Paintings and Maps of the Qing Dynasty, 1644-1911: A Brief Inquiry into Court Practices and Private Commissions
Claudia Brown will present the first lecture in the Traditions and the History of Art Lecture Series
Date/Time
Monday, November 5, 2012 - Monday, November 5, 2012
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Location
Event Notes:
Free and open to the public and handicap accessible.
Qing court artists studied and re-created masterworks in the topographical genre from the Song dynasty (960-1279). The legacy of these traditional paintings, which had continued to develop in the Yuan and the Ming periods, could be both useful and poetic, and it informed the well-known series of Southern Inspection Tour scrolls commissioned first by the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) and later by Qianlong (r. 1736-1795). Kangxi also recognized the strategic utility of Western cartography and employed Europeans to survey and map the empire, and his sucessors carried on the practice. However, traditional Chinese mapmaking remained a standard administrative tool to the end of Imperial rule. In panoramas that foreshadow Google Street View, Qing painters recorded a wealth of information while maintaining a link to the classical aesthetic.
