dc.description.abstract | Qianlong Emperor is the only Qing Dynasty emperor who made Southern Inspection Tours for six times after his grandfather, KangXi Emperor. West Lake in Hangzhou, as a scenic resort, was always included on the itinerary of Qianlong’s Southern Inspection Tours. Historically, West Lake had been unknown before Six Dynasties (A.D. 220-589) until Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) it gradually gained its celebrity and was known for its beautiful scenery. In the past, a lot of remarkable and famous people in history left their figures on the lakeside, among them, there were countless artiest who chose West Lake as the motif of their works.
Conditioned by space-time and other sorts of coincidences, a number of the classic West Lake Paintings of the previous dynasties were collected and sequentially entered Qing palace. Consequently, Qianlong Emperor became the emperor who owned the largest number of classic West Lake paintings in the history. Qianlong Emperor’s favor in appreciation of classic West Lake Paintings began in the sixteenth year of his reign (A.D. 1751) and remained unaltered until his later years. Not only appreciated those classic paintings and poems inspired by the beautiful scenery of West Lake, Qianlong emperor also created a great deal of West Lake Paintings and West Lake Poems. He particularly had a passion for representing the scenery of West Lake, not only giving orders to produce new West Lake paintings and copied the scenery of West Lake in royal gardens, Qianlong Emperor also created West Lake Paintings himself at his leisure and regarded it as a form of elegant recreation. During the sunset of his life, Qianlong Emperor even frequently painted West Lake to temper his will. However, not all of the West Lake paintings made by Qianlong Emperor were embodied in Shi Qu Bao Ji (石渠寶笈)— the compilers of Shi Qu Bao Ji were commanded not to record every piece of imperially produced work unless it is significant for promotion of Qianlong Emperor’s historical image.
Besides presenting Qianlong Emperor’s preference for West Lake, in this study, the main stress falls on how the imperial taste affected the appreciation and production of West Lake paintings in Qianlong Court. It is noteworthy that those who produced West Lake paintings for Qianlong Emperor were not professional artist worked in Ruyiguan(如意館) and Zaobanchu(造辦處) or Roman Catholic missionaries, but were courtiers (from 2nd-rank first grade to full 7th-grade) excelling at literati-painting such as Dong Bang-Da, Zhang Ruo-Cheng, Zhang Zong-Cang, Xu Yang, Dong Gao and Guan Huai… etc.
West Lake paintings produced in Qianlong Court have clearly shown that Qianlong Emperor’s taste in art was affected profoundly by the esthetic values of Han literati, and revealed the cooperation and interaction concerning art creation between Qianlong emperor and his courtiers.
| en_US |