Collaborative Painting by Chinese and Western Artists at the Qing Court: Evidence from the Huoji dang

Abstract

As the principal art-production unit under the Workshops of the Imperial Household Department, the Qing dynasty Ruyi guan operated through highly rationalized and institutionalized procedures. Within this system, collaborative paintings, in which several artists divided the work on a single surface, were not merely an efficient mode of collective production. They were also political acts governed by strict bureaucratic control. Drawing on the Huoji dang, the administrative records of the imperial workshops, this article examines collaborative painting as a distinctive form of court art production. It argues that Qing emperors, especially the Qianlong emperor, used standardized procedures of assignment, draft review, approval, revision, and completion to select and integrate the skills of Chinese court painters and European missionary artists.