painting would have corresponded to doorways and windows in the original space. If there had been a doorway or windows in the west wall of the Hall of Mental Cultivation, for example, they would have been incorporated into the composition of Spring’s Peaceful Message. Instead, the moon gate in the painting creates a fictive aperture in the wall, which is otherwise entirely covered by the painting.
Successfully integrating a scenic illusion visually into a space also required that the real architectural frame surrounding the painting be incorporated into the painting itself in order to correspond to the viewer’s expectation of the surroundings. Indeed, it is this continuation of the surrounding architectural frames (what has been described as architectural colonization of an illusionistic painting’s borders) that suggests the works are emphatically not paintings.40 In the scenic illusion of Spring’s Peaceful Message, the porcelain-tiled floor (an unusual element that differed markedly from the standard dark stone flooring of the Forbidden City) and latticed windows were repeated in the work, as was the latticework at the top and upper corners of the painting that mimicked the latticework surrounding the real doorway into the room in figure I.1. Other paintings still in situ also demonstrate the consistent practice of painting architectural elements continued from or very similar to those in the real room into the extreme foreground of the paintings, serving to increase the illusion by linking the painting to that particular space and site.
Beyond the visual contiguity of painting and architecture, scenic illusions had to present subjects that would not have been out of place in their surroundings. Furthermore, because scenic illusions derived their subjects and meanings from how and why Qianlong used the sites where they were installed, the subject also had to carry a deeper meaning related to the significance of the building to him personally. The growing study of interiors within art and architectural history has demonstrated that occupant and interior each helps create the other, particularly in the case of monarchs and their palaces.41 Most individual, named spaces in the Qing imperial palaces and garden residences carried a particular meaning, even spaces as small as a single room in a larger building, such as the Three Rarities Studio within the Hall of Mental Cultivation. The name of a site often alluded to this meaning, conveying something of the function of the space as well as a network of historical and literary allusions personally significant to the emperor. For example, Qianlong named the Three Rarities Studio after three pieces of early calligraphy by the most famous calligraphers in Chinese history, which he succeeded in acquiring for the imperial collection. Objects such as these are still part of the former Qing imperial collection, and are also seen in the small Spring’s Peaceful Message, as connoisseurship of antiques in a garden was equally appropriate for literati and for emperors. Although the same antiques are not repeated in the scenic illusion, the fact that the studio was just to the left of the painting implied that real objects from the studio could be brought out into the fictive garden for connoisseurship. To understand a scenic illusion, therefore, one must not only understand the building in which it was installed, but also how Qianlong engaged with it as the primary intended occupant in his own private space.42
Wish-Fulfilling Studio archives reveal that in addition to numerous locations within the Forbidden City, scenic illusions were originally installed across the full range of imperial sites in and around Beijing, including but not limited to imperial palaces, residences, gardens, and parks. The Central and South Seas (Zhongnanhai) park located just west of the Forbidden City may still hold scenic illusions in situ,43 but it is now the Chinese government center, with no access whatsoever granted to scholars. The Perfect Brightness Garden complex (Yuanmingyuan) is located in the northwest corner of Beijing, six miles from the Forbidden City, and was originally both a garden retreat and a fully functional alternate government center for a dynasty that disliked spending time in the Forbidden City. Its name now refers to the complex of multiple neighboring gardens in this area of Beijing, including the Eternal Spring Garden (Changchunyuan), although these were conceived and constructed separately in the eighteenth century. Today both the Perfect Brightness Garden and the Eternal Spring Garden lie in ruins, but originally they may have contained the greatest number of scenic illusions. Nearby, paintings were also installed at the southern-style Carefree Spring Garden (Changchunyuan), where Qianlong’s mother (the empress dowager Xiaosheng [1693–1777]) lived, and at the Fragrant Mountain (Xiangshan) retreat west of the Perfect Brightness Garden.44 “Travel palaces” (xinggong) housed the emperor on his many imperial tours throughout the empire, and scenic illusions were installed there as well. At the Mount Pan travel palace (Panshan) outside Beijing, for example, a complete program of wall and ceiling paintings was installed at the Attracting Victory Pavilion (Jingshengxuan).45 Scenic illusions were even installed 150 miles outside Beijing at the imperial summer residence at Chengde, known as the Mountain Retreat for Escaping Summer Heat (Bishu Shanzhuang).46 These few locations are only the most important and best known of the sites with scenic illusions, which could be found essentially anywhere Qianlong spent time, and especially in places that were important to him.
For various reasons, the vast majority of scenic illusions have been lost, along with their original locations. The skills necessary to create and repair these works largely died out with the core group of Qianlong’s Chinese and European Wish-Fulfilling Studio artists.47 Many works were likely destroyed in the political upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Any scenic illusions still mounted in the Perfect Brightness Garden in 1860 would have been looted, ruined, or lost in the conflagration set by marauding foreign troops during the Second Opium War (1856–60). Although archives demonstrate that the Forbidden City’s Established Happiness Palace (Jianfugong) also had scenic illusions, the fires that eunuchs set there in 1923 to hide evidence that they were stealing from the imperial collection would have destroyed any paintings still in situ. Today, most of the paintings in situ are in Qianlong’s Forbidden City retirement compound, the Tranquil Longevity Palace (Ningshougong). The delicate condition of all the extant paintings demonstrates their extreme vulnerability to damage from having been installed permanently or for long periods of time, suffering from exposure to the
drastic changes of Beijing’s harsh climate. Despite these near-complete losses, mapping even the few surviving scenic illusions and visual records of lost works illustrates the diversity of spaces in which they could be found (figures I.5a–b, I.6).
Regardless of their current location, scenic illusions must be considered relative to their original place and spatial context, which often can be reconstructed only textually.48 While the primary documentary source for scenic illusion production is the Wish- Fulfilling Studio archives, Qianlong’s poems are the key source for interpreting their meaning. Few of the approximately forty-three thousand poems credited to Qianlong are notable literary achievements, but they demonstrate how these sites themselves sometimes provoked the commissions, and more importantly reveal the personal meanings that he drew from the various sites and their paintings. Although Qianlong almost certainly projected a constructed self-image in poetry, his poems written for and about the architectural sites that contained scenic illusions, as well as those inscribed on or written about other paintings related to them, are consistently more personal than average. In addition, scenic illusions were sometimes commissioned to imitate others produced earlier