Page 285 - 2018 Hong Kong Important Chieese Art

A number of painted and woodblock-printed albums of various the Palace Museum. Paintings by the Court Artists of the Qing
editions is preserved amongst worldwide museum and private Court, Hong Kong, 1996, pp. 74-90.
collections. A Qianlong album of Imperially Commissioned
The Qianlong Emperor’s ultimate infatuation with these
Illustrations of Tilling and Weaving with Poems, comprises
agrarian imageries and their conceptual meaning is marked
imperial poems by all three Emperors, is recorded amongst
by his large-scale project in 1769 of commissioning forty-eight
the collections of the Dalian Library in Liaoning. Compare
stone slabs carved with scenes from the Gengzhi tu, prompted
also a book of woodblock prints of the 1696 Kangxi edition,
by his discovery of the Yuan-dynasty album painted by Cheng
with added colours by brush, in the British Museum, London
Qi (1279-1368) which closely followed Lou’s originals. The
(inv. no. 1949,0709,0.1). Two pages of which are illustrated in
steles were then erected in the Yuanmingyuan, many of which
Jessica Rawson, Chinese Jade: from the Neolithic to the Qing,
are now destroyed, but two scrolls depicting ink rubbings of
British Museum, London, 1995, pp. 407 and 409, figs 1 and 2.
the scenes are known. Extant ceramic and jade versions of the
Another 1696 edition of the book but without added colours by
Gengzhi tu produced in the Qianlong period are also preserved;
hand, and an album painted on silk depicting the same scenes,
see a porcelain version of this book, illustrated in Kangxi,
featuring Prince Yinchen (the later Yongzheng Emperor) as the
Yongzheng, Qianlong: Qing Porcelain from the Palace Museum
main farmer, are preserved in the Palace Museum, Beijing. The
Collection, Hong Kong, 1989, p. 418, pl. 100.
latter is illustrated in The Complete Collection of Treasures of

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