Sold: Boy in Black

Portrait of a boy / oil on canvas / c. 1850s

Commissioned by an American, this exceptional oil on canvas portrait of a boy was painted in China in the mid-19th century. By way daguerreotype photography, American merchants and sailors involved in the mid-19th century China Trade commissioned Chinese artists to execute portraits of their family members, though they resided on the other side of the globe in New England. Western painting styles entered China in the 18th century western artists living in Chinese ports introduced Chinese artists to European techniques. This painting’s anonymous artist was clearly a master among the Chinese painters working in the western style of painting, and his work gave life and color to an American child living thousands of miles away. Rolled canvas in hand, the artist’s American client sailed from the Chinese port have paid a lower price and — at least in this example — commissioned a better quality portrait that he could have found in New Hampshire or Cape Cod.

The painting’s wooden stretcher type indicates the portrait is China Trade, as well as its cracqueleur, a signature element of China Trade paintings. The tiny fissues in the surface indicative of the types of canvasses and paints used by Chinese painters, and this portrait is no exemption. The canvas has a beautiful cracqueleur, which creates an abstract textural overlay over the realistic portrait, adding complexity and depth to its moody composition and serious young subject.

Cracqueleur, tape-bound edges of stretcher, slight stretch irregularities to canvas. Unframed.

Measurements

14.5 inches tall

11.75 inches wide

Shipping

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