The Yuanmingyuan was a paradise on earth for the Qing emperors: beautiful, extravagant, utterly private, and totally their creation—not an inheritance from previous dynasties. This imperial vision was captured in a set of 40 paintings commissioned by the Qianlong emperor in 1744. Plundered by the Anglo-French forces that destroyed the Yuanmingyuan at the conclusion of the 2nd Opium War in 1860, the “40 scenes” remain the only visual evidence through which we can imagine the Chinese sections of the “Garden of Perfect Brightness.” They are reproduced in full here in Part 1.
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