In a New Light: 500 Years of British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2025-04-01 - 2026-01-30)The China Trade - Romance and Reality (De Cordova Museum & Sculpture Park, 1979-06-22 - 1979-09-16)
Publications:
An Illustrated Journey Round the World, Folio Society, London, p. 183, NJ18 .D21 D3 2007 Oversize (YCBA)Patrick Conner, The China Trade : 1600-1860, Brighton, 1986, pp.64-65, fig. 81a, N7343.5 .C66 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 82-83, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, , Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1978, vol. 10, p. 3612, NJ18 F2164 A3 1978 (YCBA)The exhibition of the Royal Academy : the forty-second, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1810, p. 5, no. 27, N5054 A54 (YCBA)The exhibition of the Royal Academy : the forty-second, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1810, p. 5, no. 27, https://chronicle250.com/1810#catalogue
Gallery Label:
Organized on a picturesque winding river, this composition focuses on the steps of tea production, from preparing the soil and caring for the young plants to harvesting, folding, crisping, packing, and weighing the leaves and shipping them to the port of Canton (Guangzhou). Although Daniell traveled to China twice, there is no evidence that he ever visited a tea plantation. Instead, he likely relied on artworks by Chinese artists to create this detailed scene. Tea, initially an elite beverage in seventeenth-century Britain, became widely consumed across social classes by the early nineteenth century. The demand was such that by 1810 approximately 20,000 tons of the product, valued at £3 million, were imported each year by the East India Company. The high demand for tea created a trade imbalance, which prompted the Company to start smuggling highly addictive opium into China. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2025