Publications: Strangers in a Strange Land (y1968-225)

Beginning with a love for flower-and-bird painting, the Qianlong emperor learned to paint at age nineteen. Here, after a summer stroll through a garden after rain, the emperor is inspired to paint and compose poems for eight fragrant summer flowers. He paints with deliberate yet tremulous lines and graded wash over a faint charcoal sketch, adopting a style associated with the amateurism of literati painting. Like the emperor, many high officials, such as Zou Yigui (1686-1772) and Jiang Tingxi (1669-1732), also painted bird and flower themes. That they were painted by ministers and emperors cannot be overlooked. The painting of flowers recreates the act of gardening and may allude to a passage in the Analects: when Confucius was asked how to garden, he deferred to a humble gardener. Like a gardener correctly naming and ordering plants in a garden, a virtuous ruler similarly had to recognize that each individual has his own role and place. The painting of flowers, fruits, or vegetables, therefore, may have been meant to represent an act of humility and virtue. (Excerpt from "Strangers in a Strange Land from the Qing Palaces to the Princeton University Art Museum" by Cary Y. Liu)