[China] Chinese school, ca. 1820. Interior tea ceremony scene

Oil on canvas, 47 x 61 cm, in black lacquered Chinese export frame.

Provenance: The estate of a former Royal New Zealand Navy Officer, Auckland, New Zealand. The painting has been expertly restored and relined onto a new stretcher by Alan H.K. Bradford, specialist conservator with vast experience in Chinese export paintings. Cf. Choi, Kee Il, “Tea and design in Chinese export painting”, in: The Magazine ‘Antiques’, vol. 154, no. 4, October 1998. Very fine, early 19th cent. interior scene depicting a Manchu Mandarin and his consort drinking tea in a domestic setting. Culturally, spiritually and religiously (in Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism) very important to the Chinese, tea had also been a driving force of Chinese Trade since the early 18th century, resulting in export paintings illustrating a.o. its cultivation and production process. Traditionally, drinking tea was regarded as something for the academic and cultural elites of society, being considered an expression of personal morality, education, harmony, social principles and status. Tea houses were regarded as sanctuaries for sharing ideas; political allegiances and social rank were said to be temporarily suspended in favour of honest and rational discourse.