Xu Yang
Qing dynasty · Qing dynasty painting, Chinese court painting, Literati painting
The story
In 1751 the Qianlong Emperor made his first tour of southern China, and in Suzhou a local painter named Xu Yang presented him with pictures. They earned him a place among the court painters in Beijing. Two years later the emperor granted him the rank of juren, normally won by passing the provincial examinations, and in 1766 he became a secretary in the Grand Secretariat, the central imperial office.
His best-known work looks back at the city he had left. Prosperous Suzhou, finished in 1759 and now in the Liaoning Provincial Museum in Shenyang, is a handscroll about 12 metres long. Its inscription describes a journey from Mount Lingyan outside the city, past the walls and through the streets to Tiger Hill, and along the way it fits in more than 4,800 people, some 2,000 buildings and about 400 boats, with rows of shops and market stalls. The painting combines European linear perspective, familiar at the Qing court through Jesuit painters, with traditional Chinese ways of composing a long scroll.
In 1764 Xu Yang was chosen to paint the Southern Inspection Tour, a set of 12 large scrolls recording the emperor's journeys, and one of them is now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He was born in 1712, and the records show him still alive after 1777.
