On Macau Trade Paintings – 2026.01.28
The Rui Cunha Foundation presents today, Wednesday, January 28th at 6:30pm, a conference “On Macau Trade Paintings: Creating a new painting category”, conducted by researcher and Professor Cristina Osswald, PhD, a specialist in Global Art History, with a focus on Asia, which is the result of a research project on multilateralism in art, funded by the Polytechnic University of Macau and the University of Seville, in Spain.
The discussion, inserted in the Notebook of Stories series, will focus on various artistic representations of Macau and the Pearl River Delta region, produced in the 18th and 19th centuries, and exhibited in the West. This presentation «deals with a new painting category, Macao Trade Paintings distinct from China Trade Painting. This rather small array of circa three hundred paintings is dated to a short period of time, between the end of the 18th century and the mid-19th century», according to the guest speaker’s proposal.
«Macao Trade Art emerged from commissions originally from Western (rarely Portuguese) patrons, followed by requests from Chinese and other Asian clients. These paintings were produced by Western painters, mostly amateurs living in or visiting Macao, inspired by prototypes taken to the West, and with the participation of a few Chinese professional painters and craftsmen workshops».
In addition to oil on canvas portraits, «Macao’s urban and architectural specificities have also been depicted in watercolors, gouache, and to a lesser extent glass reverse paintings and the Chinese rice paper paintings. Such examples of sceneries are the seaports, harbor views, rural landscapes, different religious rituals, the everyday life of its multi-ethnic population and the emergence of Macao as an international tourism hub», Cristina Osswald reveals.
The researcher believes that «understanding this artistic production requires a multi-disciplinary research strategy that integrates data and methodological tools from across a wide range of disciplines, including literature, sociology, and economic history». «The participation of Western and Chinese painters and mixed patronage, the blending of local techniques with Western techniques and materials, and the subjects reflecting the Portuguese administration of Macao, the presence of Westerners against the back-ground of the Canton Trade System, and the broader Chinese context, all contributed to their particular transcultural character», worth studying as a unique phenomenon.
Cristina Osswald is a Portuguese historian of Art and Culture from the early Modern Age, specializing in the Portuguese Overseas Empire. She holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Department of History and Civilization) in Florence, Italy, with a thesis on Jesuit Art in Goa (1542-1655). Currently teaching at the Macao Polytechnic University, she is also the main researcher of a project on Global Arts and Architecture during the Qing Dynasty.
The event will be held in English.
Admission is free.
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