Chinese export painting, also known as China trade painting, is the name given to a particular genre of paintings produced in large quantities in Guangzhou in the 18th and 19th centuries, during the time when foreign trade flourished and foreign merchants from all over the world converged in the city. Produced by Chinese artists to meet the demand for a taste of China, its life, its customs and its landscape in the West, Chinese export paintings were mostly executed in the Western media by employing Western techniques. The effect of Western aesthetic qualities is demonstrated in many of the extant examples. This exhibition attempts to study the role Western art traditions play in Chinese export painting through a display of export paintings alongside with works by Western artists, particularly those who had been to China.

The exhibition features some 50 sets of oil paintings, gouaches, watercolours, sketches and prints selected mostly from the Historical Pictures collection, among them works created by important travelling or expatriate artists such as Thomas and William Daniell, Auguste Borget, Marciano Baptista and George Chinnery, as well as household names of Chinese export paintings such as Spoilum, Tingqua and Lamqua.