton trade painting.’ But beyond that, its rich analysis and rigorous scholarship should prompt anyone interested in the history of art, and not only in China, to reconsider some of the boundaries we have drawn and exclusions we have enforced.”
— Craig Clunas, University of Oxford“This book is a major advancement in scholarship on so-called Chinese export art, a misnomer that Wong corrects. Looking closely and carefully at a range of relevant paintings, prints, and drawings, Wong has sifted through an enormous amount of archival detail to uncover new historical materials and evidence. Her insightful and fresh analysis draws deeply on the best traditions of art historical scholarship. The result is an eye-opening study of paintings, painters, inscribers, biographies, subjects, patrons, and viewers—all coming together to produce a new and original story of Canton trade art as a compelling subject of art history.”
— Stanley Abe, Duke UniversityTopics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Note on Romanizations, Sinicizations, and Audio Recordings
ix -
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INTRODUCTION. Names Are But the Guests of Reality
1 -
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1 Ting Qua's Studio of Quiet Self-Attainment
41 -
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2 Chin Qua and Chit Qua
91 -
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3 From Spillem to Spoilum
139 -
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4 Lam Qua I, II, and III
185 -
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CONCLUSION. The Mirror and the Template
225 -
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Acknowledgments
237 -
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Abbreviations
239 -
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Notes
241 -
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Bibliography
281 -
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Index
303
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 26, 2026
eBook ISBN:
9780226842479
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780226842479
Keywords for this book
portraiture; trade; Chinese art; visual culture; Global history of art; Chinese Modernity; History of Guangzhou; Sino-Western relations; Maritime history; Canton
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
