The sudden appearance of painted and unfired clay portraits of western merchants in the burgeoning China trade of the early eighteenth century marks some of the earliest manifestations of Chinese trade portraiture or trade “art” – and Chinese artisan. Originating with the craftsman Amoy Chinqua (active 1716-20), these curious and vivid portraits function in a new space of intercultural commerce and exchange, as articulated through their unusual materials, crafting, and authorship.

Roberta Wue works on late Qing and early twentieth-century China, with a particular interest in painting, photography, print culture, and intermediality. Her work examines issues of audience and picturing, while analyzing genre, heterogeneity and hybridity, seriality, and movement in modern Chinese art and visual culture. She is the author of Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai.