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images that cannot be reduced to romanticized images of the Orient produced in the

context of the West’s Industrial Revolution. In fact, the Qing court Taoye tu paintings

were equally as unreal in their depiction of depopulated groves and spacious artisan

workshops. They adopted Western perspective in drawing technique in some scenes

while other leaves exhibited shifting perspective drawing techniques that were exemplary

of landscape painting methods. Furthermore, the existence of a Jiaqing imperial

inscription on the cover page of a hitherto under-studied album of paintings with fourteen

leaves of Jingdezhen porcelain manufacturing paintings called Jingdezhen taotuji౻ᅃᕄ

ௗྡাdrawn during the Jiaqing reign period (1796-1820) reveals that the production

process in visual form was significant to the Qianlong emperor and continued for the

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Jiaqing emperor. Jiaqing’s inscription, “qi guan փᝈ,” (amazing view) captures the

emperor’s amazement and further indicates the broader phenomenon of Qing emperors’

visual investment in Jingdezhen production processes as systematic and rationalized

technology. A comparison of reproductions of the Jingdezhen taotuji ౻ᅃᕄௗྡা

album with the painting set of the Qianlong commissioned Taoye tu, the woodblock

prints of Jingdezhen Tao lu by the local sketch artist Zheng Xiu, and export paintings of

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries point to their commonalities as well as differences.

All fall under the rubric of the Taoye theme and showcase the sequentially-viewed format.

The particularities of this early nineteenth century album further exemplifies the

argument of recent studies on visual culture that pictures and visual images are not

transparent mediums of a fixed meaning. This album consists altogether of fourteen

leaves, the first being a textual preface whose author is unknown. The second leaf in the