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Personal expression was generally not part of the job requirements of trade-painters in nineteenth-century Canton, China. They were asked to produce paintings tailored to their Western consumers’ interests, wishes, and needs. Yet, in the middle of this “art-world” lies an enigma: a set of thirteen paintings depicting the workshop of the trade-painter Tingqua, which seem, at first glance, to be duplicates of a mundane product of the industry. Closer examination, however, reveals not only that each of these versions is unique, but also that the series as a whole is actually extraordinary. The workshop paintings are full of details, including various quotes written in calligraphy, which would not have been understood either by Western or even by most Chinese viewers, but only by members of the scholar-gentry, that is, the literati of China. The main question we face before this thirteen-piece puzzle is: why did the artist plant messages or integrate codes in paintings that were sent to a world in which nobody could decode them? I propose that these workshop paintings be read as a self-portrait of a person living in a world that is witnessing a contest between two substantially different momentous cultures, each struggling to prove its superiority or dominance. Watching the demise of an old world to which he himself was contributing, Tingqua decided to treasure some of its features despite knowing that those who purchased the works would not be able to appreciate them.

The many versions of the painting of Tingqua’s studio: painting copying and originality in nineteenth-century canton