Professional artists from the West had scarcely any access to China until the latter years of the 18th century. But in December 1793 three professional artists from Britain – William Alexander, Thomas Daniell and William Daniell – found themselves together in Canton (Guangzhou). Alexander, ‘draughtsman’ to the first British embassy to China, was returning from the embassy’s audience with the Qianlong Emperor; the Daniells, after seven years in India, were seeking a passage home in convoy from Canton.
We might suppose that these artists would have returned to London with a plethora of sketches of Canton. However their access to the city was limited, and they faced competition from the rapidly expanding group of Cantonese export artists; the Westerners’ contact with these ‘export’ artists is discussed (with reference to Alexander’s unpublished diary), as is the influence that these Chinese artists may have had on the three visitors and subsequent Western paintings of Chinese subjects.