Page 45 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

are those of his Jesuit followers, Brother Jean Denis Attiret (1702-68) and Father Ignaz

Sichelbarth (1708-80). In 1765, for example, Qianlong turned to Castiglione and his
colleagues for the first instalment of a series of sixteen compositions recording the victories
of the Manchu armies in Xinjiang between 1755 and 1759. He then commissioned
copperplate engravings of the series from France, through the successive intermediaries of
Guangzhou merchants and the Compagnie française des Indes (554-55). The project was

eventually undertaken under French royal auspices by Cochin, with superb results. Other
representational rhetorics, however, could be equally convincing. Tibetan Lamaist art, long
familiar to the peoples of the steppes, was revived in this period as the expression of

imperially sponsored Buddhism, both for diplomatic reasons and as a conscious echo of
Yuan and early Ming practice. Its rigorous iconometrics were no less absolute and precise
than the "beautiful rules" of European painting. When the same requirements were made of
the Chinese pictorial tradition, on the other hand, the results were deeply destructive. To
suppress the traces of an individual mind in the pictorial craft was to negate the very purpose

of painting. The results, as seen in the art of Ding Guanpeng or any number of artists in the
Academy, are eerily reflective of their world -- a reality without real foundation.
While the court art machine continued to function into the first two decades of the

nineteenth century, it was already visibly slowing down as early as the 1770s. After around
1775, Qianlong initiated relatively few construction projects, and he also seems to have lost
interest in the Painting Academy. It was only the production of decorative arts that continued
to hold his attention after that date. Following Qianlong's death in 1799, Jiaqing initiated a
policy of austerity without compensating innovations, and his reign saw court art become

more stereotyped and routine.
Cultural Networks and Microcultures. Despite the universalist ambitions of the
Qianlong court, eighteenth century China was a tapestry of diverse cultures which escaped

court control. One of the richest of these was to be found in Yangzhou. The welcome offered
to Qianlong during his southern tours by the Huizhou salt merchants of Yangzhou, his major
commercial partners in the south-east, far outstripped in luxury the already lavish
arrangements for Kangxi. The vast pageant of the imperial entourage was matched by the
temporary transformation of the city into a vast pleasure site, appropriate to the rituals of

pleasure-viewing and gift-giving in both directions. Indeed, it was through their respective
displays of wealth through luxury that the merchants and the court symbolically played out
their commercial rivalry. The Yangzhou merchant elite continued to redevelop their city. It

was during the Qianlong period (1765) that the semi-public park in the north-western suburbs
around the "Slender West Lake" reached its full complement of twenty-four "views". It is