Imperial Illusions. Kristina Kleutghen
of references and meanings that evolved with time and place and is often only visible in relation to Qianlong’s poetry. The poetry is therefore as inseparable from those sites as the scenic illusions originally installed there, and they function in concert to illustrate what the site meant for Qianlong.
As expected for most perspectival paintings, the space of each scenic illusion resolves only at a single vanishing point. It therefore has only one perfect viewing position, which also implies the presence of the imperial viewer at a particular position in the original space. Consequently, the physical experience of scenic illusions differs from traditional Chinese paintings in two ways. First, Chinese paintings typically prescribed neither a fixed viewing position nor a fixed angle of representation. Second, the portability of most traditional Chinese painting formats, and their transmission through multiple owners over generations or even centuries, indicates that site-specificity played no consistently meaningful role in producing a painting’s meaning for its owner. Through the painting- architecture relationship, which creates visual contiguity, linear perspective creates specificity of sight and site in the holistic viewing experience of scenic illusions.49 For scenic illusions, therefore, recovering the original architectural context and its meaning to Qianlong are essential to understanding how a painting originally appeared and what it meant.
When both versions of Spring’s Peaceful Message are considered specifically in relation to the significance of the Hall of Mental Cultivation, it becomes apparent that the hall, reserved as it was for the imperial residence and offices, was an entirely logical place for the emperor and his chosen successor to be together.50 The surrounding architectural context not only provided the visual frame that helped create the illusion, but, as the place of the emperor’s daily business, also encouraged the mindset necessary for interpreting the meaning of the painting. The hall became the center of imperial governance during Yongzheng’s reign, when he relocated the imperial residence and office suite from the
Qianlong Garden
Dream of the Red Chamber
(Epilogue)
Spring’s Peaceful Message
(Introduction)
Landscape with Cave
(Chapter Four)
(a)
I.5Original locations of all known extant scenic illusions or visual evidence for lost paintings originally in the Forbidden City (a) and Qianlong Garden (b; opposite). Diagrams by Barry Levely.
Studio of Exhaustion
from Diligent Service
(Chapter Six)
Bower of Purest Jade
(Chapter Three)
Supreme Chamber of
Cultivating Harmony
(Chapter Three)
(b)
Perfect Brightness Garden
Eternal Spring Garden
Perspective Paintings East of the Lake (Chapter Five)
Beautiful Women
(Chapter Six)
Qianlong Watching
Peacocks in their Pride
(Chapter Four)
Water
Land
Buildings
Portrait of Qianlong’s
Consort with Yongyan as a Child
(Chapter Three)
I.6 Original locations of all known extant scenic illusions or visual evidence for lost paintings originally in the Perfect Brightness and Eternal Spring Gardens. Diagrams by Barry Levely.
Palace of Heavenly Purity (Qianqinggong) on the Forbidden City’s central axis to this more protected space closer to the Grand Council (Junjichu), akin to a privy council. Yongzheng and Qianlong were therefore the first two Qing emperors to use the hall as the center of the emperor’s life in the Forbidden City. The image of Yongzheng giving Qianlong a branch of flowering plum, typically a symbol of spring and renewal, in this particular space therefore symbolized how Yongzheng transferred the authority to rule to Qianlong when Qianlong was in the springtime of his life, visually confirming him as Yongzheng’s successor.51 Without the significance of the architectural reference, the small version of Spring’s Peaceful Message seems to be simply a costume portrait of the two Manchu emperors in Han scholars’ robes, just another of many with a tenuous relationship to reality. Had the scenic illusion been removed from the Hall of Mental Cultivation, it too might be interpreted that way, but remaining in place there has preserved both its effects and its meaning in the original context. Furthermore, Spring’s Peaceful Message is one of only two extant known scenic illusions depicting Qianlong. Since images of the imperial visage were historically as venerated as the emperor himself and could not be destroyed,
it is likely that few scenic illusions depicted him; otherwise more would have survived.52 Surviving in situ therefore adds another layer of significance to this rare scenic illusion portrait.
Crossing Pictorial Boundaries
The sheer volume, meticulous detail, and general incorporation of Western techniques in High Qing court painting as a whole encourage the viewer to treat them as realistic and representationally accurate, making it easy to succumb to Qianlong’s pictorial presentation of himself and his reign. Depicted more often than any emperor before him, he adjusted his presentation relative to the various roles he played for contemporary audiences and how he wanted posterity to perceive him, rendering his pictorial identity both discursively and historically mobile.53 Such control over his perceived image is epitomized by the fact that in 1795, after reigning for sixty years, he formally abdicated the throne in favor of his son Jiaqing (r. 1796–1820) as a filial gesture to avoid surpassing his grandfather Kangxi’s sixty-one-year reign. But he retained control of the empire until his death in 1799, not even vacating the imperial residence in the Hall of Mental Cultivation. Yet the depictions of Qianlong’s many accomplishments in paintings do not always measure up against the truth of events during his reign, which laid the foundation for the “destructive nexus of social disintegration and economic decline that would lay waste to so much of Chinese society in the 1800s.”54 Qianlong may not have left the empire better off than when he inherited it, but court painting produced under his patronage suggests otherwise.
Where this carefully constructed image fractures, revealing something of the real man who was emperor, is in scenic illusion paintings. Scenic illusions and their specific messages differ markedly from the rhetoric and propaganda of the emperor’s carefully controlled presentation in the majority of Qing court paintings. Originally installed in some of Qianlong’s most private spaces, scenic illusions offer his personal (and even secret) thoughts on the major issues of his reign, including empire, ethnicity, identity, longevity, and legacy. Although perhaps not all of the original scenic illusions were as intensely symbolic as those that have survived, and some level of imperial rhetoric is always involved, these works are extant largely because of their personal connection to this emperor who had them installed in spaces that were important particularly to him. The specific circumstances of each painting’s production link them to different moments in the imperial biography, a connection strengthened by the relationship of each work to places deeply meaningful to Qianlong, such as his retirement compound and personal art connoisseurship studio, which were preserved even centuries after his death.
Beyond the personal connection to Qianlong in scenic illusions, institutional,