Images of foreigners in traditional Chinese woodblock prints of the late XIX and the early XX centuries

The article deals with the formation of mutual images between China and the Western powers at the turn of the XIX and the XX centuries - during the period when there was an unprecedented expansion of contacts between the parties. For the first time in Russian science the question of the emergence of new visual images of foreigners and foreign realities in China of the studied period is viewed through the prism of the traditional Chinese folk painting - Nianhua, which, unlike traditional academic painting, reflected changing historical realities very vividly. The article provides a detailed classification of Nianhua, including the following categories of images with “foreigners and foreign phenomena” in particular: woodblock prints dedicated to the activities of Christian missionaries in China; well-wishing pictures with images of western realities; and the images on historical and political issues, which became especially popular at the turn of the XIX and the XX centuries. The article describes in detail each of the categories. The study is based, primarily, on the richest collection of Chinese folk woodblock print paintings stored in the museums of St. Petersburg: the State Hermitage Museum, the State Museum of the History of Religion, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera), the Russian Geographical Society, which is based on the collection of a famous Russian academician V. M. Alekseyev.