Conference to disseminate the results of the International research project "From Lima to Canton and Beyond: An AI-aided Heritage Materials Research Platform for Studying Globalisation through Art".

Advanced imaging and materials science analysis techniques have been used to examine art collections from The National Archives, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in the UK, and the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Asian Art, the Hispanic Society of America, Indiana University's Lilly Library and Yale, to investigate global trade and information exchange networks among the Americas, Asia and Europe ca. 1780-1850.

Detailed Description

Background: 

Chinese export paintings from the 18th and 19th Century were painted by artists from Canton and other Chinese ports, and often sold to visitors as souvenirs. They typically depict contemporary life in China, illustrating the various trades, costumes, boats, birds, insects and plants. 

Meanwhile, from the late 18th century, European colonial powers such as Britain and Spain were collecting information from around the world. In Britain, the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanical Gardens in London commissioned botanical drawings by Chinese export artists in Canton, and a Royal Botanical Expedition to South America commissioned local South American artists to provide botanical illustrations. 

By about 1818, in the context of the coming independence of Peru, watercolours of Peruvian subjects are documented in Lima, the capital city of Peru. However, paintings showing Peruvian type costumes are also found in albums which appear to have been produced in Canton, China. 

These paintings, with Peruvian subjects but produced in both north-western South America and in China from 1780 to 1850, are clearly connected to a complex web of social, political, artistic, geographic, economic, and technological relationships. The study of these paintings is therefore extremely valuable for the study of economic and cultural history, international trade and cultural exchange in the 18th and 19th Century, allowing us to understand the motives for their creation, the materials from which they were made, the means of their dispersal and preservation, and the lives of the people who made, sold, bought, and collected them.