Qing1

Costume Portraits of the Qing Emperors Yongzheng and Qianlong

The Qing emperors Kangxi (r. 1661-1722), Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735), and Qianlong (r. 1735-1796) were important ruler personalities who not only (re-)shaped the political and social structure of the state during the last dynasty but also had a dominant influence on cultural affairs. All three acted as patrons of the arts and enlarged the imperial collection of cultural treasures.

Emperor Kangxi commissioned handscrolls to be painted which documented his inspection tours to the south.

The Yongzheng emperor is known to have copied Chinese styles of calligraphy, studied Chinese literature extensively, collected art works and compiled catalogues of literary collections.

His son, Qianlong, was even more obsessed with collecting and commissioning works of art than his grandfather and his father. He wrote 42.000 poems (classified by critics as of mediocre quality) and saw himself in line with the [Chinese] Confucian tradition of mastership in poetry and connoisseurship in evaluating pieces of art.

Of all three emperors portraits were painted. But while Kangxi was painted in the traditional formal style sitting in official attire with a stern face looking straight forward at the observer, Yongzheng and Qianlong are presented in a variety of informal or, in the case of Yongzheng, even foreign costumes.

We see Yongzheng as a Persian warrior, a Turkish prince, a Daoist magician, a fisherman, a Tibetan monk, a Mongol nobleman, and as a Chinese scholar observing nature or occupied with playing music or writing calligraphy in a natural setting.

These ‘masquerade paintings’ followed a trend popular at European courts: masked parties at the court of Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) as well at other European courts in the 17^th century when the aristocracy was fascinated with exotic costumes and habits. While paintings of European masquerade participants showed the persons without masks in their exotic costumes, the Manchu emperors’ masquerade paintings have to be seen in a political context. According to the art historian Wu Hung (University of Chicago) Yongzheng was “fascinated with exotic clothes and expressed his imperial desire to rule the world” in these paintings while Qianlong’s portraits served to conceal his political motivations and actions from his subjects. The portraits were based on masterpieces from the imperial collection and adapted to become the emperor’s portraits. Wu Hung explains this method to create a new tradition of portraits with “the emperor’s uncontrollable desire to dominate any existing tradition, whether it be Confucian, Daoist, or Buddhist”. Qianlong collected with obsession, he inscribed paintings with his personal calligraphy, had his poems carved on ancient jade objects, and finally “embodied” paintings as bodhisattva Manjushri, the bodhisattva of endless wisdom and enlightenment. He thus represented worldly power as a mundane ruler and at the same time divine might as a deity of the spiritual realm.

The association of the name Manchuria with the Sanskrit name of the bodhisattva Manjushri has been created early in Manchu rule in documents exchanged between the emperor and the Tibetan clergy. Qianlong’s wish to be seen as the reincarnation of Manjushri may not have been an exclusively political tactic as some historians believe. The emperor had converted to Tibetan Buddhism in 1745 and is said to have studied the sutras daily. The official dress code of the Qing came to include a string of court beads reminding of Buddhist ‘rosaries’ worn as a necklace. Possibly the court beads were used to popularize Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhist emblems like bells and thunderbolts (vajra), symbols of compassion and wisdom, were ritual objects that were produced for the imperial art collection and can be seen today in the Palace Museum.

For more information and color photographs of the different costume portraits of the emperors see the article by

WU Hung, “Emperor’s Masquerade – ‘Costume Portraits’ of Yongzheng and Qianlong”, Orientations July/August 1995, 25-41. (UO Art Library)