that objects pushed toward the eye,34 perspectival illusionistic paintings in eighteenth-century China resulted in the same “anthropologically constant interaction between sight and touch” as they did in Europe.35 The temptation to touch deeply engages the scenic illusion viewer with the world of the painting, and transmutes the merely visual into the real and tactile. Given the “emotional valence of touch,”36 the most powerful temptations are naturally human: the figures in scenic illusions, which sometimes
directly engage the viewer, provide the nexus between the viewer’s tangible body and the intangible sense of sight, personally drawing the viewer forward into the depicted world. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century comments, as well as the literary record, indicate that touch was often responsible for a viewer’s recognition of what he saw as a painting: viewers did not understand a seemingly permeable space to be a wall-mounted illusionistic painting until they touched it, or even accidentally bumped into it. The same visual depth cues in the painting that drew viewers forward to touch the objects depicted, however, also moved them inexorably toward the discovery of the painting’s materiality and the collapse of the illusion.
Touch was always only a means to an end, however. Whether by intellectual recognition or haptic connection, scenic illusions were always discovered as paintings and were enjoyed as such, even though all their features initially conspired to conceal that identity. Their deceptions were extended by the perfect viewing position prescribed by both linear perspective and the surrounding architecture, which directed the viewer into place. But the illusion always disintegrated in the end, thereby giving rise to the moment of recognition necessary to the disjunction between first seeing the scene and then understanding that it was a painting. The goal of illusionistic painting in general is not permanent deception (which is impossible), but instead astonishment or amazement at one’s own misperception.37 Illusionistic paintings “lose their raison d’être” without the viewer’s willing complicity in balancing his or her perception of real space with the acknowledgment of a mere flat painted surface.38 That Qianlong repeatedly commissioned and engaged with views that he knew to be only paintings demonstrates just how enjoyable he found both visual illusions and these paintings in particular.
The Necessity of Space and Place
As paintings intended to decorate (rather than visually replace) their supporting walls, ordinary affixed hangings were typically much smaller than the walls and were displayed continuously for long periods of time. Sometimes they were removed and replaced with other paintings, moved to other locations to decorate those spaces, or remounted as scrolls, as the small version of Spring’s Peaceful Message was some time after being removed from the Hall of Mental Cultivation.39 Using a monumental wall-encompassing version of the affixed hanging format for scenic illusions theoretically implies that one could move them from one wall to another, as long as the dimensions were the same. However, the paintings were tailored precisely to the size and form of the structure, down to its distinctive decorative features. Removing or dissociating scenic illusions from their original locations therefore destroys their original effects. Nevertheless, their physical features still suggest something of the original settings, even if those have been lost. Composed and fitted to cover the entire area of the supporting surface, untrimmed paintings suggest the original size of that surface, and the placement of apertures in an unmounted
painting would have corresponded to doorways and windows in the original space. If there had been a doorway or windows in the west wall of the Hall of Mental Cultivation, for example, they would have been incorporated into the composition of Spring’s Peaceful Message. Instead, the moon gate in the painting creates a fictive aperture in the wall, which is otherwise entirely covered by the painting.
Successfully integrating a scenic illusion visually into a space also required that the real architectural frame surrounding the painting be incorporated into the painting itself in order to correspond to the viewer’s expectation of the surroundings. Indeed, it is this continuation of the surrounding architectural frames (what has been described as architectural colonization of an illusionistic painting’s borders) that suggests the works are emphatically not paintings.40 In the scenic illusion of Spring’s Peaceful Message, the porcelain-tiled floor (an unusual element that differed markedly from the standard dark stone flooring of the Forbidden City) and latticed windows were repeated in the work, as was the latticework at the top and upper corners of the painting that mimicked the latticework surrounding the real doorway into the room in figure I.1. Other paintings still in situ also demonstrate the consistent practice of painting architectural elements continued from or very similar to those in the real room into the extreme foreground of the paintings, serving to increase the illusion by linking the painting to that particular space and site.
Beyond the visual contiguity of painting and architecture, scenic illusions had to present subjects that would not have been out of place in their surroundings. Furthermore, because scenic illusions derived their subjects and meanings from how and why Qianlong used the sites where they were installed, the subject also had to carry a deeper meaning related to the significance of the building to him personally. The growing study of interiors within art and architectural history has demonstrated that occupant and interior each helps create the other, particularly in the case of monarchs and their palaces.41 Most individual, named spaces in the Qing imperial palaces and garden residences carried a particular meaning, even spaces as small as a single room in a larger building, such as the Three Rarities Studio within the Hall of Mental Cultivation. The name of a site often alluded to this meaning, conveying something of the function of the space as well as a network of historical and literary allusions personally significant to the emperor. For example, Qianlong named the Three Rarities Studio after three pieces of early calligraphy by the most famous calligraphers in Chinese history, which he succeeded in acquiring for the imperial collection. Objects such as these are still part of the former Qing imperial collection, and are also seen in the small Spring’s Peaceful Message, as connoisseurship of antiques in a garden was equally appropriate for literati and for emperors. Although the same antiques are not repeated in the scenic illusion, the fact that the studio was just to the left of the painting implied that real objects from the studio could be brought out into the fictive garden for connoisseurship. To understand a scenic illusion, therefore, one must not only understand the building in which it was installed, but also how Qianlong engaged with it as the primary intended occupant in his own private space.42
Wish-Fulfilling Studio archives reveal that in addition to numerous locations within the Forbidden City, scenic illusions were originally installed across the full range of imperial sites in and around Beijing, including but not limited to imperial palaces, residences, gardens, and parks. The Central and South Seas (Zhongnanhai) park located just west of the Forbidden City may still hold scenic illusions in situ,43 but it is now the Chinese government center, with no access whatsoever granted to scholars. The Perfect Brightness Garden complex (Yuanmingyuan) is located in the northwest corner of Beijing, six miles from the Forbidden City, and was originally both a garden retreat and a fully functional alternate government center for a dynasty that disliked spending time in the Forbidden City. Its name now refers to the complex of multiple neighboring gardens in this area of Beijing, including the Eternal Spring Garden (Changchunyuan), although these were conceived and constructed separately in the eighteenth century. Today both the Perfect Brightness Garden and the Eternal Spring Garden lie in ruins, but originally they may have contained the greatest number of scenic illusions. Nearby, paintings were also installed at the southern-style Carefree Spring Garden (Changchunyuan), where Qianlong’s mother (the empress dowager Xiaosheng [1693–1777]) lived, and at the Fragrant Mountain (Xiangshan) retreat west of the Perfect Brightness Garden.44 “Travel palaces” (xinggong) housed
