Tragulus napu (Larger Malayan Mouse Deer) beneath a Convolvulus

In the second half of the 18th century many Chinese artists migrated to countries in southeast Asia such as Java, Sumatra and Malaya in search of European patrons for their painting. During the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain captured many French and Dutch possessions in southeast Asia, the various countries began to attract the attention of commercial and investigative travellers. The East India Company posted there many officials and explorers such as Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), who sailed for the east in 1805 and put together an important collection of specimens and drawings. Both private and official collectors commissioned artists to paint the local flora and fauna. Western and Chinese paper was used by the artists to produce stock sets of natural history drawings that were brought back to England as a record of the exotic lands.