A CHINESE-EXPORT REVERSE MIRROR-PAINTING

Chinese mirror and glass paintings were produced during the 18th and early 19th centuries purely for export to the West, their decoration deriving in some degree from European engravings. Painted upon plates of glass, the painting was executed on the back of the glass, a technique which was known in the 18th Century as 'back-painting'. Many of the paintings were produced in Canton, a centre for painting on glass (M. Jourdain and R. Soame Jenyns, Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century, Norwich, 1967, p. 36).