Page 244 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

some of whom were responsible and far-seeing men. This hide-
bound refusal to recognise the inevitability of change eventually
brought about the collapse of the dynasty. But for the first century
and a half, China basked in the sunlight of her restored power and
prosperity, which was due largely to the work of the second em-
peror, K'ang-hsi (Shcng-tsu), who ruled from 1662 to 1722. It was
he who pacified all China and restored her to a paramount position
in Asia.
During the seventeenth century and the fust half of the eigh-
teenth, China was treated with enormous respect by the European
powers; admiration for her principles of government filled the
writers of the Enlightenment, while her arts gave birth to two
waves of chinoiserie, the first late in the seventeenth century, the
second at the height of the eighteenth. During this period, indeed,
China had far more influence upon the thought, art, and material
life of Europe than had Europe on China. Western influence was
confined to court, where, ever since the arrival of the Jesuit mis-
sionary Matteo Ricci in 160 1, the emperors and their immediate
entourage of officials and savants had been in close touch with
Western art and learning. But apart from Adam Schall's reform of
the calendar and Verbiest's ordnance factory, the arts and tech-
niques brought by theJesuits were treated by all but a tiny minor-
ity of scholars as mere curiosities. This was not entirely true of
painting, however: although the literati generally ignored Euro-
pean art, some academicians at court made strenuous efforts to
master Western shading and perspective in the interest of greater
realism.
The most characteristic intellectual achievement of the Ch'ing
Dynasty was, like that of the Ming, not creative so much as syn-
thetic and analytical; indeed, in the production of such works as
the huge anthology Ku-chin t'u-shu chi-ch'eng (1729) and the Ssu-
k'u ch'uan-shu, an encyclopaedia in 36,000 volumes begun in 1773
and completed nine years later, the Ch'ing scholars far surpassed
their Ming forebears in sheer industry. Characteristically, also,
the latter work was compiled not primarily in the interest of
scholarship but as a means of seeking out all books whose contents
might reflect upon the legitimacy of the Manchu Dynasty. Never-
theless this enormous compilation contains many otherwise un-
known texts and the fruits of much scholarly research. For this
was an antiquarian age when, as never before, men looked back
into the past, burrowing into the classics, dabbling in archaeol-
ogy, forming huge collections of books and manuscripts, paint-
ings, porcelain, and archaic bronzes. Most famous among the col-
lectors of paintings were Liang Ch'ing-piao, to whom we have
already referred, and the salt magnate An I-chou (c. 1683-c.
1740), many ofwhose treasures were later acquired by the Ch'ien-
lung emperor. Ch'ien-lung, who had succeeded the able but ruth-
less Yung-cheng in 1736, possessed a prodigious enthusiasm for
works of art, and in his hands the imperial collection grew to a size
and importance it had not seen since the days of Hui-tsung. 1 His
taste, however, was not always equal to his enthusiasm, and he
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