Imperial Illusions. Kristina Kleutghen
IMPERIAL ILLUSIONS
KRISTINA KLEUTGHEN
IMPERIAL
ILLUSIONS
Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces
This book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association.
This book also has been supported by generous grants from the Association for Asian Studies First Book Subvention Program, and from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art History and Archeology at Washington University in St. Louis.
© 2015 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in China
Design by click! Publishing Services
Composed in Arno by Robert Slimbach, Scala Sans by Martin Majoor,
and Myriad by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly.
18 17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kleutghen, Kristina, 1981–
Imperial illusions : crossing pictorial boundaries in the Qing palaces/Kristina Kleutghen.
pages cm.—(Art history publication initiative)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99410-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Qianlong, Emperor of China, 1711–1799—Art patronage. 2. Painting, Chinese—
China—Beijing—Ming-Qing dynasties, 1368–1912. 3. Art and society—China—
History—18th century. 4. Trompe l’oeil painting—China—Beijing. 5. Gu gong bo wu yuan (China) I. Title.
ND1047.B45K59 2015
759.951'156—dc232014007530
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. ∞
For Melanie Michailidis (1967–2013)
IN MEMORIAM
CONTENTS
Chronology of Chinese Dynasties and Political Periods xv
Introduction: A New Vision of Painting 3
ONE Painted Walls and Pictorial Illusions 25
THREEContemplating the Future 103
FOUR Peacocks and Cave-Heavens 143
SIX The Beauty in the Garden 221
Epilogue: Illusions, Imperial and Otherwise 271
Glossary of Chinese Characters 325
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While attending the New Jersey Scholars Program (NJSP) in high school, I did not know that its topic for that year, “The Western Experience and Asia: The Collision of Cultures,” would provide the catalyst for my future career. Later, Allen Hockley and Sarah Allan helped me discover a passion for Chinese art at Dartmouth College, which my parents generously made possible. It is upon this foundation that Imperial Illusions was built.
As a graduate student in Eugene Wang’s landscape painting seminar at Harvard University, I rediscovered the complexity of China’s multicultural eighteenth century, and later