The Study of Vision: Cross-Cultural Illusionistic Painting in Eighteenth-Century China

FAIN: FT-58704-11

Kristina Renee Kleutghen
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

Under the patronage of China’s powerful Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-1795), Chinese and European Jesuit court artists used Western illusionistic painting techniques to create life-size "scenic illusion paintings." These monumental works were seamlessly integrated into various imperial spaces, creating a seemingly permeable threshold between reality and illusion. The techniques of European trompe-l’oeil illusionism were found at the very heart of the Chinese empire, but the origins of scenic illusions at the Chinese court remain murky. In "The Study of Vision: Cross-Cultural Illusionistic Painting in Eighteenth-Century China,"I seek the missing link in their history with the first full translation of the Chinese text The Study of Vision (1729 and 1735). Written by court retainer Nian Xiyao (1671-1738), this illustrated manual articulated the principles and effects of scenic illusion painting well before its heyday. [Edited by Staff]

Media Coverage

Review of Imperial Illusions (Review)
Author(s): Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens
Publication: Journal of Asian Studies
Date: 5/1/2016
URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=10352879&fulltextType=BR&fileId=S0021911816000127

Review of Imperial Illusions (Review)
Author(s): Michele Matteini
Publication: caa.reviews
Date: 12/3/2015
URL: http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/2643

Associated Products

Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces (Book)
Title: Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces
Author: Kristina Kleutghen
Abstract: In the Forbidden City and other palaces around Beijing, Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) surrounded himself with monumental paintings of architecture, gardens, people, and faraway places. The best artists of the imperial painting academy, including a number of European missionary painters, used Western perspectival illusionism to transform walls and ceilings with visually striking images that were also deeply meaningful to Qianlong. These unprecedented works not only offer new insights into late imperial China's most influential emperor, but also reflect one way in which Chinese art integrated and domesticated foreign ideas. In Imperial Illusions, Kristina Kleutghen examines all known surviving examples of the Qing court phenomenon of "scenic illusion paintings" (tongjinghua), which today remain inaccessible inside the Forbidden City. Produced at the height of early modern cultural exchange between China and Europe, these works have received little scholarly attention. Richly illustrated, Imperial Illusions offers the first comprehensive investigation of the aesthetic, cultural, perceptual, and political importance of these illusionistic paintings essential to Qianlong's world.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/910935529
Primary URL Description: Worldcat link to book
Secondary URL: http://arthistorypi.org/books/imperial-illusions
Secondary URL Description: Art History Publication Initiative website with additional media
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978029599410
Copy sent to NEH?: No

From Science to Art: The Evolution of Linear Perspective in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Art (Book Section)
Title: From Science to Art: The Evolution of Linear Perspective in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Art
Author: Kristina Kleutghen
Editor: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu; Ning Ding; Lidy Jane Chu
Abstract: Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West examines how the contact between China and Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed the arts on both sides of the East- West divide. The essays in the volume reveal the extent to which images, artifacts, and natural specimens were traded and copied, and how these materials inflected both cultures’ visions of novelty and pleasure, battle and power, and ways of seeing and representing. Artists and craftspeople on both continents borrowed and adapted forms, techniques, and modes of representation, producing deliberate, meaningful, and complex new creations. By considering this reciprocity from both Eastern and Western perspectives, Qing Encounters offers a new and nuanced understanding of this critical period.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/904905006
Primary URL Description: Worldcat Link to book
Secondary URL: http://www.academia.edu/18143310/From_Science_to_Art_The_Evolution_of_Linear_Perspective_in_Eighteenth-Century_Chinese_Art
Secondary URL Description: Link to PDF download of chapter
Publisher: Getty Research Institute
Book Title: Qing encounters: artistic exchanges between China and the West
ISBN: 978160606457

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