英国马戛尔尼使团于1793—1794年访华，并将大量的中国图像信息带回欧洲，其中人物画的数量最多，也最引人瞩目。这些作品记录了有关中国人体貌特征、日常穿着和风俗习惯的信息，是英国在全球化初期收集异域人种知识的一个例证。而绘制作品的过程实则展现的是当时英国生产世界知识的权力。这些人物绘画里蕴含着两种截然不同的表现风格：属于博物范畴的人种志绘画和用艺术手段构建的生动人物场景画。这两者的共存丰富了使团画师绘制中国人物形象时的表现形式和内涵，从中也可窥见中英双方对彼此都持有特定的偏见。
The Macartney Embassy brought a large amount of Chinese visual information back to Europe. The figure painting is the most popular and noticeable subject. These works not only record information about people’s physical features，costumes and daily customs，but are also an indication of Britain’s collection of world ethnic knowledge，reflecting the British power to produce world knowledge. These works contain two completely different artistic expressions：ethnographic paintings belonging to the paradigm of natural history and exotic paintings constructed by artistic means，both of which expanded the expression and content of the Embassy’s figure painting. It is observed that the Europeans had complex psychological pursuit in creating Chinese figure paintings.
