‘Intoxicated, we listened to warblers and swallows chattering in the spring wind’

Abstract

The affinity between the landscape painter Wu Li and François de Rougemont, a Jesuit missionary based in Changshu, is a rare example of friendship between a Chinese and a European in the seventeenth century. Their encounter, which seemingly resulted in the first Chinese painting partly dedicated to a European, evidences the role of the visual arts as a social lubricant. These arts included engravings imported from the Netherlands, works produced in China, and Sino-European co-productions. Aspects of patronage of Christian art in provincial China of the early Qing period come into closer view as well as, conversely, the Chinese view towards European art. Both men studied each other’s ideological background (respectively Confucianism and Catholicism) and their careful exchange oscillated between transactional strategy, cross-cultural curiosity, and, perhaps, affection.