European illustrations began to be introduced to China since as early as the 16th century by the Jesuits under Matteo Ricci (1552-1660), who brought Western arts and illustrated materials to Chinese emperors and local gentry for the purpose of evangelical proselytism. Some of the images even found their way into Chinese publications. An
35 Ellen Johnston Laing, Selling Happiness: Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in Early- Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004), p.56.
36 The earliest extant woodblock illustration was the frontispiece for Diamond Sutra made in 861.
Most of the Tang woodblock prints illustrated religious themes. By the Ming dynasty, with the development three-colored printing techniques, a great variety of subjects were to be included in woodblock prints.
37 Yangliuqing nianhua industry is said to have women and children involved as printers and
colorists. See James A. Flath, The Cult of Happiness: Nianhua, Art and Print Culture in Rural North China
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), p.18. Flathnotes that in north China woodblock printing remained economically viable into the late-1920s, and even 1930s. On woodblock printing of books, the Shunde County Gazetteer of 1853 notes that block cutting requires little training, techniques and even literacy that “women and children could all do it.” See Cynthia Brokaw, “Commercial Woodblock Publishing in the Qing (1642-1911) and the Transition to Modern Print Technology,” in Christopher Reed and Cynthia Brokaw eds., From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, circa 1800 to 2008 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010), p. 42.
often-cited example is a set of four Christian images that were reproduced
(accommodated) in the Chinese ink design book Mr. Cheng’s Ink Garden (Chengshi
moyuan 程 氏 墨 苑, 1606). The 17th and 18th century witnessed the circulation of European prints of landscapes and scenic spots in China that even influenced the Chinese depiction of landscapes.38 However, it was during the latter half of the 19th century that foreign illustrations began to be mass produced through print media, firstly as by- products of missionary educational activities, then appropriated by the Qing state in its effort to translate technical and scientific works as part of the Self-Strengthening
Movement.39
From the 1860s onward, missionary institutions accommodated the Chinese wish to acquire Western science and technology, publishing Chinese-language religious pictorials alongside translated Western technical and scientific works. Many missionaries were themselves scientifically curious “natural historians”, and others were medical missionaries, using technology and science as part of their proselytizing. Jiaohui Xinbao
(Church News, 1868-74), for example, was one of the earliest illustrated periodicals published by missionaries in Shanghai. According to Adrian Bennett:
In the first two volumes, especially, [Young J.] Allen supplied his readers with pictures of many animals and plants, as well as illustrations of biblical passages. In later volumes, scientific illustrations appeared more frequently on such subjects
38 Though lacking direct evidence, James Cahill argues from circumstantial evidence that novel
motifs, compositional types and representational techniques appeared in paintings of Chinese landscape paintings at the same time when European prints that became accessible to Chinese. See James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p15. On Western arts and their influences in China during the Ming-Qing time, see Mayching Kao, “European Influences in Chinese Art,” in Thomas H.C. Lee, China and Europe: Images and Influences in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1991), pp. 251- 303.
39 Adrian A. Bennett, John Fryer and the Introduction of Western Science and Technology into Nineteenth-Century China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).
as the universe, trains, mining techniques, and the physiology of the human body.40
In an announcement for the publication of Gezhi Huibian (The Chinese Scientific and Industrial Magazine, 1876-77, 1879-81, 1890-91) of 1875, John Fryer wrote, “the magazine will contain as many illustrations and engravings as can be procured.”41 Most of the illustrations of these early publications were made from engraved plates donated by foreign publishers.42
The first true illustrated newspaper that focused on illustrations published in
China was Yinghuan huabao瀛寰画报 (Worldwide Illustrated News), which appeared
irregularly for five issues between 1877 and 1880, with all the illustrations supplied by British illustrators and Chinese texts added in Shanghai. Chinese artists were not involved in news illustrations until 1884 when the first true Chinese pictorial journal,
Dianshizhai Pictorial (Dianshizhai huabao 點石齋畫報, 1884-98) was published as a supplement to Shenbao (Shanghai News, 1872-1949) founded by the British merchant Ernst Major (1841-1908), using photo-lithography.43 Contemporary material life and current affairs became subjects of representation at the hands of a team of specialist illustrators. They adopted elements of Western pictorial techniques combined with Chinese brushwork traditions to create a hybrid form of representation. Following early
40 Adrian A. Bennett, Missionary Journalists in China: Young J. Allen and His Magazines, 1860- 1883 (Athens:University of Georgia Press, 1983), p. 99.
41 Cited in Bennett 1967, p. 50.
42 Ji Shaofu, Zhongguo chuban jianshi (Shanghai: Xuelin, 1991), p. 332.
43 For an introduction of the Dianshizhai Huabao, see Xiaoqing Ye, Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life, 1884-1898 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Michigan, 2003).
missionary publications, Dianshizhai Pictorial also included reproductions of illustrations from Western prints, while also including traditional “paintings” and pictorial storytelling that gave it a complex and innovative character.
Formal knowledge about Western drawing was spread through translated art
books and art education. Drawing manuals such as Lunhua qianshuo 論 畫 淺 說
(Introductory Remarks on Drawing) and Huaxing tushuo畫形圖說 (Aids to Model Drawing,by F. Calmady Richardson) were published under the missionary auspices,44 which supplemented the drawing classes, woodcarving and printing crafts taught at
Tushanwan workshops under Liu Bizhen 劉必振 (1843-1912) by a staff of both Western
and Chinese artists. In addition to religious images, Western secular illustrations were also copied in classes. Mayching Kao argues that the art studio of Tushanwan was perhaps the first institution in China to provide training in Western art on a systematic basis.45 Although there is no evidence of a direct link between the first generation of China’s news illustrators such as those on the staff of
Dianshizhai Pictorial and the Tushanwan painting studio, there is no doubt that Chinese artists had access to Western pictorial arts and art theories thanks to the commercial publishing industry. With the increasing importance of the pictorial component in the publishing industry in Shanghai, traditional woodblock artists also supported and perhaps were forced to participate in the trans-media dialogue with artists from various kinds of image production system, from journalistic illustration to pictorial advertising.
44 Hay 1998, p. 137.
45 Mayching Kao, “Reforms in Education and the Beginning of the Western-style Painting
Movement in China,” in Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen eds., A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1998), p.152.