The British American Tobacco Company Advertising Department and Four of Its Calendar Poster Artists By Ellen J. Laing Prepared for symposium on Urban Cultural Institutions in Early Twentieth Century China

By 1910 the British American Tobacco company, known as BAT, was aggressively promoting its products in China through pictorial advertising, black and white ads placed in journals, colored posters and the extremely popular calendar posters, known as yuefenpai, given to customers for free or for a small price at New Year's time. By 1920, the typical advertising calendar posters were usually painted with a special procedure known as rub-and-paint perfected by Zheng Mantuo (1885/1888-1961). In this technique, carbon was rubbed into the paper to create shadows and then watercolor pigments were added, resulting in a soft, muted colors. In the calendar posters, the central image was usually an illustration to some legend or opera or a beautiful woman or two, along the sides or at the bottom were lunar and western calendars, brand names, and advertising text. Two calendars by Zheng Mantuo, one from 1924, are typical. Full length figures of young women are rendered in soft colors; they are quiet and static, passive and aloof. Eventually, "hangers," pictures alone, without calendars and sometimes without advertising, were also offered.

To facilitate the advertisement of its tobacco products in China, BAT established an in-house advertising department in 1915. Among the Chinese artists on its staff were Liang Dingming (1898-1959), Hu Boxiang (1896-1989), Ni Gengye, and Zhang Guangyu (1900-1965), his student Zhang Zhengyu (1904-1970), Ding Song (1891-1972) and his brother, Ding Ne, Yang Qinsheng, Yang Xiuying, Tang Jiuru, Wu Bingsheng (known also as Wang Shaoyun), Yin Yueming, Ma Shouhong, and Wang Ying. Not all of the artists named served BAT at the same time and not all were responsible for creating calendar posters (Ding 1995:13). The BAT advertising department maintained a specific work protocol: artists were assigned explicit tasks from which, we are told, they were not permitted to deviate. Some created color advertisements; others drew only black and white newspaper ads, other artists only made representations of cigarette packages and tins. Yet another artist was responsible for the artistic lettering, and still others for the writing of foreign languages. James Hutchison, a BAT advertising and sales representative in China for more than two decades (from 1911 to 1933), describes the general procedure used at BAT in 1917 for creating advertisements and calendars:

Leading popular Chinese artists, chiefly girl head specialists, were paid a good retaining fee to submit preliminary sketches nine months ahead of Chinese New Year . . . These roughs were then sent out to all Division headquarters of the Chinese members of the staff to vote on their respective merits and check the titles to see that the characters carried no local double meanings. (Hutchison 1936: 266-267).

In actual calendar production, certain artists painted the figures, others only created the backgrounds for these figures, others only designed the decorative borders, others only produced the written characters, some of which were in artistic forms. The finished painting, presumably approved by the head of the department, would then be sent off to be photo-lithographed in multiple copies. This division of labor was used in other commercial art studios in China as well as in the United States. In China, it paralleled the standard Chinese workshop system used for the production of, for example, popular wood block prints, which involved at its simplest, a designer, a block cutter, a printer, sometimes a mounter.

Under the People's Republic of China, some artists who had designed advertising calendar posters for BAT claimed that they had found the rather rigid system frustrating because it did not permit them to develop their full artistic potential (Ding 1995:14). This paper tests the veracity of this assertion by analyzing the work of four BAT calendar artists: Liang Dingming (1898-1959), Hu Boxiang (1896-1989) and Ni Gengye (dates unknown) and Zhang Guangyu (1900-1972).

Liang Dingming studied art in Shanghai and became proficient at portraiture. He created calendars for BAT between 1921 and 1925. The color in Liang Dingming's calendars is exceptionally rich because he painted the originals in oil, not in the rub-and-paint or light watercolor techniques used by most other calendar poster painters. Liang Dingming favored a palette of saturated colors: deep crimson, emerald green, harvest yellow, ultramarine blue, and violet. He sometimes used bright red for the ground, with blue or green shadows. Scumbling with white or yellow pigment created shimmering surfaces, shiny silk tissues, or light glinting off gold. Oil painting brush strokes are evident in Liang's calendar pictures. The rich opulence of his "Nymph of the Luo River" is unmatched by any other calendar poster. Liang imbued his figures with a narrative immediacy lacking in the passive figures seen in other calendar posters of the early nineteen-twenties, where individuals rarely make eye contact with each other or focus upon a specific object. In Liang's posters, people communicate with each other or react to situations through facial expressions and glances, giving his works a singular vivacity. In "Yang Guifei Serving at a Banquet" (fig. 1) the rapport between the lovers, Yang Guifei and the Tang Emperor Minghuang, is expressed through postures and exchanged looks. The beauty, ready with a pot of wine, stands slightly behind the emperor; she leans invitingly toward him, tilting her head coquettishly as she looks into his raised face.

Liang's dainty young modern Chinese girls are often engaged in some physical activity, unlike their sisters in other calendar prints who stand immobile and gaze off into space like manikins. In "Hitting Butterflies in the Shade of Willows" (fig. 2) two girls, their arms linked, are actually walking, their soft, full skirts swing in response to their movement, both of them fix their attention on the butterflies they hope to hit.

Liang's most compelling calendar is of a young woman seated on the edge of a couch. Her individualized facial features, especially the wide eyebrows and straight mouth, indicate that the sitter was Liang's older sister, Xueqing. Liang utilized his portraiture skills to create an outstanding advertising poster. As expected in Liang Dingming's calendars, his sister appears to be about to rise from the couch.

In 1925, Liang moved to Guangzhou where he had a one-man show and was introduced to Jiang Jieshi through a contact at the Huangpu Miliary Academy where Jiang had his headquarters. Liang's artistic career would hereafter be entwined with Jiang's Nationalist Party.

By the time Liang Dingming left BAT around 1925, Hu Boxiang was already creating extraordinary calendars for the company. Hu was born into an artistic family in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Hu junior studied with his father, and was proficient in depicting landscapes and figures in the traditional medium. Hu Boxiang's real love, however, was photography. He started to create BAT calendar posters in 1917. For BAT calendar posters, Hu Boxiang produced ink landscapes, a few "blue and green" style landscapes in the conventional Chinese mode, colored landscapes in a Western descriptive approach, highly colored illustrations to ancient Chinese legends and stories, and depictions of modern women. He was intrigued with light, perhaps because of his fascination with photography. Photographic preferences inform his calendar poster work: strong lighting effects, the dimness of nighttime, dawn and dusk, and soft focus effects.

"Returning at Sunset," a hanging scroll ink landscape calendar poster by Hu Boxiang from 1924 is a transfer of his painting technique directly into the calendar picture: brushed line contours, texture strokes and ink wash. In the lower right corner, however, rings of water disturbed by the duck taking flight give the picture a snapshot character; the realism of the bridge, donkey, rider and trees reflected in the stream as well as the light suffused mid-ground, are further suggestions of photographic intervention. In keeping with traditional painting practice, the artist inscribed the title, the date, his signature and impressed a square seal on "Returning at Sunset." The hanger was printed to simulate an actual hanging scroll, complete with the surrounding area imitating the colors and the geometric floral patterns of textiles and papers used in mounting traditional scrolls. Hu Boxiang wrote lines of poetry on many of his traditional style paintings calendar posters, thereby elevating and dignifying them. This is one reason why Hu Boxiang's calendar posters were regarded as noteworthy and as superior to the ordinary calendar poster.

"Deer Cave in Autumn Rain" could nearly be mistaken for a photograph. Especially effective are the glows highlighting the travelers, the wayside hut and the distant buildings (fig. 3). Although the picture is given a Western frame, it is conceived as a traditional painting and, in the upper right corner, Hu wrote the title followed by a long inscription, his signature and seal.

Hu's interest in light and its sources, whether sun, moon or artificial illumination are conspicuous in yuefenpai such as "A Girl Playing a Flute on a Autumn Night" as well as in his illustrations to ancient stories or themes which frequently have evening or nighttime settings illuminated by lanterns or the moon. Hu Boxiang's soft focus images are derived from photography techniques: in his half-length picture of a girl holding a bouquet, the lower part of the figure gradually fades away (fig. 4). Hu repeatedly imitated this special effect to great advantage, and it became a standard approach used by many other calendar print artists.

Many of Hu Boxiang's calendar pictures are unique to him, and were, as far as can be determined, never imitated or copied by other calendar artists. In the picture of two women seated at angles to each other, one woman applies powder to her face with a small puff and holds open a small compact. Two more are the charming depiction of a lady arranging flowers in a vase on a wicker table and his 1925 half-length figure of a girl wearing a pink jacket who is seen from the back; she turns her head toward the viewer, her lips are slightly parted, barely revealing her teeth, the lower part of her figure is cut off by swags of beautiful chrysanthemums. Isolated from external intrusions, girl and flowers glow against a deep velvety black ground. The inscription by Cai Jielu (printed in gold), mentions "autumn ripples," a metaphor for "bewitching eyes, clear and bright." Cai was the calligrapher who wrote many of the inscriptions and titles on BAT calendar posters.

Hu Boxiang occasionally depicted overtly sexy women, a new slant on the beautiful women seen in calendars. In one calendar poster, a woman wearing a pale blue qipao bordered at collar, cuff and hem with wide, delicate gold patterns, and a large pink rose reclines sinuously on a couch, resting against a pillow. Her short dress exposes her shapely silk-stocking clad crossed legs and one arm is raised behind her head. Both crossed legs and "exposed armpits" are, according to Francesca Dal Lago, invitational body language. Dal Lago interprets the Hu Boxiang depiction:

The representation is more openly flirtatious than those analyzed so far . . . and displays certain signs that endow the figure with a sexually easy-going attitude: the relaxed self-consciousness and the "open" presentation of the self underlined by the body -- the fleshy, soft texture of the pink peony pinned just above the breast and close to the folding sleeve, traditionally considered one of the erotic zones of access to more intimate body parts, the legs wrapped in sheer silk stockings. The most revealing detail is the enticing posture of the woman, seductively leaning against the covered armchair and exposing both her armpit and her legs up to the knees (Dal Lago 2000:133).

Francesca Dal Lago has observed that in traditional Chinese culture "outstretched postures and a seeming lack of control over one's body could be associated with loose moral habits" (Dal Lago 2000: 137).

Hu Boxiang's provocative woman was merely a precursor to the truly blatant sexy and promiscuous women which originated with Hu's companion at BAT, Ni Gengye. Nothing is known about Ni Gengye except that he was trained in art by Xu Yongqing (an older calendar artists who received his art education at the Jesuit orphanage school of painting at Xujiahui). Ni Gengye apparently had no other artistic interests. His advertising posters are rarely dated, so it is impossible to establish firmly the dates he worked for BAT; the earliest calendar is dated 1928 and the latest 1938. In this decade, Ni created pictures in the standard genres of illustrations to Chinese opera stories and legends, and modest, quietly posed, oval-faced modern lovelies in both interior and exterior settings, the latter typified by the woman holding a parasol (1928; fig. 5) and a woman seated on a garden bench (fig. 6).

Ni's real forte, however, was the portrayal of flamboyantly sexy women, and in this genre, he developed a distinct, personal style during the 1930s. One picture, from 1932, initially seems to be an offshoot of Hu Boxiang's alluring woman; Ni's seductress, however, goes further than Hu's temptress. Behind Ni's woman is an oval mirror suggesting the intimacy of a private bedroom. She wears anklets, the red designs of which immediately call attention to her exposed legs, leading the viewer's eye up to the red hibiscus on her shoulder and finally to her alluring full, red lips. The long sleeves and the top of her dress are transparent, so that the flesh of her arms, shoulders, and chest are evident. And, quite different from Hu's girl, Ni's woman stares directly out at the viewer with a challenging "come hither" expression. A second provocative woman (1933, fig. 7) is seated on a garden bench like her sister, but instead of gazing quietly to one side, she toys with her pearl necklace and gazes beguiling out at the viewer, gesturing toward the space beside her, as if extending an invitation for a companion to sit beside her. Ni abandoned the oval-faced, expressionless beauties with their loose, body-concealing dresses for his own paragon of feminine beauty and attractiveness. Her face is round and pinkish makeup deepens her eye sockets. In Western style, her hair is fixed with finger waves; it is parted, not in the center, but on one side, so that, in an asymmetrical arrangement, the waves of hair are fuller on one side of her face. Her close-fitting dress reveals the soft curves of her body. Her direct, piercing gaze further distinguishes her from her sisters of the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties. Ni's women sometimes are more active, in the sense that they literally drape themselves invitingly over pieces of furniture, or lounge coquettishly slumped in sofas or chairs.

One of Ni Gengye's most successful depictions of the piercing gaze women shows her dressed in silken fashion based upon Western art-deco fabric patterns seated in silken magnificence among art-deco pillows, smoking a cigarette. A special immediacy pervades the depiction as the woman is seen from a low angle, as if the viewer is seated on the floor looking up at her. There is no barrier between viewer and subject. A slight, inviting smile animates her face, along with the usual intense gaze. A second poster of this type carries the amorous title: "Always thinking of you" (fig. 8). Seated on a wooden pavilion bench on the shore of West Lake in Hangzhou, the woman, again in lovely silk, has her knees drawn up and her chin resting on them. In this pose, the front half of her qipao skirt entirely conceals her legs, but the back half falls completely open, revealing her white slip and providing an insinuating visual invitation for intercourse.

What makes many calendar prints by Hu Boxiang and Ni Gengye for BAT memorable are the distinctive borders designed by Zhang Guangyu. Natives of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, Zhang's father and grandfather were practitioners of Chinese medical arts. When young, Zhang studied at home and at age fourteen went to Shanghai and later studied art with Zhang Yuguang, the prestigious multi-talented Shanghai artist. From 1927 until 1933 Zhang Guangyu worked at BAT.

In his career at BAT, Zhang Guangyu created extraordinary backgrounds for one-time use only. Shortly after he joined BAT, Zhang Guangyu created the surrounding design for Ni Gengye's woman with a parasol (fig. 5). The background of this poster has an intricate maze of curlicue patterns derived from contemporary European art-deco metalwork designs, such as those by Edgar Brandt (1880-1960). The two reclining deer above the bottom cartouche are immediate clues to the art-deco origin, since deer, leaping or reclining, were motifs beloved by art deco designers. Decorative metalwork was readily visible in Shanghai itself, a primary example being windows of the Sassoon House. Zhang's penchant for intricate, interwoven designs is evident in his cover for the first issue of Shanghai manhua of April 21, 1928 (fig. 9) and his infatuation with modernistic geometric forms in his cover for Shanghai manhua of June 20, 1928.

Zhang's design masterpiece was created for Hu Boxiang's 1930 calendar poster depicting the ill-fated movie star, Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide in 1935 subsequent to an unhappy love affair (fig. 10 and fig. 11). Zhang's border design is entirely art deco in concept and color. It is an overall abstract pattern of discs, arcs and bars in the approved art deco blue and orange. It echoes his geometric designs on the cover for the April 11, 1928 issue of Shanghai manhua (fig. 9). Zhang took extreme care in designing this pseudo-mounting, introducing subtle changes and variations on the basic pattern shapes. On the right side of the image the mounting design is constructed of connected bars; on the left side of the image, the design is of discs and curved forms. Above the central image the design is composed of connected arcs and bars. The intricate frame which surrounds the calendar at the bottom of the scroll seems to imitate some sort of wrought metalwork. It consists of highly stylized birds, pointed leaves and flower forms. A related metalwork design frames a panel with small seal characters above the central image and extends to either side to underline the characters expressing wishes for a happy and prosperous new year.

In 1936, because of Japanese incursions BAT moved its headquarters from Shanghai to Hong Kong, although it "continued to do business in occupied as well as unoccupied China" (Cochran 1980:199). Nevertheless, the glorious era of lavish calendar advertisement posters was over. In a reassessment, under the BAT advertising department system, Liang Dingming, Hu Boxiang and Ni Gengye each employed strikingly different approaches to the central images and Zhang Guangyu designed wonderfully ingenious, sometimes extravagant, borders. Hu was not discouraged from transferring visual elements from photography into his pictures; Ni's developed his images from modest to sexy women. Zhang's amazing flair for design was nurtured at BAT. Perhaps only the BAT calligrapher, Cai Jielu has cause for complaint -- he is listed in the 1947 yearbook of art in China, as a landscape artist; whether he ever got a chance to exercise this speciality at BAT is unknown (Wang 1948, biography section: 106).

In conclusion, the BAT production system instead of being a deterrent, encouraged artistic innovation and indeed may have provided an outlet for the talents of these extraordinary artists. Experimenting with new techniques, new motifs, new images, and new designs, the artists working for BAT produced some of the most inventive, attractive, and at times, lavish advertising calendar posters.

Bibliography
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Dal Lago, Francesca. 2000. "Crossed Legs in 1930s Shanghai: How 'Modern' the Modern Woman." East Asian History 19 (June): 103-144.

Ding Hao. 1995. "Jiang yishu caihua fengxiangei shangye meishu -- jilao Shanghai guanggao huajiaqun." In Yi Bin, ed., Lao Shanghai guanggao. Shanghai: Shanghai huabao chubanshe.

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Wang Yichang, ed., 1948. Zhonghua minguo sanshiliu nian Zhongguo meishu nianjian. Shanghai: Shanghaishi wenhua yundong weiyuanhui.