Page 43 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

set of sino-European palace buildings with accompanying gardens. This group of buildings,

oriented north-south, was completed in 1751. In the same year, Qianlong made his first
southern tour of inspection in emulation of Kangxi, during which he was housed in splendid
mansions in the great cities of the south. Deeply marked by the experience, which he was to
repeat several times, he initiated in 1751 a new garden to the south-east of the Yuanming
yuan, in which copies of famous gardens of the south were constructed. This, the Garden of

Everlasting Spring, replaced the Yuanming yuan as Qianlong's summer seat of government.
At the same time, the success of the first buildings in European style led to the addition of a
more ambitious extension to the east, built during the years from 1756 to 1759. Finally,

probably in 1768, after the Jesuits made a gift of six Beauvais tapestries based on designs by
Boucher, a last sino-European building was added to house them (548). (The entire complex,
in fact, served to house Qianlong's European and sino-European objects). The Observatory of
the Distant Waters stood behind the Great Fountain that marked the center of the east-west
extension, and which Qianlong contemplated from his rococo throne. The European Palaces,

as the complex was known, also had their Chinese elements, such as the red of the plaster-
coated walls, the white marble used for such elements as stairways, and the bright colors of
the glazed tile rooves. They were a theatrical affair, an illusionistic exercise in which illusion

itself provided one of the pleasures: on its eastern side, the Hill of Perspective offered a view
over a lake toward a part architectural, part mural painted vision of a country town, the
Perspective Painting East of the Lake.
The result of all these expansions was that the European Palaces integrated the
Yuanming yuan with Kangxi's original Garden of Glorious Spring to the east. The latter

garden now adjoined the Garden of Everlasting Spring to the south, which itself stretched
almost as far to the south-west as another summer retreat built by Kangxi; this in turn came
very close on its western side to the place where Qianlong had excavated a lake to create

Clear Ripple Garden. The European-style buildings in the Yuanming yuan were therefore
only one part of the larger project of a vast complex of summer palaces near the capital.
Following Yongzheng precedent, Qianlong split his time between the Forbidden City
and the summer palaces, in his case leaving Beijing in the third month and returning in the
eighth. Consequently, the Palace Workshops continued to maintain operations in both places

as they had during the previous reign. This was also the case for the Painting Academy,
which came into being under Qianlong on the basis of Prince Yi's more informal
organization of painters under Yongzheng. Finally, certain privileged bureaux/workshops

existed in both the Forbidden City and the Yuanming yuan where painters and outstanding
artisans could be found together, and which were easily accessible to the Emperor. These