Page 174 - A Re-examination of Late Qing Dynasty Porcelain, 1850-1920 THESIS

The objects that remained in the Forbidden City became the foundation for the

Palace Museum that opened in Beijing on October 10, 1925. 222 By analyzing Qianlong’s

catalogs, along with the lists Puyi created documenting his gift giving, the Palace

Museum was able to create the Catalogue of Books, Calligraphy, and Paintings from the

Palace Collection (故宮詩書畫目錄,Gugong yishi shuhua mulu). 223 It is clear that the

Palace Museum had a strong desire to reclaim the lost objects associated with the

imperial collection. This trend has led to the Palace Museum actively attempting to

purchase wares that can be traced back to the imperial collection. While the original

1926 catalog did not directly address the porcelain lost from the imperial collection, it is

evident that a great deal of porcelain comprising the imperial collection traveled. This

makes it critical to evaluate the holdings of outside collections to establish the styles

associated with porcelain of any era. In total, the Qing dynasty collected more than one

million art objects, with the majority of those being attributed to the collecting of the

Qianlong Emperor. This establishes that the Qianlong Emperor not only established

himself as the premier patron of his time but also as one that later rulers strove to

emulate, possibly attempting to collect objects similar to those Qianlong desired. 224

222 Scott, “The Chinese Imperial Collections,” 26. Many of the numbers provided for inventories
th
may fluctuate slightly, as the objects were moved numerous times during the 20 century. The
major movement of imperial objects occurred when wares were moved to Nanjing in 1931 due to
the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and in 1948 when objects were moved to Taiwan as a
result of tensions between the Nationalist Government and Communist armies. The move to
Taiwan would result in the formation of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
223 Chu-tsing Li, “Recent History of the Palace Collection,” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of
America 12 (1958): 61–75.
224 Chiang, “Redefining an Imperial Collection: Problems of Modern Impositions and
Interpretations,” 2.

135