Bibliography

Attiret, Jean Denis (1702–1768). A particular account of the Emperor of China's gardens near Pekin: in a letter from F. Attiret, a French missionary, now employ'd by that emperor to paint the apartments in those gardens, to his friend at Paris. Translated from the French by Sir Harry Beaumont (London: printed for R. Dodsley; and sold by M. Cooper, 1752).

Barrow, John. Travels in China, containing Descriptions, Observations, & Comparisons made and collected in the course of a short residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-ming-yuen and on the subsequent journey from Pekin to Canton, first American ed. (Philadelphia: Wm. McLaughlin, 1805 [also London: 1806]).

Bell, John. A Journey from St Petersburg to Pekin, 1719—22. Edited and with introduction by J. L. Stevenson (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966).

Chambers, Sir William. A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (Dublin: printed for W. Wilson, 1773).

China: The Three Emperors, 1662–1795, edited by Evelyn S. Rawski and Jessica Rawson (London: Royal Academy of the Arts, 2005).

Chiu, Che Bing. Yuanming Yuan: le Jardin de la Clarté Parfaite (Bescançon: Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2000).

Danby, Hope. The Garden of Perfect Brightness: The History of the Yuan Ming Yuan and of the Emperors Who Lived There (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950).

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 2nd edition (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, edited by Nancy Berliner (New Haven and London: Peabody Essex Museum in association with Yale University Press, 2010).

The Forbidden City [De Verboden Stad]: Court Culture of the Chinese Emperors, 1644-1911. (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1990).

Forêt, Philippe. Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).

Juanqinzhai: In the Qianlong Garden,The Forbidden City, Beijing, edited by Nancy Berliner (London: Scala Publishers, 2008).

Kangxi, Empereur de Chine, 1662–1722: La Cité interdite à Versailles, Musée national du chateau de Versailles, 27 janvier-9 mai 2004. Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 2004.

Kutcher, Norman A. “Unspoken Collusions: The Empowerment of Yuanming Yuan Eunuchs in the Qianlong Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 70.2 (Dec. 2010), pp. 449-495.

Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717), Hearn, Maxwell J., ed. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008).

Li, Lillian M., Dray-Novey, Alison J., and Haili Kong. Beijing: From Imperial Capital to Olympic City (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Malone, Carroll Brown. History of the Summer Palaces under the Ch’ing Dynasty (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1934).

Naquin, Susan. “Giuseppe Castiglione/Lang Shining: A Review Essay.” T’oung Pao 95 (2009), pp. 393-412.

Pirazzoli-T’Serstevens, Michèle. Giuseppe Castiglione, 1688-1766: Peintre et architecte à la cour de Chine (Paris: Thalia, 2007).

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Qianlong yupin Yuanmingyuan 乾隆御品圓明園 (Qianlong’s Imperial treasure Yuanmingyuan), ed. Guo Daiheng 郭黛姮 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 2007). “Yupin”

Sirén, Osvald. Gardens of China (New York: The Ronald Press, 1949).

Staunton, Sir George. An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 2 vols. and a folio atlas of plates (London 1797–98).

Strassberg, Richard E., “War and Peace: Four Intercultural Landscapes,” in China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century, edited by Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2007), pp. 88-137.

Tangdai 唐岱 and Shen Yuan 沈源. Yuanmingyuan sishi jingtu yong 圓明園四十景圖咏 (40 Scenes of Yuanmingyuan) (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongyuan chubanshe, 2007). “40 Scenes”

Wong, Young-tsu. A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001).

Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits, edited by Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 2001).

Yuanshi de huihuang: Yuanmingyuan jianzhu yuanlin yanjiu yu baohu 远逝的辉煌:圆明园建筑园林研究与保护?Brilliance of the distant past: Research and protection of Yuanmingyuan’s architecture and gardens), edited by Guo Daiheng 郭黛姮 (Shanghai: Shanghai keji jishu chubanshe, 2009).

1. The iconography of this image is discussed in Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits, edited by Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 2001), pp. 120-21.

2. Forêt, Philippe. Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), p. 70. This painting and artist are discussed in China: The Three Emperors, 1662–1795, edited by Evelyn S. Rawski and Jessica Rawson (London: Royal Academy of the Arts, 2005), pp. 393-94.

3. Forêt, Color Plate 3, and pp. 49-53.

4. Bell, John. A Journey from St Petersburg to Pekin, 1719—22. Edited and with introduction by J. L. Stevenson (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1966). Bell, pp. 132-137, describes the reception of the Russian ambassador and entourage by the Kangxi emperor at Garden of Joyful Spring (Changchunyuan) in 1720. They were required to perform the kowtow (“Great pains were taken to avoid this piece of homage, but without success.” p. 134), but otherwise, Bell was impressed with the quiet and ordinariness of the event. “By these means every thing goes on with great regularity; but at the same time with wonderful quickness. In short, the characteristic of the court of Pekin is order and decency, rather than grandeur and magnificence.” (p. 135) Bell remarked on the entertainments, including music, dancing, wrestling matches, and fireworks displays, to which they were invited. He found the emperor was most cordial and seemed more nimble than his sons.

Bell also records the Kangxi emperor’s greetings to Peter the Great, including cautioning him to guard against overexertion in the cold weather. Peter the Great (1672-1725) died shortly after Kangxi (1654–1722), but was considerably younger. Also in Malone, Carroll Brown. History of the Summer Palaces under the Ch’ing Dynasty (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1934), pp. 37-42.

5. Wong, Young-tsu. A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Garden Yuanming Yuan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), pp. 51-52.

6. According to Attiret, Qianlong returned to the Forbidden City only two to three months of the year. Attiret’s years in China coincided with the Qianlong’s major constructions at Yuanmingyuan, which may have kept the emperor there more of the year. Attiret, Jean Denis (1702–1768). A particular account of the Emperor of China's gardens near Pekin: in a letter from F. Attiret, a French missionary, now employ'd by that emperor to paint the apartments in those gardens, to his friend at Paris. Translated from the French by Sir Harry Beaumont (London: printed for R. Dodsley; and sold by M. Cooper, 1752).

Dates of residence are found from Chinese sources reproduced in Yuanshi de huihuang: Yuanmingyuan jianzhu yuanlin yanjiu yu baohu, edited by Guo Daiheng (Shanghai: Shanghai keji jishu chubanshe, 2009), pp. 70-74.

7. Attiret, p. 47

8. Kutcher, Norman A. “Unspoken Collusions: The Empowerment of Yuanming Yuan Eunuchs in the Qianlong Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 70.2 (Dec. 2010), pp. 449-495.

9. Strassberg, Richard E., “War and Peace: Four Intercultural Landscapes,” in China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century, edited by Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, 2007), p. 106

10. Tangdai 唐岱 and Shen Yuan 沈源. Yuanmingyuan sishi jingtu yong 圓明園四十景圖咏 (40 Scenes of Yuanmingyuan) (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongyuan chubanshe, 2007), preface. This volume reproduces the original set. I thank John Finlay (Paris) for sharing with me his extensive knowledge of the Forty Scenes album.

11. Chiu, Che Bing. Yuanming Yuan: le Jardin de la Clarté Parfaite (Bescançon: Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2000), pp. 229-230. The translations of scene titles and understanding of their meaning in this unit are adapted from this source, as well as from Malone and Wong. Alan Berkowitz (Swarthmore College) helped with the translation of the poetry of this scene.

12. Malone, p. 77, and Wong, p. 28

13. Chiu, p. 235

14. The Qianlong emperor did not make the first of his six southern tours until 1751, seven years after the completion of the 40 Scenes album. So in a literal sense, he could not actually have been influenced by seeing the south. Rather he was inspired by what he already knew about it through poetry and painting, as well his grandfather’s tours.

15. Wong, p. 35

16. Wong, pp. 36-37. Malone, pp. 83-88, has detailed description together with photographs of archaeological remains of the Ancestral Shrine.

17. Chiu, p. 264

18. Attiret 1982, 16-17, cited by Wong, pp. 43-46

19. Described by Attiret, pp. 26-31.

20. Malone, pp. 94-96.

21. Attiret, p. 5

22. Attiret, pp. 36-40.

23. Chambers, Sir William. A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (Dublin: printed for W. Wilson, 1773), pp. 11-12. An excellent overview of Chinese influence on European gardening is found in Strassberg, pp. 121-132.

24. The eight large tribute gifts left at Yuanmingyuan included a planetarium, clocks, barometers, and Wedgewood porcelain as well as model warships and guns. Wong, pp. 84-85.

25. Cited in Malone, p. 76.

26. Quoted in Barrow, John. Travels in China, containing Descriptions, Observations, & Comparisons made and collected in the course of a short residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-ming-yuen and on the subsequent journey from Pekin to Canton, first American ed. (Philadelphia: Wm. McLaughlin, 1805 [also London: 1806] ), p. 87.

27. Reported in Staunton, Sir George. An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 2 vols. and a folio atlas of plates (London 1797–98), pp. 121-22. But John Barrow’s own account, op. cit., was not so favorable.

28. Barrow, pp. 73, 83-84; Malone, pp. 164-166; and Wong, p. 84.

CREDITS

“The Garden of Perfect Brightness l: The Yuanmingyuan as Imperial Paradise (1700–1860)” was developed by Visualizing Cultures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and presented on MIT OpenCourseWare.

John W. Dower
Project Director
Emeritus Professor of History

Shigeru Miyagawa
Project Director
Professor of Linguistics
Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture

Ellen Sebring
Creative Director

Scott Shunk
Program Director

Andrew Burstein
Media Designer

Lillian M. Li
Author, essay
Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor of History
Swarthmore College

SUPPORT

MIT Visualizing Cultures received generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, the Getty Foundation, Japan Foundation's Council for Global Partnership, National Endowment for the Humanities, and MIT's d'Arbeloff Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education and MIT Microsoft-funded iCampus project.