By about 1818, in the context of the coming independence of Peru, watercolours of Peruvian subjects are documented in Lima, the capital city of Peru. The earliest are associated with Francisco Javier Cortés, who was joined by his presumed pupil, Francisco "Pancho" Fierro in the 1820s. By the 1830s, watercolours by Fierro, his followers, and imitators became widespread, and were eventually produced in the thousands, with the phenomenon tapering off around 1850-60. Similar ethnographic drawings are found in Colombia and Ecuador. 

In the meantime, trade in Chinese export paintings from Canton flourished in the late 18th to the 19th century. These paintings were often sold to visitors as souvenirs, and typically depicted contemporary life in China; traditional costumes, trades, boats, birds, insects and plants. Costume paintings of Peruvian types are also found in albums with provenances and artistic styles which suggest that they were made in painting studios in Canton. These works, produced in north-western South America and in Canton from 1780 to 1850, are connected to a complex web of social, political, artistic, geographic, economic, and technological phenomena, all of which affected the motives for their creation, the materials from which they were made, the means of their dispersal and preservation, and the lives of the people who made, sold, bought, and collected them.