Butterflies Boxed Notecards

Chinese-export watercolors were painted in port cities for sale to Western customers in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Until the middle of the 19th century, these were mostly souvenirs brought back by merchants and tourists. Afterward, they became valued as artworks in their own right. The colors used were those common in Chinese painting, but primary colors tended to predominate later in the 19th century, particularly because the adoption of pith paper, made from a plant called tong cao (Tetrapanax papyrifer), allowed the painters to create images in brilliant colors as well as in very fine detail. The images on these notecards were painted by anonymous artists in China, ca. 1830–1871, and have been reproduced from an album titled Chinese plates of butterflies.