To browse Academia. In the late seventeenth century the Beauvais workshop created a cycle of nine tapestries celebrating the life of the Emperor of China. While seemingly fanciful, many of the elements depicted are accurate and prove to be based on imagery found in contemporary books describing travel in the Far East. In a set of chinoiserie tapestries produced by the Beauvais manufactory was presented to the Qianlong emperor on behalf of the French administration.
Chinoiserie has conventionally been understood as a frivolous or superficial European response to China's material culture; viewed from this perspective, the tapestries would seem to be a most unsuitable gift for the emperor.
Yet Qianlong not only received the hangings, but he had a European-style palace built to house them. This article examines the circumstances surrounding the French offering, the Chinese priests who brought the gift from France to Beijing, and the meanings the tapestries could communicate in a diplomatic context marked not by official contact between the French and the Qing, but through an informal diplomacy negotiated through objects.
Seminar presentation 'Introduction to Chinese Culture', Current presentation discusses question of the Chinese culture and among others, painting, calligraphy and opera. Painting and calligraphy are of the same origin and are regarded as two treasured arts in China. They are both liked with free movement and distribution of lines in expression.
Together with music and chess, they formed the four skills for a learned scholar to pursue in ancient China. Chinese painting has a long history and excellent tradition. Through thousands of years, it has developed its own style, its own techniques, and a complete system of art which expresses the aesthetics of the nation. Chinese paintings are usually in the form of hanging pictures or of horizontal scrolls, in both cases they are normally kept rolled up.
