Beauties in Qing Court Art：On Jiao Bingzhen's Album of Classical Ladies*

JIN Yingcun Shanghai University

Abstract: As a court painter in Qing dynasty under the Manchu's authority, Jiao Bingzhen created the Album of Classical Ladies, with its highly decorative style, mainly to serve as a visual pleasure for the Qing's court.Yet, besides the basic quality of female being an object for the male's beholding as a visual enjoyment, which is common throughout Chinese court arts, this album also reflects crossing-cultural elements including the introduction of western painting techniques, the tradition of paintings of beautiful women generated from the southern literati class, together with the rich, bright surface preferred by the Manchu aesthetics.This essay intends to explore the causes of the combinations as well as the transition of meanings in painting of beautiful women from a cultural level to the court's establishment, thus, to better identify the aesthetic and political functions of this artwork in specific context.

Keywords: Qing court； Manchu aesthetics； western techniques； painting of the feminine； literati culture； political authority

The year 1644 marks a new period of China, when the Manchu took over Chinese land from Ming loyalty and established Qing.The Manchu rulers have set up a unique pictorial language that could be seen in their splendid court art.When reflecting court art in Chinese history, the Qing court art has reached a peak in the development of the highly decorative, flamboyant style, especially in the reigns of Kangxi 康熙(1662-1722), Yongzheng 雍正 (1723-1735) and Qianlong 乾隆 (1735-1796).By absorbing western painting techniques brought by the European Jesuits, including Chinese cultural marks and also retaining Manchu's tradition at the same time, the Qing rulers made their court art highly recognizable with the distinct style of crossingcultural elements, which forms a new cultural identity in Chinese history.

Among the various artists who served the Qing court and contributed to its prosperity, Jiao Bingzhen 焦秉贞 (1650-after 1726) was one of the earliest painters who studied western science and adopted western painting style in his artworks.Born in Jining, Shandong province, Jiao began his court career by serving in the Directorate of Astronomy, where he came in contact with the famous scientist Ferdinand Verbiest (Nan Huairen南怀仁, 1623-1688) who was recorded to have been working in the same department.The assistant work in the technology-leading bureau provided him with an excellent opportunity to learn science and technology from the western missionaries.It was probably this experience that helped him to become a pioneer among the fine masters in western perspective and drawing.Due to Kangxi's personal interest in western science and technology, Jiao Bingzhen was promoted as a scholar official after Kangxi's praise on his accurate calculation in creating an illusionistic space in painting.His skillfulness in the use of western painting methods made him a prominent court painter who became qualified to paint important court works such as Gengzhi Tu 《耕织图》 (Farming and Sericulture), through which he gained high comments of his contemporary that “his work gives the effect of distance, the objects decrease in size from near to far with perfect accuracy ［...］ because he represented them in a western manner.”

I

Shinü tuce 《仕女图册》 (Album of Classical Ladies) (Fig.set.1) is one of Jiao's most famous works.It consists of twelve leaves, each showing a group of beautiful classical ladies in different activities.They are painted in elaborated colors, smooth lines with delicate texture in the approach to surface.Every piece of leaves represents a certain scene such as beauties playing chess in a palace pavilion, watching dancing under the willow trees, looking outside by the banana leaves and so on.At the same time, they also form a coherent unity in which all figures, landscapes and architecture settings share essential similarities.The group of classical ladies, almost without any distinction, was depicted in an extremely slim body shape dressed in classical costumes probably made of silk which reveal their socially upper class status, while the plain facial expression echoes to the strained quality to standardize a beautiful woman.The most striking handling in this album is the treatment of space.All the architecture settings were painted in strong sense of 3-dimentional effect, going along neatly with the composition of the group of women.Every leaf proves an extraordinary use of linear method which was called xianfa 线法 in Chinese term, referring to the linear perspective in western concept,through which Jiao demonstrated his capability of showing a single vanishing point in a stable space.With the accurate proportion in the recession of space and the believable details applied to every step, tree leaf, pillow and even tiny ornament, the album conveys a great sense of naturalism and volume which successfully transcended previous works of similar subject using immature technique of perspective.Apart from the borrowing of western techniques, it also employs a heritage of court painting style of Ming dynasty with the highly decorative quality carrying the royal temperament.For example, in Qiu Ying's 仇英 (1498-1552) Hangong Chunxiao Tu 《汉宫春晓图》(Spring Morning in Han Palace) (Fig.2), we could find the same attempt to display beauties' lives in a luxurious palace.However, unlike Jiao's album, the court scene was depicted in an unfixed viewpoint and fragmented proportion, while the decorative qualities more reflected the style of Tang and Song periods, which made Spring Morning in Han Palace failed to achieve a unity between visual language and literal assumption compared with Jiao's album.This contrasting use of perspective reflects the advancement of Jiao Bingzhen's work.

To distinct Jiao's absorption of western technique and the traditional court painting style, another significant evidence could be found in Hu Jing's 胡敬 (1769-1845) Guochao Yuanhua Lu《国朝院画录》 (Record on Painters in the Painting Academy of the Qing), in which the author indicated that Jiao Bingzhen's “skillfulness in painting figures, landscapes, architectures is referred from the west methods.”Regarding Jiao's landscape，the author further argued that through scientific examination of space, the painter shows an accuracy of measuring distance in the recession of mountains, which differs from simply “holding brushes” to paint.

However, if we make a close observation to this album, we would find that the approach to realism derived from western techniques is not fully applied.In other words, there seems to be a selected execution of techniques such as perspective, chiaroscuro, proportional examination, etc.According to Shan Guoqiang, most Chinese painters in Qing court absorbed western methods in their own way and translated them into a new language.This is also true in Jiao's Album of Classical Ladies.Despite the perspective used to create a 3-dimensional illusion to the architecture and landscape settings, the perfect naturalism seems not to be equally applied to the individual figures, not only because they share the same appearance, but the distorted body proportion and assimilated faces carry a strong message of a lack of individuality and realism.Apart from the economical use of shading on women's faces, there is seldom evidence showing foreign reference in the depiction of human figures.One may argue that Jiao's mastery of western technique was still limited to portray a realistic human figure, since he was in an initial stage of combining western elements into court art in Kangxi's reign.It could be partially true that Jiao's skill remained elementary to depict the observatory nature of human.However, when it comes to the subject of classical ladies, there might be immanent cause from traditional Chinese culture which finally led to this unsatisfaction.Before further discussing this album, it would be necessary to briefly chase the origin of this subject matter.

II

Painting of classical ladies has a long tradition in the development of Chinese history which could probably date back to Gu Kaizhi 顾恺之 (348-409) in the Six Dynasties.However, it was not until Ming and Qing dynasties did this type of paintings reach a new systematic recognition which was categorized as meiren hua 美人画 (painting of beautiful women).With the development of urban citizen culture and rise of literatures about secret love or romance between beauties and scholars, there appeared an illustrated prints attached to some of the famous novels and dramas such as Hong Lou Meng《红楼梦》(Dream of the Red Chamber), Xi Xiang Ji《西厢记》(Story of the West Chamber).The illustrations of the novels usually provide a visual narrative corresponding to the stories being told.Many illustrators have their own preference to depict the images of female figures with their inner qualities, usually setting them in beautiful gardens, elaborated architectures, magic landscapes and so on.One of the most famous illustrations was Gai Qi's 改琦 (1773-1828) prints to Dream of the Red Chamber (Fig.3).In this series of illustration, Gai Qi depicts jinling shier chai 金陵十二钗 (The Twelve Beauties) in Dream of the Red Chamber which later on developed a wider comprehension of both a group of beauties and a beautiful individual.In Gai Qi's version, there is not only the appearance of the beauties, but also emphasis on the settings and activities of each female in terms of their different characteristics.One thing remarkable of this illustration is that the painter seems to be very interested in the surrounding of these beautiful ladies as well as what kind of items they are equipped with.All these features contribute to concept of a feminine space which, according to Wu Hong 巫鸿, is “a spatial entity—an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color fragrance, light, and sound as well as selected human occupants and their activity,” summing up “female qualities while providing a specific environment.”The more this feminine space is depicted realistic and detailed, the more private the picture would seem to be when hung in a man's room, supposedly the owner of the real space is eager to enter into some imaginary space.As Wu Hung notices, this type of privacy leads to the intimacy, through which the viewers (usually males) not only play a role as the patron of the painting, but also involve into some kind of imaginary events with women.Among all the components associated to a feminine space, architectural settings are considered to be prominent and effective objects since they provide the space with a dynamic/temporal structure and points of view.It therefore explains the reason why many Yuan dramatists and Ming-Qing novelists such as Wang Shifu 王实甫 (1260-1336) and Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1715-1763) prefer to site a feminine architecture (beautiful gardens, palace, pavilion, etc.) or legendary landscape (flying willow trees, flowing water, mirror lake, etc.) before moving to the real description of a certain beauty.

Another feature in the establishing of feminine spaces is that they are commonly depicted as highly isolated, which could also be observed in Jiao's Album of Classical Ladies.Although there is no lack of open-air scenes in this album, all the leisure activities seem to be taking place in a noninterrupted paradise.In other words, despite the realism applied to build convincing spaces, they are staged as a non-secular world.Anne Birrell defines this world as a secret love space, where all the daily servants, children, friends, family, and above all, husbands or man lovers remain absent.Keeping the women in chamber in a symbolically isolated state, the painter therefore puts them in a luxurious “prison,” leaving them in loneliness to meet the idealized expectations for love in the romance poetry in ancient China.From the depiction of Chinese love poetry as well as meiren 美人 paintings to capture lives of classical ladies, “women in chamber” had become a stereotype indicating privacy, intimacy and isolation in the hierarchy of the state-family structure dominated by male readers and viewers in Ming and Qing Dynasties.As a matter of fact, from late Ming dynasty, domestic women were given much more freedom to travel in communities, so as their rights to engage in public intellectual activities through creative actions such as writing, painting and group discussion.Furthermore, Dorothy Ko used to divide women in Ming and Qing society into three categories: domestic, socialized and public, all of which are able to enjoy different levels of public engagement.Above all, there is one type of woman besides those three who began to grow high reputation in the literati circle: the celebrated courtesan, or famous prostitute.They are the very group who actually started to make close relationship with intellectuals to both emotional and artistic extends, while remaining most weak and dependent to male in social structure towards women.From this perspective, the real women in chamber are to be less consumed than the courtesans, providing a misleading chance in artistic creation that all women in Ming and Qing dynasties are Jiao Bingzhen privately occupied, intimately linked to love affairs and isolated from the social matters in which they indeed participated.

The meiren painting also originated from the legendary literati tradition in southern cities such as Hangzhou, Suzhou, “where a courtesan culture flourished and where they lived.”When the concept of meiren or beauties came to the literati level, it eventually developed as a certain stereotype which was frequently implied in the lack of individuality in most meiren paintings.For example, a Qing literati named Xu Zhen 徐震 (d.1711) exemplified a standardized type of beautiful woman in his Meiren Pu《美人谱》(Manual of Beautiful Women), categorizing them into physical appearance, dressing styles, skills, activities, dwelling and so on.Under this particular trend, the images of meiren became idealized with a negligence of individuality.Star-bright eyes, literary-leaf eyebrows, cloud-like hair, weak bodies that even cannot stand the wind, slim shapes with great fluidity and many other features became a formula in various meiren paintings while “［l］iterary conventions for describing beautiful women offer endless-repeated similarities.”

Now when we come back to Jiao Bingzhen'classical ladies, it would not be confusing in his simplified depiction of the beauty images.All the body shapes, external appearance and activities of classical ladies strictly follow the stereotype which was set upon the literati expectation of a beautiful woman.Since they were considered as a group of idealized images, little need of representation of physical truth was actually required.Instead, the western handling to make a figure more approachable and realistic would only interrupt the ideal of classical ladies in Chinese visual language and taste.On the other hand, what Jiao Bingzhen had transcended from other meiren painters was his proper use of western linear method in the construction of a perfect feminine space.The realism applied on the architectural settings has successfully achieved a visual fulfillment of the whole atmosphere of meiren from the literal level.According to Wu Hung, Jiao Bingzhen had “reinterpreted the traditional representation of feminine space” by making space not only a symbolic sphere but a visual believability, which forms a perfect unity instead of simply the sum of individual features.The idealized figures, together with the accurate background settings resembling the Land of Illusion in Dream of the Red Chamber,achieve a perfect imagery scene according to the concept of meiren painting.In a word, by using western skills and simultaneously preserving Chinese essence, Jiao made a best combination of these two languages and concreted them as an advanced kind of meiren painting.

III

Despite the literati origins, Album of Classical Ladies also embodies another iconography when this genre was taken by the Manchu imperial court.The different meanings of meiren painting in court and among the literati circulation made the same subject matter serve in very different purposes.

Generally speaking, most of the meiren paintings in either court art or non-court art fundamentally functioned as a visual consumption for males as the dominant sex.As James Cahill points out, in the best of the Qing dynasty meiren paintings, there is a common feature of meeting the male viewers' willingness to enter into the private feminine space where beautiful women carry out daily routines, while most of which are related to sexual implications due to the privacy and intimacy in viewing.The paintings actually transformed an imaginary world into a visually “real world” where beautiful women act as accessible objects of sexual desire.

However, apart from the sensual qualities, there remains a hidden cultural implication among the literati in the South.According to Yang Dong and Xu Ze, there are mainly four expectations in describing beautiful women in Ming and Qing dynasties.They are “feelings,” “talents,” “disease” and “weakness.”The first two features could be quite comprehensible, for that “feelings,” usually refer to love and romance, are basically a permanent theme in literature about women in literature, while “talents,” according to James Cahill, are usually an invisible assumption together with “feelings.”However, “disease” and “weakness” could be seen in a growing appreciation of pictorial women who have fragile bodies, weensy waists, melancholy expressions and dusky faces, leading to the flourishing of morbid beauty.There is a common recognition in the studies that the fragility of female bodies in traditional Chinese painting are to suggest male's privileges and domination on the opposite sex.Still, this distorted aesthetic perception might lead to another interpretation when political coercion became reinforced during Ming and Qing, and the voices of the literati class became more and more marginalized.A large group of unrecognized intellectuals, especially those from the South eventually began to explore a new way to express their depression through painting of beautiful women who look extremely weak.For instance, a Qing literati namely Shi Zhenlin史震林 (1692-1778) used to write a sentence in his book to indicate the similar circumstance of unemployed scholars and untended beauties:

There are two situations worthy crying one's heart out.One is good works not being appreciated by others.The other is forlorn beauties not being recognized.

An earlier example showing the tendency of using grieved beautiful woman as a metaphor of unappreciated scholars is Tang Yin's 唐寅 (1470-1523) Qiufeng Wanshan Tu《秋风纨扇图》(Beauty with a Silk Fan Standing in Autumnal Wind) (Fig.4), through which he expresses his agonizing heart by painting a sorrowful lady standing lonely in an abstract landscape.The inscribed poem on the left corner further explains the metaphorical comparison of this lady to an unfortunate scholar:

When the autumn comes, a silk fan is to be taken out from the collection,

Beauty, what makes you in such sorrowful mood?

Please, make a close look to the world,

Who is not careless about the desolated ones and escaping from them?

As a matter of fact, the relation between the literati's obsession with feelings for beautiful women and his career setbacks could be traced back to earlier dynasties and became a legacy in Qing dynasty.According to Feng Menglong 冯梦龙(1574-1646) who wrote Qingshi 《情史》(The History of Love)，qing 情 (feelings to women) is a symbol of a type of educated sentiment embodied in a person with rich emotion, which, according to the writer, should be treasured and preserved.On the one hand, this tendency flourished as jiahua 佳话 (good stories) among the literati circulation, on the other hand, it could be reflexively understood as the situations of scholars as Tang Yin, who were not appreciated by the court authority under the hierarchy of Confucian ideology, finding them another path to mark their reputation in art with the empathy to depict a weak beauty.

Until Qing dynasty, the famous painter Gai Qi, Fei Danxu 费丹旭 (1801-1850), Yu Ji 余集 (1738-1823) might have pushed this trend to extremes.Simei Tu 《四美图》 (The Four Beauties) (Fig.5), painted by Gai Qi, shows four extremely slim ladies standing in separated frames, each with an inscriptive poem, adding mood to the painting.Although they are recognized as beautiful women in the conceptual system, none of them look joyful.Being extremely weak and fragile, their eyes are starring at the mortal world as if seeing through the emptiness of life.Are they simply being sentimental about love? Or are these complicated feelings reflecting a scholar who failed at his career? According to Yang Dong's interpretation, by shaping beauties into morbid images, both physically and mentally, the marginalized scholars are searching for a certain type of psychological balance between the political failure and their gender priority.

IV

As one can imagine, this tendency on iconography would not be tolerated in court art now dominated by the Manchu.Having abandoned the literati implication, the Album of Classical Ladies only preserves the decorative and erotic quality of meiren painting.As a matter of fact, the existence of meiren painting in Qing court has already been an unexpected phenomenon.In order to control the intellectuals' minds and maintain Manchu's authority, Qing rulers have set up strict regulations for the contents of court painters' work.According to the introduction to Qing court art in Beijing Palace Museum, there are mainly four types of painting which were allowed to be executed in court art: painting of record, painting of history, painting for decoration and painting for religion.Under this circumstance, Jiao Bingzhen's album was actually a particular case with a group of women dressing in traditional Chinese costumes.It has huge possibility to be an imaginary scene since Emperor Kangxi had established a restriction that no court lady was allowed to dress in Chinese costume and any woman who dressed in Chinese costume was forbidden to enter the court.Ironically, the painting of Chinese classical ladies were actually patronized by the emperor and this genre was later repeated over time by court artists like Ding Guanpeng 丁观鹏 (1736-1795) and Jin Tingbiao 金廷标 (d.1767), which indicates the emperors' permission of something that were formally banned by themselves.The reasons for this strange phenomenon might be analyzed in two aspects.

Firstly, according to Wu Hung's proposition, the meiren painting in court art also works as a private appreciation to meet the emperors' interests in the “Chinese-ness” and exoticism of beautiful women outside their world.In other words, by exposing the secret scene of beautiful women in various activities, dressing in Chinese costumes, surrounded by dream-like landscape which marks a traditional scenery of the south, the paintings reach a certain level of entertainment in the consumption of fantasy and exoticism.A best example could be emperor Yongzheng's Shier Meiren Tu《十二美人图》(Collection of Twelve Beauties) (Fig.9), which used to be placed in his living room before his engagement of throne.And after his succession of the reign, the twelve leaves were secretly hidden to avoid disputation.From the album of ladies dressed in traditional han costumes, we could find that the color is strongly elaborated, the images meticulously embellished, and the settings strictly examined, all of which suggest a departure from the literati meiren painting tradition and the integration with other decorative court arts such as bird-flower paintings, animal paintings and landscape paintings.The only difference of this type of painting from decorative art is that they indicate a secret physical pleasure probably associated with love, romance and sex.If we compare Album of Classical Ladies with formal portrait of court women, the function it serves might be even clearer.Huixian Huangguifei Xiang 慧贤皇贵妃像 (Portrait of Royal Concubine Huixian) (Fig.6) is a formal portrait by Giuseppe Castiglione 郎世宁 (1688-1766) showing what a Manchu woman was supposed to be.Although the figure was depicted of high individuality and dressed in delicate Manchu costumes and adornments, it is of few qualities about enjoyment of female beauty but a demonstration of Manchu's authority.While the Album of Classical Ladies, on the other hand, provides a good quality of leisure entertainment.

Secondly, the album may also have a political implication.According to Wu Hung, this approach is described as a Manchu's political action to insure the heritage of Chinese culture and art.As is mentioned before, Album of Classical Ladies signifies various cultural marks of Chinese tradition, particularly the culture of southern China, which could be associated to Manchu's political prestige to the South.Historical records show that both Kangxi and Qianlong were quite concerned about the development of the south and they both paid several visits to southern China.Cities like Hangzhou, Suzhou in Manchu's mind not only site a fantasy land but also symbolize special districts with high economic prosperity and cultural superiority where the rulers should pay special attention.Kangxi was even made his Southern tours a set of formal paintings as a visual record of this grand event in Wang Hui's 王翚 (1632-1717) Kangxi Nanxun Tu《康熙南巡图》(Emperor Kangxi's Southern Tour) (Fig.7).Apart from the recorded southern scenes for documentary use, there are also artworks showing the imaginary south.The screen with oil painting in the front entitled Tongyin Shinü Tu《桐荫仕女图》(Ladies under Wutong Tree) (Fig.8) could be a typical example.In this oil painting, the beautiful ladies again dressed in traditional Chinese costumes seem to be inviting the viewers looking through the pavilion gate to the wide landscape, which symbolizes an imaginary southern China.Jiao Bingzhen's classical ladies, by setting them in a very predominated southern atmosphere, might have large potential to share the similarity to Ladies under Wutong Trees, in which Emperor Kangxi used to set up “a symbolic connection between the central court and southern China.”

To summarize all the analyses above, Jiao Bingzhen's Album of Classical Ladies was a set of court art reflecting different cultures and tastes in a particular period of China.With the absorption of western technique and reference from Chinese urban culture as well as literati tradition, Album of Classical Ladies ultimately contributed in the establishment of Qing pictorial language which was dominated by Manchu pursuit in both political and artistic fields.Therefore, it is a significant crossing-cultural artwork in late imperial China.

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Fig.1: JIAO Bingzhen, Album of Classical Ladies, album leaves, ink and color on silk, National Palace Museum, Beijing.For reproduction, see NIE Chongzheng, Court Paintings of the Qing Dynasty of the Collection in the Palace Museum, plate 1.

Fig.2: QIU Ying, Spring Morning in Han Palace, section of a handscroll, ink and color on silk, Palace Museum Collection, Taipei.

Fig.3: GAI Qi, album of illustration to Dream of the Red Chamber, prints.

Fig.4: TANG Yin, Beauty with a Silk Fan Standing in the Autumnal Wind, ink on paper, Museum of Shanghai, Shanghai.

Fig.5: GAI Qi, The Four Beauties, ink and color on silk, Museum of Ningxia, Yinchuan.

Fig.6: Giuseppe Castiglione, Portrait of Royal Concubine Huixian, oil on paper, National Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig.7: WANG Hui, Emperor Kangxi's Southern Tour, color on silk, National Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig.8: Anonymous, Painted Screen, front: Ladies under Wutong Trees, Kangxi period, oil on canvas, National Palace Museum, Beijing.

Fig.9: Yongzheng, Collection of Twelve Beauties (selected pieces), Yongzheng period, Palace Museum, Beijing.