Tableaux

65894 — China c.1870. 8vo. 20 x 15 cm. Album of contemporary patterned cloth covered boards with 12 leaves of finely coloured illustrations on pith paper each secured with blue silk border. Just 2 short cracks generally very good condition. Pith came into use for painting to satisfy the increasing demand for small inexpensive and easily transported souvenirs following the massive growth in the China Trade in the first half of the nineteenth century. Paintings in oils on board and canvas were costly and difficult to carry home. Earlier and more prestigious export water-colours had often been on a larger scale and painted on fine Chinese paper or on paper imported from Europe. The albums of pith paintings and later the little glass-fronted boxes were inexpensive light easy to pack and gave the pictures some protection on the long voyage home. Because many were sold in albums and hence protected from the light they retain their bright colours to this day. Pith comes from the central column of spongy cellular tissue in the stem of a small tree called Tetrapanax Papyrifera native to south-west China. It has had a variety of some going back many centuries. At the imperial court both men and women wore coloured flowers made from pith in their hair. For use in painting it is cut by hand with a knife into thin sheets from short lengths of the spongy tissue. Cutting is highly skilled and the constraints of the process mean that the finished sheets for painting seldom if ever measure more than about 30cms by 20cms. The sheets are dried trimmed and used for painting without any further processing. Because of the nature of pith and its cellular structure the gouache used by the Chinese sat on the surface and produced a bright and even sparkling effect. Very fine detail could be achieved but pith did not lend itself to the flat wash of colour favoured for European watercolours. These albums are difficult to date specifically as they are seldom signed and never actually dated. They are known to have been produced from the 1830s through to the 1870s [China, c.1870] hardcover