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Dec 6, 2023 · Art of the Qing dynasty. This chapter introduces key topics in the histories of Qing dynasty art, looking at how the making of art intertwines with the politics of identity and ethnicity, from regional social circles to global audiences. by Dr. Kristen Loring Brennan.
Three principal groups of artists were working during the Qing: the traditionalists, who sought to revitalize painting through the creative reinterpretation of past models; the individualists, who practiced a deeply personal form of art that often carried a strong message of political protest; and the courtiers, the officials, and the ...
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- Overview
- Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12)
- Since 1912
The Manchu conquest did not produce a dislocation of Chinese social and cultural life in the same way the Mongol invasion had done. On the contrary, even before their conquest, the Manchus began imitating Chinese ways, and the Qing rulers, particularly Kangxi (1661–1722) and Qianlong (1735–96), were well-educated men who were eager to enlist the support of Chinese scholars. They were extremely conservative in their political and cultural attitudes; in artistic taste, their native love of extravagance (which the Chinese viewed as barbarous) was tempered, ironically, by an equally strong conservative propensity. The art of the Qing dynasty, even the painting of many of its finest eccentrics and the design of its best gardens, is similarly characterized both by lavish decoration and ornate effects as well as by superb technique and conservative taste. By the 19th century, however, China’s internal weakness and humiliation by the Western powers were reflected in a growing stagnation of the arts.
The dual attraction of the Manchu rulers to unbridled decoration and to orthodox academicism characterized their patronage at court. In regard to the former, they favoured artists such as Yuan Jiang, who, in the reign of Kangxi, combined with great decorative skill the model of Guo Xi and the mannered distortions that had cropped up in the late Ming (1368–1644), partly as a result of Ming artists’ exposure to an unfamiliar Western art. More thoroughly Westernized work, highly exotic from the Asian perspective, was produced both by native court artists such as Jiao Bingzhen, who applied Western perspective to his illustrations of the text Gengzhitu (“Rice and Silk Culture”), which were reproduced and distributed in the form of wood engravings in 1696, and by the Italian missionary Giuseppe Castiglione. In the mid-18th century Castiglione produced a Sino-European technique that had considerable influence on court artists such as Zuo Yigui, but he was ignored by literati critics. His depictions of Manchu hunts and battles provide a valuable visual record of the times.
On the other hand, Manchu emperors saw to it that conservative works in the scholar-amateur style by Wang Hui, Wang Yuanqi, and other followers of Dong Qichang were also well represented at court, largely putting an end to the conflict at court between professional and amateur styles that had been introduced in the Song (960–1279) and that played a significant role in the Ming. In a sense, the amateur style was crowned victor, but it came at the expense of the amateurism that had defined its purpose, given the prominent role these artists enjoyed at court. This politically effective aspect of Manchu patronage was not necessarily a specifically calculated strategy; rather, it was a natural extension of their concerted attempts to cultivate and recruit the scholar class in order to establish their legitimacy.
The Qianlong emperor was the most energetic of royal art patrons since Huizong of the Song, building an imperial collection of more than 4,000 pre-Qing paintings and calligraphy and cataloging them in successive editions of the Shiqubaoji. The shortcomings of his taste, however, were displayed in his preference for recent forgeries rather than the originals in his collection (notably, copies of Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains and of Fan Kuan’s Travelers among Mountains and Streams) and in his propensity for covering his collected masterpieces with multiple impressions of court seals and calligraphic inscriptions in a mediocre hand.
The conservatism of Qing period painting was exemplified by the Six Masters of the late 17th and the early 18th century, including the so-called “Four Wangs,” Wu Li, and Yun Shouping. In the works of most of these artists and of those who followed their lead, composition became routinized, with little in the way of variation or genre detail to appeal to the imagination; fluency of execution in brushwork became the exclusive basis for appreciation. Wang Shimin, who had been a pupil of Dong Qichang, retired to Taicang near modern Shanghai at the fall of the Ming, making it the centre of a school of scholarly landscape painting that included his friend Wang Jian and the younger artist Wang Hui. Wang Hui was a dazzling prodigy whose landscapes included successful forgeries of Bei Song and Yuan masters and who did not hesitate to market the “amateur” practice, both among fellow scholars and at the Manchu court; however, the hardening of his style in his later years foreshadowed the decline of Qing literati painting for lack of flexible innovation. In contrast, Wang Shimin’s grandson, Wang Yuanqi, was the only one of these six orthodox masters who fully lived up to Dong Qichang’s injunction to transform the styles of past models creatively, as he did in his tour de force Wang River Villa, After Wang Wei (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). At court, Wang Yuanqi rose to high office under the Kangxi emperor and served as chief compiler of the imperial painting and calligraphy catalog, the Peiwenzhai Shuhuapu.
Receiving no patronage from the Manchu court and leaving only a minor following before the latter half of the 19th century was a different group of artists, now frequently referred to as “Individualists.” Collectively, these artists represent a triumphant, if short-lived, moment in the history of literati painting, triggered in good part by the emotionally cathartic conquest of China by the Manchus. They shared a rejection of Manchu political authority and the choice of an eremitic, often impoverished lifestyle that obliged them to trade their works for their sustenance, in spite of their allegiance to amateur ideals. Stylistically, just like their more orthodox contemporaries, they often revealed the influence of Dong Qichang’s systematization of painting method; but, unlike the more conservative masters, they pursued an emotional appeal reflective of their own temperaments. For example, Gong Xian, a Nanjing artist whose budding political career was cut short by the Manchu conquest, used repetitive forms and strong tonal contrasts to convey a pervasive feeling of repressive constraint, lonely isolation, and gloom in his landscapes (most impressive is his Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines in the Rietberg Museum, Zürich, Switzerland; C.A. Drenowatz Collection). He was the most prominent of the artists who came to be known as the Eight Masters of Nanjing. This group was only loosely related stylistically, though contemporary painters from Nanjing did share solidity of form derived from Song prototypes and, possibly, from the influence of Western art.
The Manchu conquest did not produce a dislocation of Chinese social and cultural life in the same way the Mongol invasion had done. On the contrary, even before their conquest, the Manchus began imitating Chinese ways, and the Qing rulers, particularly Kangxi (1661–1722) and Qianlong (1735–96), were well-educated men who were eager to enlist the support of Chinese scholars. They were extremely conservative in their political and cultural attitudes; in artistic taste, their native love of extravagance (which the Chinese viewed as barbarous) was tempered, ironically, by an equally strong conservative propensity. The art of the Qing dynasty, even the painting of many of its finest eccentrics and the design of its best gardens, is similarly characterized both by lavish decoration and ornate effects as well as by superb technique and conservative taste. By the 19th century, however, China’s internal weakness and humiliation by the Western powers were reflected in a growing stagnation of the arts.
The dual attraction of the Manchu rulers to unbridled decoration and to orthodox academicism characterized their patronage at court. In regard to the former, they favoured artists such as Yuan Jiang, who, in the reign of Kangxi, combined with great decorative skill the model of Guo Xi and the mannered distortions that had cropped up in the late Ming (1368–1644), partly as a result of Ming artists’ exposure to an unfamiliar Western art. More thoroughly Westernized work, highly exotic from the Asian perspective, was produced both by native court artists such as Jiao Bingzhen, who applied Western perspective to his illustrations of the text Gengzhitu (“Rice and Silk Culture”), which were reproduced and distributed in the form of wood engravings in 1696, and by the Italian missionary Giuseppe Castiglione. In the mid-18th century Castiglione produced a Sino-European technique that had considerable influence on court artists such as Zuo Yigui, but he was ignored by literati critics. His depictions of Manchu hunts and battles provide a valuable visual record of the times.
On the other hand, Manchu emperors saw to it that conservative works in the scholar-amateur style by Wang Hui, Wang Yuanqi, and other followers of Dong Qichang were also well represented at court, largely putting an end to the conflict at court between professional and amateur styles that had been introduced in the Song (960–1279) and that played a significant role in the Ming. In a sense, the amateur style was crowned victor, but it came at the expense of the amateurism that had defined its purpose, given the prominent role these artists enjoyed at court. This politically effective aspect of Manchu patronage was not necessarily a specifically calculated strategy; rather, it was a natural extension of their concerted attempts to cultivate and recruit the scholar class in order to establish their legitimacy.
The Qianlong emperor was the most energetic of royal art patrons since Huizong of the Song, building an imperial collection of more than 4,000 pre-Qing paintings and calligraphy and cataloging them in successive editions of the Shiqubaoji. The shortcomings of his taste, however, were displayed in his preference for recent forgeries rather than the originals in his collection (notably, copies of Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains and of Fan Kuan’s Travelers among Mountains and Streams) and in his propensity for covering his collected masterpieces with multiple impressions of court seals and calligraphic inscriptions in a mediocre hand.
The conservatism of Qing period painting was exemplified by the Six Masters of the late 17th and the early 18th century, including the so-called “Four Wangs,” Wu Li, and Yun Shouping. In the works of most of these artists and of those who followed their lead, composition became routinized, with little in the way of variation or genre detail to appeal to the imagination; fluency of execution in brushwork became the exclusive basis for appreciation. Wang Shimin, who had been a pupil of Dong Qichang, retired to Taicang near modern Shanghai at the fall of the Ming, making it the centre of a school of scholarly landscape painting that included his friend Wang Jian and the younger artist Wang Hui. Wang Hui was a dazzling prodigy whose landscapes included successful forgeries of Bei Song and Yuan masters and who did not hesitate to market the “amateur” practice, both among fellow scholars and at the Manchu court; however, the hardening of his style in his later years foreshadowed the decline of Qing literati painting for lack of flexible innovation. In contrast, Wang Shimin’s grandson, Wang Yuanqi, was the only one of these six orthodox masters who fully lived up to Dong Qichang’s injunction to transform the styles of past models creatively, as he did in his tour de force Wang River Villa, After Wang Wei (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). At court, Wang Yuanqi rose to high office under the Kangxi emperor and served as chief compiler of the imperial painting and calligraphy catalog, the Peiwenzhai Shuhuapu.
Receiving no patronage from the Manchu court and leaving only a minor following before the latter half of the 19th century was a different group of artists, now frequently referred to as “Individualists.” Collectively, these artists represent a triumphant, if short-lived, moment in the history of literati painting, triggered in good part by the emotionally cathartic conquest of China by the Manchus. They shared a rejection of Manchu political authority and the choice of an eremitic, often impoverished lifestyle that obliged them to trade their works for their sustenance, in spite of their allegiance to amateur ideals. Stylistically, just like their more orthodox contemporaries, they often revealed the influence of Dong Qichang’s systematization of painting method; but, unlike the more conservative masters, they pursued an emotional appeal reflective of their own temperaments. For example, Gong Xian, a Nanjing artist whose budding political career was cut short by the Manchu conquest, used repetitive forms and strong tonal contrasts to convey a pervasive feeling of repressive constraint, lonely isolation, and gloom in his landscapes (most impressive is his Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines in the Rietberg Museum, Zürich, Switzerland; C.A. Drenowatz Collection). He was the most prominent of the artists who came to be known as the Eight Masters of Nanjing. This group was only loosely related stylistically, though contemporary painters from Nanjing did share solidity of form derived from Song prototypes and, possibly, from the influence of Western art.
Painting in China, as with all the arts of China since 1912, has reflected the effects of modernization, the impact of Western art, and the political, military, and economic struggles of the period, including the war with Japan (1937–45), the civil war that ended in the establishment in 1949 of the People’s Republic of China, and the rapid economic...
Jan 30, 2014 · As for the study of Qing painting, in 1743 court officials began the evaluation and cataloguing of the vast palace collection of scrolls and albums, old and new. Their work set the starting point for the study of painting of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).
Art during the Qing dynasty was dominated by three major groups of artists. The first, sometimes called " the Individualists ," was a group of men largely made up of loyalists to the fallen Ming dynasty.
The Qing dynasty, especially in the eighteenth century when the Qing empire was the largest and most prosperous in the world, saw prolific cultural and artistic achievements. Three Qing emperors were responsible for the notable stability and prosperity of the period.
The art of the Qing dynasty, even the painting of many of its finest eccentrics and the design of its best gardens, is similarly characterized both by lavish decoration and ornate effects as well as by superb technique and conservative taste.
