Mirror
Category
Mirrors
Date
c. 1780
Materials
Glass, mercury, pigments, wood, gold, lacquer
Place of origin
Guangzhou
Order this imageCollection
Saltram, Devon
NT 872229
Summary
Group of six mirror paintings, glass, mercury and pigments, square format, made in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong Province, China, c. 1780, depicting pairs of male and female figures of various types and ages, in lacquered and gilded Chinese frames with ruyi-shaped metal rings at the top, depicting genre scenes with male and female figures.
Full description
Chinese mirror paintings (or reverse glass paintings) were particularly fashionable in Europe during the second half of the 18th century and the early 19th century. The mirrored glass was made in Europe and shipped to Guangzhou where some of the mirrored surface was removed and painted on. This resulted in the creation of hybrid mirror-paintings which were then shipped back to Europe as decorative objects reflecting (in more ways than one) the fictionalised European conceptions of China. The origins of this type of object may lie in 1664, when the Dutch East India Company presented some mirrors to the Kangxi Emperor. The earliest known mention of Chinese mirror paintings in Britain dates to 1739, when six of them are recorded arriving in London by ship (Audric 2020). Two Chinese mirror paintings with similar subjects, in a vertical ‘portrait’ format but with similar lacquered and gilded frames, are in the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool (Audric 2020).
Provenance
Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust, 1957.
References
Audric 2020: Thierry Audric, Chinese Reverse Glass Painting, 1720-1820: An Artistic Meeting between China and the West, Bern, 2020, pp. 29 and 160; cats. 141–2, pp. 186–7.