MetalCeramicsEnamelJadeOrganicPicturesBibliography
Imperial appliqué picture
146

A fine and rare Imperial appliqué picture

Qianlong period
29 x 37 3/8 in, 73.6 x 94.9 cm

showing numerous figures at various pursuits on terraces beside lakeside pavilions, all in a mountainous landscape with a bridge in the foreground, and with various trees and flowers, deer, sheep and a horse. The scene is minutely detailed in ivory, much of which is painted, coral, mother-of-pearl and gilt-metal on a painted paper ground. In its original Chinese
gilt-wood frame.
An album of twelve such pictures, entitled Pleasures of the Months for Court Ladies, was commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 1741 and is discussed by Weng and Yang in The Palace Museum Peking: Treasures of the Forbidden City (p. 283). The authors note that the album was executed in 100 days by five famous Cantonese carvers: Chen Zuzhang, Gu Pengnian, Chang Cun, Xiao Hanzhen and Chen Guanquan after original drawings by the Court painter Chen Mei. For a similar pair of silk screens mounted in zitan, see La Cité interdite: Vie publique et privée des empereurs de Chine 1644-1911, nos. 113-4, pp. 245-7; and for a table screen in The Palace Museum, Beijing, using the same mediums, see Choi, “Painting and Porcelain: Design Sources for Hong Bowls”, figs. 7a and b, and also fig. 6, an ivory picture of the city of Canton in the Peabody Essex Museum. Such scenes were more often executed in bone and feather, for examples, see Setterwall, Fogelmark and Gyllensvärd, The Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm, pp. 200-1.