The Itineraries of Art: Topographies of Artistic Mobility in Europe and Asia 3770557956, 9783770557950

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Karin Gludovatz · Juliane Noth · Joachim Rees (Eds.) The Itineraries of Art

BERLINER SCHRIFTEN ZUR KUNST

herausgegeben vom

KUNSTHISTORISCHEN INSTITUT DER FREIEN UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN

2015

The Itineraries of Art Topographies of Artistic Mobility in Europe and Asia

Edited by Karin Gludovatz, Juliane Noth, Joachim Rees

Wilhelm Fink

Die Publikation dieses Bandes wurde durch die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft im Rahmen ihrer Förderung der Forschergruppe 1703 Transkulturelle Verhandlungsräume von Kunst. Komparatistische Perspektiven auf historische Kontexte und aktuelle Konstellationen ermöglicht. The German Research Foundation (DFG) enabled the publication of this volume with funds provided for Research Unit 1703 Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art: Comparative Perspectives on Historical Contexts and Current Constellations.

Cover illustration: Detail of a six-panel folding screen with arrival of foreigners in Japan, late 17th century, Nara, Tōshōdaiji (courtesy of Tokyo Broadcasting Cooperation)

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung, vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Vervielfältigung und Übertragung einzelner Textabschnitte, Zeichnungen oder Bilder durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Übertragung auf Papier, Transparente, Filme, Bänder, Platten und andere Medien, soweit es nicht §§ 53 und 54 UrhG ausdrücklich gestatten. © 2015 Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn (Wilhelm Fink GmbH & Co. Verlags-KG, Jühenplatz 1, D-33098 Paderborn) Internet: www.fink.de Einbandgestaltung: Evelyn Ziegler, München Printed in Germany Herstellung: Ferdinand Schöningh GmbH & Co. KG, Paderborn ISBN 978-3-7705-5795-0

Content Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     7 Juliane Noth / Joachim Rees Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     9 I.  ART HISTORIES OF THE ROUTE: TRANSCULTURAL APPROACHES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    33 Christian Kravagna When Routes Entered Culture: Histories and Politics of Transcultural Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   35 (Annexe: Martin Beck, Half modern, half something else) . . . . . . . . . . . .    48 Monica Juneja Tracking the Routes of Vision in Early Modern Eurasia . . . . . . . . . . . . .   57 Eugene Y. Wang Why Was There No Chinese Painting of Marco Polo? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    85 II. SYMBOLIC ITINERARIES AND TOPOGRAPHIES: FRAMING ROADS AND ROUTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   107 Elizabeth Kindall Geo-Narrative in Seventeenth-Century China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   109 Sophie Annette Kranen Historicity and the Route. Remarks on the Relations between Art and Anthropology in the Illustrations of the Travel Account of James Cook’s Third Expedition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   133 Julia Orell Itinerary and Painting Lineage: Ten Thousand Miles along the Yangzi River in Seventeenth-Century China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  153 Juliane Noth Seen from a Boat: Travel and Cultural History in Huang Binhong’s Landscape Paintings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  175

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III. CROSSROADS AS CONTACT ZONES: ARTEFACTS OF INTERACTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   201 Joachim Rees / Nora Usanov-Geissler Harbouring Expectations: The Littoral as Contact Zone in the Visual Arts of Japan and the Netherlands around 1600 . . . . . . . .   203 Evelyn Reitz Transcultural Ballast. Netherlandish Tiles as Vehicles of Exchange . . . . .  235 Ulrike Boskamp Suspected Prospects. Art, Topography, and Identity in the Portsmouth Area around 1800 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  259 IV. PLATES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   287 V. APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   313 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  315 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  319

Acknowledgements This book documents the results of the conference “The Itineraries of Art: Topographies of Artistic Mobility in Europe and Asia, 1500–1900”, held from 23 to 25 May 2013 at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst Berlin. This symposium, in which scholars from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States participated, was the second annual conference of the research unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art.” Established in 2011, this research unit funded by the German Research Foundation studies artistic objects and practices in a comparative perspective as factors and indicators of cultural transformation and interweaving. Here, colleagues with specialisations in the art history of Africa, the Americas, East Asia, and Europe work closely together to explore artistic processes of exchange beyond the standard limits of periods and regions. The second annual conference of the research unit was jointly organised by the project area “Transgressive Itineraries and Transcultural Aesthetics of Artistic Exchange” directed by Karin Gludovatz and Joachim Rees, and Juliane Noth’s associated research project “Landscape, Canon, and Intermediality in Chinese Painting of the 1930s and 1940s.” The conference and this book resulted from teamwork in which numerous people participated and which enjoyed the support of various institutions. First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to the German Research Foundation. Their continuing financial support allowed us to organise the three-day symposium and made the publication of the conference papers possible. Furthermore, we owe thanks to the Museum für Asiatische Kunst for their hospitality, a visible expression of the close cooperation between the research unit and the Dahlem museums as part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. For their friendly welcome we would like to cordially thank Klaas Ruitenbeek and Alexander Hofmann. Neither the conference nor this volume could have come about without the participation of the invited speakers. In addition to the contributors to this volume, we are obliged to Yu-chih Lai, Michael North, Melanie Trede, and Jessica Stewart for the insights into their research and their contributions to the discussion. The organisation of the conference and work on this volume were supported by members of the research unit and the Kunsthistorisches Institut: as the academic coordinator of the group, Franziska Lesák kept everything under control with great dedication and her usual care, assisted by Karine Damman in administrative matters. The affiliated student assistants also made a key contribution to the smooth running of the conference and the editing of the volume in various phases. Thanks to Astrid Klein, Friederike Kröbel, Freya Nagelsmann, Insa Verbeck, Yang Piaopiao, and Philipp Zobel for their dedicated support. In assembling the illustrations, Hubert Graml, photographer at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, helped us with his usual efficiency. We are grateful to our editor Angela Roberts for her competent and patient preparation of the contributions for the English publication. Despite a tight sched-

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ule, Brian Currid took on the translation of the introduction, and we thank him for the careful completion of this task. Thanks not least to the Kunsthistorisches Institut at the Freie Universität for including this volume in their series Berliner Schriften zur Kunst and to Andreas Knop, who helped prepare the book for publication on the part of Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Finally, we would like to express our deep gratitude to the authors with whom we were able to explore the itineraries of art between Europe and Asia. They shared inspiring insights into their research. Last but not least, they contributed significantly to the smooth completion of this volume. Berlin, November 2014 Karin Gludovatz, Juliane Noth, Joachim Rees

Juliane Noth / Joachim Rees

Introduction At the start of his book Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, Timothy Brook reports of the consequences of an unintentional interruption of his travels. During a bicycle tour of the Netherlands—part of a trip across Europe that Brook undertook during the early 1970s, travelling hobo style—the student was run off the road by a truck during rainy weather. A local resident took in the bicyclist. This welcome was an important reason why the tourist then took the city closer into his sights, where he was so amicably welcomed that it seemed to the traveller that his host had made a present of the city itself: “She gave me Delft.”1 In Brook’s book, Delft serves as a topographic beginning for an approach to a web of relations whose origins the author sites in the seventeenth century: the emergence of the “global world” whose defining characteristic is in that its stories can begin anywhere and then develop worldwide dimensions. For this reason, Brook, a historian of China, can begin his contribution to global history in the Dutch city of Delft, or more precisely, with an examination of several paintings by Jan Vermeer, whose painterly work reflects the link of his hometown to global trade, and precisely because the painter scarcely never left Delft, whereas conversely none of his paintings remain today in the place of their creation. That the author introduces his inquiries with a story of his own personal history of mobility is thus more than just an anecdotal entrée; instead it refers to the thread that brings together the events, settings, objects, paintings, ideas, and agents in Brook’s book: the structure of routes and road connections, whose significance for historical knowledge was repeatedly emphasised by Fernand Braudel: “Plus encore … s’impose à moi l’importance de ces liaisons routières. Elles sont l’infra-structure de toute histoire cohérente.”2 Historical, textual, image, and material cultures provide access to these liaisons routières in their own respective ways and bestow striking insights into processes of interweaving in particular when mobility, routes, and transfer do not seem to be of relevance at all, for example, the large felt hats often depicted in mid-seventeenth century paintings, as in the case of Vermeer. This kind of head covering provided Brook with his title because it can be conceived as a materialised liaison routière on its own accord, one that stretched from the forests and lakes of Eastern Canada to the furrier workshops of European cities. While beaver pelts hunted by Native Americans since the early seventeenth century were acquired in ever larger amounts by European traders, this led on the other side of the Atlantic to the use of these pelts to create high-quality felt hats, which, underlain with certain sociocultural codes, were integrated into repertoires of self-representation and visual idioms. But that is not enough to grasp the liaisons routières of Vermeer’s hat in their full extent:

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Brook shows how the conflict-ridden penetration of the European powers into the area of the North American Great Lakes was often motivated by the search for a navigable passageway linking Atlantic and Pacific to open a trade route in the Northern Hemisphere between Europe and Asia, or more specifically, China. The sudden increasing numbers of European ventures on land and sea ever since the fifteenth century reveal themselves on closer inspection to be searches for routes to the trading centres of East and South Asia, “shortcuts” that were faster and less prone to losses.3 Braudel’s appraisal that the route links between local networks and trans-continental ocean passages create linkages that define a period that explanatory models in historical studies need to account for, develops a different urgency if we transfer this from the realm of historical research to the field of cultural studies. James Clifford explored this horizon of questions in his 1997 collection of essays Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, and with the background of the ethnologist and cultural anthropologist sketches the methodological premises of possible answers. Here too, the scene of arrival serves as the narrative entry into a world where all apparent signs of remoteness are always tied into actively used liaisons routières. Clifford borrowed this scene from the autobiographical narrative of the writer and social anthropologist Amitav Ghosh, published in 1986. This story deals with an ethnologist who, soon after the beginning of his field research in a village in the Nile Delta, discovers that the lifeworld of a large part of the male population had been shaped by manifold experiences of mobility—for generations.4 For Clifford, this semi-fictional scene has parable-like outlines: it spotlights that mobility and sedentariness on the mere descriptive level were always vague criteria of cultural difference and at the end of the twentieth century have become entirely untenable. The broad reception that Clifford’s book enjoyed is due among other things to the fact that he pointed to a paradox in the cultural coding of the sedentary and the mobile that has shaped the European tradition: genealogically speaking, the Latin-Western concept of “culture” is inscribed with a preference for the sedentary, locally anchored way of life, one that is interrupted, disturbed, complemented, or enriched by sporadic changes of location. “Dwelling was understood to be the local ground of collective life, travel a supplement, roots always precede routes.”5 At the same time, a strategic understanding of travel was already able to form against this backdrop in the social order of pre-modern Europe, which valorised temporary mobility as the accumulation of symbolic capital, experience, and knowledge. To the extent that this mobility expanded its geographic radius beyond the borders of Europe, this form of experience was expanded discursively to become a criterion of difference vis-à-vis other cultures, whose forms of movement are “othered,” archaicised, or levelled in favour of a unified cultural image of collective sedentariness. A comparable form of social distinction took shape in China. The extended journeys that government officials had to undertake in order to take their positions, to fulfil administrative tasks, or to carry out rituals led them across the entire empire. This privilege of the scholar-officials (and as of the sixteenth century increas-

Introduction

11

ingly scholars not in the state service) to seek out the most spectacular landscapes of the empire and especially the “famous mountains” (mingshan)6 led, beginning in the eighth century, to the formation of the literary genre of the travelogue, combining geographic information with subjective-aesthetic descriptions of landscapes. Later travellers often sought out a location not only due to their landscape or history, but also because of literary references in poetry or travelogues. In many cases, these texts or passages from them were inscribed directly onto rocks located on site. As Richard Strassberg has noted, this “textualization” of the landscape was accompanied by social, political, military, and economic developments: “It was one way a place became significant and was mapped onto an itinerary for other travellers. By applying the patterns of the classical language, writers symbolically claimed unknown or marginal places, transforming their ‘otherness’ and bringing them within the Chinese world order.”7 The semantic origins of these concepts shed light on the cultural recodings that were necessary to mark a socially privileged form of movement that initially sought the greatest possible distance to compulsive, subaltern mobility. The English word “travel” echoes the French term travail and refers to the fact that changing location and movement were often effort and work for elites as well over long historical periods. The Chinese distinguish between troublesome, purposeful travel (xinglü or lüxing) and travelling that serves the purpose of pleasure, edification, or the aesthetic experience of landscapes (you).8 In German, the verb reisen refers to the movement of starting off (as in the English “to rise”), that, according to the Brothers Grimm, originally meant “rising for battle and war.”9 This aspect of the violent is also echoed in the history of the word route, which takes its point of origin in the Latin via rupta. This term was used in the Gallo-Romanic world for paths that were pioneered or literally “broken” with collective effort through impassable territory, especially dense forests.10 Routes were originally swaths that passed over roots in a literal sense. Braudel’s term liaisons routières thus refers to the dialectical unity of links (liaisons) and ruptures that shapes the materiality of the cut path and the metaphor of the route, which plays with approach and distance, bringing together and separation. The formation and education of the human being along the life path lies at the basis of the term dao in Chinese thought, which Michael Nylan interpreted as “existentially appropriate modes of operating in the social world.”11 The terms that we use to describe the web of shared traces, trails, and routes that formed in mutual interaction with collective movements thus have their own significant semantic paths behind them. This is the source of the overlapping of layers of meaning, the strange mixings between the material-pragmatic and symbolicvisual aspects that are so often encountered in the conceptual language of liaisons routières. For Michel de Certeau, the term metaphorai, which is used for public transportation in Greece, vehicles that “transfer” their users along certain routes and in a certain rhythm, serves as an occasion to reflect upon “routes” in narrative spatial presentations.12 Jilly Traganou also refers to this semantic link in her work on the Tōkaidō, when she seeks to understand the most-important pre-modern road in Japan, which linked Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo (today’s Tokyo), as a metaphor.

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The Tōkaidō, according to Traganou, is “not simply a means of transportation, but carried a strong figurative capacity, embodying a multitude of ideologies and imaginings that shaped travellers, artists and spectators.”13 A similar blending of the concrete with the metaphoric can be found in the most significant term in the field of modern route research, “the silk roads,” coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen to describe routes in Central Asia. With this term, he bundled events of transfer that crossed the Eurasian continent for millennia in a composite in which description and imagination, calculation and poetry are insolubly mixed. For this reason, the term, ever since its coinage, has been employed for various geopolitical, military, economic, cultural, and scholarly interests and projects. This ingenious semantic device, combining the robust material solidity of the road with the luxurious, but ephemeral sinuousness of silk, could not help provoking archaeological searches and modern expectations of profit among the rival colonial powers who competed around the world for markets. Another reason for the longevity of this term is the consciously chosen use of the plural.14 This thus aired the idea of a cluster of regional linkages that was later developed and differentiated. In so doing, the emphasis on a dominant trade good implied by Richthofen’s passage was successively abandoned, as was the focus on land-based linkages.15 All the same, the temptation has always been great to reduce this web of multifunctional liaisons routières to a teleology of the linear route that draws its historical and current meaning from its final destinations. The location of an endpoint in East Asia, rather ideologically constructed than historically provable, either on the Chinese mainland or in the Japanese archipelago, has been the contested objective of historical research in the service of nationalist interests and memory politics.16 What insights could be expected, with the aforementioned caveats in mind, from a research perspective that does not begin with certain practices of mobility and their discursivation, but rather with local situations and the history of the movement of material objects? For if, as Barry Flood noted, inspired by Bruno Latour, we need to understand routes until the opening of the vertical and the digital space of the twentieth century as a translocal construct “that is local at all points,”17 then the same can be said for the iterative movements of people and things. As a heuristic approach and a conceptual lens, routes open those purportedly immobile and passive marginal areas that are scarcely present in a largely author and actor-centred mobility research. Such an approach converges with the critical approach that seeks to break up the interpretive monopoly of the travellers over the “travellees,” inscribed in texts and images and to dissolve the traditional asymmetries between “travelling cultures” and “travelled cultures.”18 Historical thought that takes its orientation from liaisons routières accentuates the historical possibilities of horizontal and multilateral links and thus pursues a spatial concept that differs from vertical narratives of the rise and fall of civilisations, (high) cultures, or centres of hegemony.19 In exploring this horizon, the ambivalent semantics of the route remains an important indicator in the exciting composite of linkages and fragments: as paths that were “broken,” routes were never the mere result

Introduction

13

of diffuse emergence, but intentional artefacts created by collective labour, and at the same time abstracting vectors that combined collective ideas on space, distance, and destinations.20 Reducing routes to their linking functions means masking out the resistance that has to be broken in the act of creating these routes. One need not turn to the hegemonic route projects of the ancient and modern worlds to realise that these ruptures were not only directed against the resistance of physical space. Thinking along liaisons routières does not supplant the political, strategic, and economic dimensions of an infrastructure that organises geographic mobility on a collective scale. On the contrary, it is this very line of thought that reveals territorial calculations, regimes of transfer, and movement control—in brief, historically volatile route policies. In historical studies on cultural processes of the exchange, this also entails granting analytic weight to the transfer of material “channelisations” of communication, translations, and transports. The premodern liaisons routières in particular had their own “obligatory points of passage.”21 And the “path dependency” that in modern theoretical formations is intended to show a tendency towards the fixing of social or organisational structures, was for millennia considered, quite unmetaphorically, as the only possibility of advancement.

Approaching artistic mobilities (and moorings) Without an elaborated and historically differentiated concept of mobility, the potential of a spatial concept developed along the liaisons routières cannot be sensibly explored and made fruitful for disciplinary knowledge interests. In the field of art history, the consequences of a lacking complementarity of space and mobility-based approaches is the clearest in attempts to refer specific characteristics of artistic production to geographically established realms of distribution. Even if this renewed attention to regional distinctions revived by the spatial turn of the 1990s seeks to set itself conceptually apart from the models of art geography (Kunstgeographie) that were popular in Europe between the wars, more recent studies in this realm do not escape the dilemma of labelling spatial relations according to historical or current nomenclatures of political geography. At issue here, in Europe and elsewhere, are almost always controversial terminologies if not “sectarian taxonomies.”22 In addition, it is striking that many of these studies work with a weak concept of mobility that is limited to alluding to processes of diffusion and circulation that are not further specified.23 With the attempt to define the spatial dimensions of artistic mobility on a conceptual level, it is worth examining theoretical positions that have been developed in recent years in the context of interdisciplinary mobility studies. A theoretical scaffolding that at the same time opens historical perspectives has recently been shown by Tim Cresswell.24 Cresswell on the one hand proposes structuring mobility in constitutive components to divorce this category from its singular conception, and thus to make it operable for various perspectives of study and disciplinary competence. On the other hand, Cresswell sees a historicisation of forms of move-

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ment as urgently necessary, especially in the face of a blatantly presentist narrowing of the paradigm of mobility. Here, an arrangement of temporal-spatially variable “constellations of mobility” can be of use. We will discuss both approaches here briefly to better profile their application for the cultural-historical analysis of artistic forms of movement. The necessity to interrogate mobility more specifically for its constitutive elements results for Creswell from an integral understanding of human movement, as developed in recent years in mobility studies with a strong foundation in the social sciences. This complex approach seeks to analyse mobility on a scale that stretches from the “micro-movements of the body to the politics of global travel.”25 This broad approach can be focussed on specific contexts by considering the relations between six basic mobility components: motive force, velocity, rhythm, route, experience and friction.26 Each of these elements opens perspectives that, taken together, serve to carve out the conditions and politics under which mobility is created, privileged, blocked, experienced, and represented. In so doing, an analytical basis can be gained for a context-sensitive study of “constellations of mobility.”27 Cresswell understands constellations of mobility as ephemeral structures of physical movement, representation, and practices, whose distribution in space and time can usually be reconstructed in rough outlines. Borrowing from Walter Benjamin’s concept of the constellation, Cresswell assumes that apparently obsolete constellations of mobility from the past might resurface unsuspectedly in the present and that elements of future constellations are already present today. These constellations should be conceived dynamically: not all alterations in these force fields can be understood easily from a historical perspective. To mention just one example, the supposedly neutral component of physical movement before the beginning of motorisation should be imagined as complex synchronisations of human, animal, and material bodies, each with their own experiences of the body and hierarchies of representation. Like other proponents of the new mobilities paradigm, for Cresswell human movement is only sufficiently described if aspects of the immobile, of persistence and continuity, are given analytic weight, and not just as resistance (“friction and stiction”) that interferes in movement. This thought is captured by the term “mobilities and moorings.”28 There is a clear proximity to the binarism of “roots” and “routes,” that has run through cultural studies since Clifford’s book, but here the accents are placed on mutual complementariness. Refusing all vegetal associations, “moorings” could be understood as locations or situations where potentially mobile individuals, groups, or things could be “held,” “anchored,” or detained. In this heuristic image, movement and stasis are not considered categorical, but rather gradual differences. Cresswell would like his considerations to be understood as a “meso-theoretical approach” that leads beyond a case study arrangement of “real world examples,” but does not seek to target the macrolevel of an overarching theory design. This focus on a middle level unquestionably eases the adaption of the constellation analysis presented for our undertaking to subject historical practices of artistic mobility to parallel examination that were situated in geographically distant cultural contexts

Introduction

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and narrativised in different historiographies. The studies presented here take a look at constellations of artistic mobility, which, not unlike Tim Brooks’ episodic approach, take local situations and regional references as a point of departure and explore how these experiential spaces, definable in a topographical sense, are integrated in a processual, iterative way into artistic labour and at the same time are transformed in the transition from geographic mobility to pictorial movement. The liaisons routières in Braudel’s sense serve as a conceptual point of access for the various bodies of images, objects, and texts that in their material, media, and narrative constitution mark the span of movement between physical transfers on plausible routes and an iconically framed micromobility of production and perception. On the other hand, these route linkages, which we now can grasp as sequences of “mobilities and moorings,” serve as an organising principle for the constellations of mobilities in Europe and Asia. Here, a diachronic perspective is opened that on the one hand at least by way of example seeks to account for the longue durée of long distance Eurasian relationships. On the other hand, however, the current genealogy of our interest of knowledge should be reflected upon, an interest that is motivated by the critical discourse on politics of mobility and space that has increasingly been taken up in art studies since the 1990s. The emphasis of the contributions in this volume is placed on the period between the late sixteenth and the late eighteenth century. While the Indian subcontinent was shaped over long stretches of this historical period by the imperial formation of the Mughals and experienced long phases of political stability, relations in Europe and East Asia were marked by profound transformations. In Europe, confessional division, dynastic rivalries, and economic competition fed the conflictual formation of territorial nation-states, while in China, the most populated region of the world at the time, the increasing social differentiation that brought elites affluence and allowed for an intense tourism caused economic catastrophe and around the mid-seventeenth century led to the collapse of the Ming dynasty. The conquest of China by the Manchus and the foundation of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) placed many scholars and artists in hardships and conflicts of loyalty, and drove many into internal exile. With the consolidation of the new dynasty, however, a period of far-reaching inner stability and prosperity began where the cultural and economic links to Europe were also intensified.29 In the Japanese archipelago, during the early seventeenth century the Tokugawa shoguns established a structure of rule that would continue until 1868, at least nominally. This was preceded by decades of military conflicts between regional power holders. Just as in Europe, the redirection of violence towards expansion played an important role in ending these territorial struggles, leading in the last decade of the sixteenth century to the invasion of the Korean peninsula by Japanese troops. The system of “alternate attendance” that the Tokugawa shoguns established, which required of regional lords (daimyō) and their courts an extended stay in Edo every two years, led, due to the forced mobility of thousands of people, to a close interweaving of regional cultures with that of the capital, and ultimately to the formation of a “Japanese” culture.30

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These few spotlights on a larger historical context that will be developed in the individual contributions in greater detail show that constellations of artistic mobility can only be studied in specific contexts, defined as precisely as possible in temporal-spatial terms. At the same time, we can be sure that these constellations will unavoidably interfere or overlap with one another. The “itineraries of art” are inserted into the web of the liaisons routières and are subject, like these, to the historical dialectics of linkage and rupture. In contrast to other studies that posit similar conceptual requirements, in this collection of essays we would like to contribute to an integrative conception of artistic mobility that consciously expands the prior dominant frame of reference of Western modernity and the contemporary global situation and directs our gaze at artistic constellations of mobility in “multiple early modernities.”31 In the following, the perspectives for future research that can be gained with such a multi-focal approach will be sketched out before discussing the structure of the book and the arguments presented by the individual contributors. This sketch can take its orientation from the three named elements of constellations of mobility: movements, representations, and practices. Movements: In the historical reconstruction and classification of personal forms of mobility and material transfer, the focus on individual “events of mobility” in the biographies of usually prominent artists, as typical in Western art history in the construct of the “artist’s journey,” is proving increasingly inadequate. This model has prevented a more differentiated treatment of other forms of movement, in particular circumstances and forms of forced mobility (expulsion, exile).32 The question of how experiences of forced or chosen “displacement” or imposed immobility shaped artistic work is also of relevance for the visual cultures of the early modern period. Seeing artistic mobility as a product of network operations opens new perspectives for an art history that works traditionally with strong concepts of the author; for the analysis of broad geographic mobility, this point of view is essential. In the event space here focussed upon, from a European point of view primarily two transcontinental networks are of importance in cultural interactions with Asia: the Jesuit order and trade companies with state monopolies. The activities of these organisations generated each in its own way interactions between visual cultures that condensed at specific obligatory passage points, for example the courts of the Mughals, the Qing Emperor, or hubs of maritime travel.33 Despite all frictions, the merchant ships travelling on fixed routes structured transfer processes in rhythms of departure and return that were taken up in the visual cultures of Europe and East Asia in their own forms of representation. And yet, these very iterations, if not routines, in transfer events sharpen our focus on phase shifts between personal and material movements.34 Representations: Movement is represented, and in this way it takes on social and cultural significance. Here, consider representations on a linguistic level, that, as already indicated, contain evidence of historical transformations in the production of meaning (movement as travail /travel). In a broader analysis, oral or text-bound narrativisations of movement can be addressed in the framework of a theory of a structural analysis according to certain basic patterns (for example representations

Introduction

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of time-space movements as quest, encounter, errancy, ascent, or a return to “origins”). For the historical study of visual representations of movement, the material and media conditions under which mobility is treated and under which visual perception and sign-based production of meaning are processed are central. Here, it is important that, at least in the field of manual visual production, the sensorymotoric creation process of the visual object comes to a (relative) conclusion—one could also say is iconically anchored—so that new stories of movement, including those of the object, can begin. For the objects treated in the studies here presented, this sequencing of “mobilities and moorings” seems clear, for at issue are largely more or less solid pictorial supports, in the creation of which transportability is already planned (drawings, illuminations, engravings, folding screens, paintings on canvas or panel, paper or silk, in album or scroll format, woodcuts, tiles, etc.). At the same time, the iterations of movement and moorings can only be established by the precise examination of individual object biographies, since most of the mobile visual objects here treated travelled their itineraries in the mode of potential or real “mutability.”35 Many of the works examined in the individual contributions in this book are characterised by the fact that the relation between representing motion (moves of the pictorial tool) and represented motion (a ship depicted on a Delft tile) were made explicit in visualisations of referenced mobility. Mobility can be considered referenced when it relates to movements in spaces that are anchored outside the pictorial realm and whose physical execution was claimed by human actors, in other words, “real world mobility” in Cresswell’s sense. Under this aspect, bringing together evidence from various visual cultures seems urgently needed, and this publication seeks to make a contribution here. Currently, we only have a very vague notion of constellations of mobility that interfere with one another on the layer of representation. For example, horizontal hand scrolls in East Asia can be considered constants of art production and visual culture: they were used with great continuity for a route-based spatial presentation. In the West, in contrast, the tradition of this mode of representation came to an end in the high Middle Ages. Transformed in terms of media, the spectacular re-entry of the route scroll in the topographical repertoire of representation of European visual cultures can be dated to 1675, when the first volume of John Ogilby’s Britannia was published.36 In this luxurious publication, conceivably unsuitable for the pragmatic use en route, the pages of this folio-format book are filled with sequences that in their graphic layout simulate advancement along a route in the visual sense as the development of a continuous horizontal scroll. Whether this elaborate media synchronisation of book, scroll, and tableau, intended for the political-social elite, was inspired at least indirectly by an awareness of the topographical pictorial scrolls from East Asia would require further investigation. Something similar could be said about visual representations of river journeys, where the controlled, directional movement along the route is “naturalised” and supported with its own narratives and chronotopes.37 Several contributions to this volume explore forms of visualisation of such river journeys as a tradition-giving element in the context of Ming period literati painting and in the twentieth century. Against this backdrop, ques-

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tions of phase shifts and convergences in the framework of European visual cultures emerge, where an elaborate “fluvial aesthetics” can scarcely be dated to before the mid-eighteenth century.38 And finally, the multi-focal approach to representations of mobility can be mobilised to more precisely define the relation between historically and functionally variable modes of representing space. Not only can structuralist contrasts be dissolved, like the one between experience-based and abstracting forms that Michel de Certeau conceptualised in the contrast between parcours and carte.39 Furthermore, the already deconstructed teleology of projective geometry with its perspectivist insistence on coherence, which long overshadowed the contact history of early modern visual cultures, could be followed by an approach that concentrates on modes and motivations of “peripatetic vision” in cultural and historical transformation.40 Practices: Like any other form of mobility, artistic mobility is created and physically experienced. As already mentioned, artistic work can be conceptualised as mobility, understood as a convergence of motive force, velocity, rhythm, route, experience and friction. This ensemble is coordinated by practices that are culturally conceived as a path, track, process, or in modern times, as a routine. Artistic practices of mobility have specific “moorings” not only in historical visual cultures. They were and are anchored in workshops, temples, studios, academies, or cabinets, micromovements carried out in physical engagement with the material, and thus also embedded in social topographies and cultural conventions. An emphasis of the contributions collected here is placed on the historical understanding of transitions between “localized” artistic mobility and broader forms of movement. Here, it becomes clear that the spatial division of artistic mobilities and moorings was subject to historically highly variable practices and in none of the visual cultures treated can be reduced to simple lines of development. For example, the reference to an instantaneous visual experience on a temporary-provisional mooring of artistic mobility, as began in European visual cultures in the practice of outdoor sketching in the sixteenth century and outdoor painting in the eighteenth century, was considered the hallmark of modern art education in early-twentieth-century China.41 It is exactly this practice of the temporary re-localisation of artistic mobility within their socially accepted moorings, conceptualised using unfocussed composites like plein-air painting and outdoor sketching, was only tolerated at best in the Western visual cultures of the premodern period. The specific spatiotemporal contexts in which conflicts and collisions of artistic practices of mobility could appear with social, political, and visual-cultural ascriptions of meaning thus form the subject of one of the contributions in this volume.

Outline of the volume and thematic scope of the essays This volume is structured in three sections, where the constellations of artistic mobility are explored in various regional moorings and temporal horizons. Here, not only does the interplay among movements, representations, and practices come to

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the forefront in its historical variability. In this multi-perspective approach, a whole spectrum of perspectives on the issue of mobility is revealed from the framework of art history and cultural studies. The contributions of the first section take a look at the disciplinary implications revealed with the growing interest in an “art of itinerancy.” What explicit and implicit expectations do practitioners of art history and visual studies link to research on the mobility of historical actors and objects? What methodological challenges grow from this interest in historical liaisons routières for academic fields that are shaped by regional and epochal specialisations? And finally, what frictions and oppositions are minimalised in the paradigm of mobility and how can they be made visible in their historical contextualisation? The second section collects case studies in a diachronic perspective on the mutual interaction of geographically referenced mobility, its translation to spatial images and image spaces that visually codify certain acts of mobility, making them repeatable. The analytic focus is placed here on the question of how in the visual cultures of Western Europe and East Asia geographic movement was recoded since the seventeenth century along definable routes in diachronic temporal experience, be it as a genealogy of pictorial styles or as a passage through historically constructed series of eras. The third section places an accent on the littoral zones of contact as areas of crossing between land and sea routes. The transfer events localised there generate on the one hand innovative image formats, where the mobility of people, animals, and things are iconographically ordered. On the other hand, in these conflictual zones of contact artists and their visual knowledge of representation find themselves easily subject to the influence of political-military control. Art histories of the route: transcultural approaches In the opening essay, Christian Kravagna explores the contact history of two figures of discourse whose itineraries cross repeatedly in various contexts: on the one hand, the mutual relationship between artistic practices and dominant orders of knowledge in relation to the modelling of cultural difference in the act of representation. On the other hand, the formation of political trajectories that work toward establishing a relational, route-based understanding of the cultural in hierarchical relations shaped by determinisms and dictates of domination. In this way, the author investigates positions of an “anti-foundational discourse,” that in the temporal horizon of “multiple modernities” since the early twentieth century developed momentum in various social, cultural, and institutional contexts and is currently popular in the field of “transcultural studies.” For Kravagna as well, Clifford’s book Routes represents a milestone in a process of a relational, multi-perspectival refiguration of cultural life forms. Yet more important for him is the insight that the crisis of foreign-cultural representation in the referential framework of academic writing culture was commented upon much earlier in the visual medium of film. The sequence of a cultural encounter discussed by the author from Michelangelo Antonioni’s film The Passenger (1977) not only reveals surprising

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parallels to the scene of arrival mentioned above in Amitav Gosh’s narrative. Here too, distributions of knowledge resources, interpretive authority, and world knowledge are brought into relief in an asymmetrical constellation between local-native and global-cosmopolitan movements. The rupture of this arrangement is presented in the medium of the moving image as an inversion of representing and represented movements, which results in nothing less than the implosion of the representational space. The finding, gained from contemporary visual culture, that artistic practices use unsuspected “moves” and changes of direction to reveal that “founded” orders of the representation of the “other” are changeable and thus relativised in their claim to validity, is undoubtedly also of great importance for studies of the pre-modern period. The liaisons routières of anti-foundational concepts of culture Kravagna traces until the mid and early twentieth century. In so doing, he sketches moorings that stretch from the emancipatory educational initiatives of Rabindranath Tagore in colonial India via the avant-garde syncretism of the Brazilian Oswald de Andrade to Cuba, where Fernando Ortiz developed the concept of transculturación as a point of reference in his social analysis engaging with the social-economic relations of the interwar years. A sketch of this discursive topography reveals alternative networks and routes of a cultural modernity that was hidden by the cultural mapping of colonialism, based on a sharp dichotomy between dynamic (Western) metropolises and passive-immobile peri­pheries. The mobility of people, objects, and images is often treated in art historical studies under the premise of the “traceability” of processes of transfer and translation. In her contribution, Monica Juneja takes up the methodological challenges that are linked to tracing these cultural encounters. Using examples taken largely from art production at the courts of the Mughal Empire and its successor states, she shows how the analytic recovery of works and forms of presentation as dynamic “sites of cultural encounter” can be implemented in the practice of art history. Going beyond merely tracing out the evidence of a history of contact, a key focus of this study is placed on the specific historical conditions of transculturation, understood as the productive-reflective appropriation of alternative “ways of doing.” As Juneja argues, in order to achieve this, the conceptual toolbox needs to be expanded and refined. Although a “space of shared questions” has been established in recent years in the framework of academic art history, where the traditional separations in art history into regions, periods, and genres have been overcome to some extent, she suggests that additional steps are necessary: how can a “delimited” macroperspective with its drift towards reification of the “universal” be grounded in the web of the particular, or what Juneja calls the “thicket of localities?” What relayerings are necessary in the canon of genres of artistic production and what revisions are required in the relationship between art history and research on material culture to be able to conceptualise transculturation processes in the history of visual cultures? Juneja gathers these concerns in the question of the importance of the visual in the structure of those perceptive bridges that mediate between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Just as mobility in the framework of the humanities was taken for granted for a long time, vision was also considered something that existed across

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time. In her attempt to differentiate a singular vision into historically variable “ways of seeing,” the author considers especially those visual works as important signs where this plurality of visual forms is made thematic as a collection of various modes of image production. The image production of early medieval court culture in northern and southern India, where art forms, literary traditions, and religious knowledge from various cultures of Eurasia crossed, offers a rich store of material to illustrate this. Juneja shows that the dynamics of this crossover are based on “local” prerequisites that need to be defined more precisely in the work of historical contextualisation. For example, for all of the visual cultures involved differentiated orders of visibility and understandings of the pictorial can be shown that differently weigh the relationship between vision and representation, material and mental images, (divine) truth and (human) deception—at times resulting in controversy. Whether and with what consequences the images took anchor between Antwerp, Istanbul, Tabriz, Lahore, and Bikaner depended not least on the intellectual climate of these cultural moorings. The author attributes great importance to the agency of manuscript illuminators and court painters in this process: many of these picture producers mastered diverse pictorial modes of their own geographic provenance, and they mobilised this professional knowledge in various visual cultures for a social “self-fashioning.” The muraqqa widespread among the court elite, albums in which the illuminations, drawings, or prints of the most varied origins were inserted, could in this perspective be understood as temporary moorings of migrating images, whose itineraries were assembled in the process of collage and were made accessible to synchronous examination. The methodological problem of tracing those movements that culminated in encounters at diverse cultural moorings and triggered artistic interactions is further explored by Eugene Y. Wang. The author grasps this problematic in questioning the implicit assumptions and perspectivist ascriptions that lie at the basis of those models of interpretation with which historical disciplines construct movements as culturally significant encounters. To examine the heuristic validity of these models, Wang explores a conglomerate of events that is often attributed a key role in the modern history of contact between Western Europe and East Asia. Through the military expansion of the Mongols, during the course of the thirteenth century a dynastic power complex developed that stretched from China to the Levant. The dynamics of movement contained in this process of empire building have historiographically been narrativised in highly different ways: while the military expansion of the Mongols in the Latin West was captured in metaphorics of the wild forces of nature, individual events of mobility were emphasised early on in this historical context as undertakings that transgress language, religious, and cultural bounds: in particular, the Asia travels of Marco Polo and his brothers, which coincided with the establishment of the Mongol Yuan dynasty in China. When Wang provocatively asks why the presence of the Venetians left no provable traces in the Chinese visual arts of the late thirteenth century, he targets a problem not only relevant in art history. The silence of Yuan sources about the arrival of the travellers from the West is also a subject of concern in other historical disciplines. Wang takes this

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negative finding as an occasion to closely examine the rarely thematised expectations that shape historical investigations in the framework of a story of cultural contacts and transfers. As a foil of contrast, he uses a mobility event from the mid-fourteenth century that triggered artistic moves in the context of Yuan court art and beyond. The arrival and stay of the papal emissary Giovanni Marignolli in Beijing in 1342 served as a cause for painting both for the court artist Zhou Lang and for the painter Ren Xianzuo, who was aspiring to win the favour of the court. A comparative examination of these visual works and the inclusion of additional iconographic sources leads to the result that both artists took recourse to visual scripts, in which the event of the travellers’ arrival was read into in order to be communicated visually. These scripts not only shaped the pictorial description of the animal and human actors involved in the encounter, but they anticipated as it were all real travel movement and their spatial dimensions. The visual formulas of the court painter follow a mythological-geographic narrative developed in an exalted, lyrical speech that links the presentation of the horses as precious gifts to the rulers with the appearance of the heavenly steed as a promising omen for the rule of the Emperor. The mobility here interpreted in the painting is more vertical than it is horizontal. Ren’s scroll places a stronger accent on horizontal movement in that he represents the arrival of the emissaries as an act of offering tribute, and in so doing takes recourse to pictorial markers of an ethnic-cultural diversity that refer both to India and near Eastern Asian Christian denominations like the Nestorians or Manicheans. From this case study, the author derives the necessity to question the division of roles preinscribed in the semantics of the “cultural encounter”: of the countless movements, in the cultural moorings of the premodern era only those were visually codified that could be synchronised with local forms of meaning production. Symbolic itineraries and topographies: framing roads and routes The second section explores the tensions between itineraries as paths in geographic space and as a sequence of perceptions and observations. Pictorial constructions of itineraries can be understood as mediations of physical spatial experience with collective frameworks of knowledge in which manifold processes of translation are involved: what is selectively emphasised from the wealth of experience, how is the reference to what is seen underlain with meaning? An additional focus is placed on the exploration of the link between travel route, encounters, and their imagination in the moment of visual depiction. The contributions explore how the relationships between the travellers, the “travellees,” the visited locations, and routes travelled that are constitutive for the images appear on the surface and how they are fixed or indeed produced by images and accompanying texts. This relates not only to the implied beholders, the readers and recipients of the works, since not just the audience, but often the artists themselves have often not travelled the routes in question. The images thus refer often simultaneously to travels that have taken place and to the imagination of such journeys.

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The metaphor of the route is not only based on a spatial dimension, but at the same time a temporal one, closely linked to the former. Not only is the time required to take a trip inscribed in the visualisations, they are also tied to a respectively specific historicity. For example, in European expedition reports of the late eighteenth century, residents of the Pacific Islands were historically-culturally “othered” by interpictorial references to Roman-Greek antiquity. In the Chinese literary tradition, in contrast, the course of the Yangzi from West to East was itself a metaphor for the passing of time. This temporality becomes a key element in later representations of the river, which refer to it in a spatio-temporal as well as an art historical sense. This form of representation is made possible by the format of the horizontal scroll, which needs to be successively unrolled in viewing, revealing the image bit by bit. In this way, and with the extremely long pictorial dimensions that it allows, it seems to be the ideal format for representing rivers and routes, making the temporal dimension of routes available to experience. The album, another common format of East Asian painting, makes it possible to place individual views of landscapes or special events of a journey in a sequence and in relation to one another. The routes are thus inserted with pictorial formats into various visual orders that summon specific references: at the same time, they refer to various modes of experience and orders of knowledge. In her contribution, Elizabeth Kindall looks at two albums by Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673); these trace out travel routes through Yunnan and Guizhou, which in the seventeenth century were still remote provinces of southwest China devastated by the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. In her analysis of both albums, she uses the term “geo-narrative,” that was shaped in the framework of geographical information science (GIS) and refers to studies in which geographic information is won from narrative material. Kindall uses the term to describe a different phenomenon, that is, the development of a narration using the geographical and topographical qualities of a landscape. The landscape with its views, paths, blockages, and dangers, thus becomes an agent in the image. It is not only placed in a complementary relationship to the small figure that embodies the painter himself, but drives him forward or blocks his way in the form of immense rivers, deep gorges, or hostile locals. As Kindall shows, Huang uses the conventions of representation that was developed in the region around his hometown Suzhou, the wealthiest city in China at the time, filled with cultural landmarks. He thus transformed a pictorial genre that linked the cultivation of social elites with certain topographies and at the same time personalised an experience that was shared by members of this social class and transferred it to a scarcely travelled and largely unmapped landscape to underscore the drama of his own journey. The dramatising narrativisation of landscape served to generate certain social identities, on the one hand that of the artist, on the other the addressee of one of the two albums, his father. Huang Xiangjian undertook the trip to Yunnan before the end of the war to find his parents and return them to Suzhou (his father held a post as district magistrate until the end of the Ming dynasty). After their happy return, the family had lost their fortune; but Huang was able to obtain the official status of “Filial Son” due to the

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spread of his dramatic story in paintings and texts, providing his family with social and financial security. The route of his journeys is not only staged in his albums as a geo-narrative to tell the story of a spellbinding journey, but is loaded with cultural and moral connotations that were supposed to be transferred to the experiences and the personality of the artist himself. Sophie Annette Kranen explores the formation of a geonarrative with a global claim in the late eighteenth century. Her study focusses on the prints for James Cook’s third trip around the world in the years 1776 to 1780, published in an independent volume of plates. In particular the large copper engravings based on drawings by the expedition draughtsman John Webber (1751–1793) allowed the European public to participate visually in the journey. The author discusses the various forms of graphic representation that were used to construct the several-year itinerary of this expedition as an illustrative and graspable object. An important instrument in this process of visualisation is the world map that opens the atlas: the routes of all three Cook expeditions were entered on this map with linear precision and numerous chronological entries. These graphic lines measure oceans with ease and in this sense already point to the nautical course maps of maritime world travel in the nineteenth century. Kranen argues that the graphic representations of these itineraries were not only intended to illustrate synchronously the spatiotemporal dimensions of Cook’s undertakings, but also to offer beholders suggestive trajectories to past ages of humanity. For the European project of anthropology as the science of the human, the pictures and descriptions made by travellers, and even more so the objects they brought with them, were important evidence of a universal history of human cultures and societies. For the social recoding of geographical mobility in historical development, it was decisive that European societies, despite all their internal competitions and conflicts, increasingly constructed themselves as a civilisation that in an imagined series of levels of humanity was virtually the only one existing in the present, while other cultures were assigned places in the past. In her case study, the author shows not only how the selection and visual presentation of travel drawings was driven by this history of development. The expedition draughtsmen themselves also interpreted their nautical itineraries in the late eighteenth century increasingly as trips to past eras, in the stylisation of Tahiti as an island of Greco-Roman antiquity in the drawings of John Webber. The vast breadth of the Pacific Ocean is here imagined as a chronotope that not only includes archipelagos, but entire eras of human civilisation. Julia Orell’s contribution explores a chronotope scarcely less monumental, and one that is illustrated in visual formats that are no less impressive. The focus of the study is placed on horizontal landscape rolls with the motif of the Yangzi, which, as the longest river in China, crosses the country from the Tibetan plateau to the mouth of the river near Shanghai. It thus links the historically more remote Western regions of the country with the affluent economic and cultural centres of the Jiangnan Region (literally “south of the river”) and is one of the central traffic arteries of China. The course of the river very early on became a metaphor for the passing of time, both historically, recalling past dynasties and lost heroes, and per-

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sonally, standing for the impossibility of returning to one’s origins. This melancholic reminiscence of the past and the equivalence of spatial and temporal distance can also be found frequently in poetic colophons to usually no longer extant horizontal scrolls with motifs of the Yangzi River. As Orell shows, these early representations, which were created by anonymous artists beginning in the thirteenth century at the latest, are topographic representations that mark the most important sites along the river and which first and foremost serve as visualisations of historical and geographic knowledge. Beginning in the sixteenth century, however, these anonymous images were attributed alternately to various great masters of landscape painting, so that the subject of “Ten Thousand Miles Along the Yangzi” became a central motif in the history of Chinese painting that was increasingly organised around the names and styles of great masters. Orell’s analysis of horizontal scrolls of the Yangzi from the seventeenth century takes this practice as her point of departure. In her study of the scroll Misty River attributed to Dong Qichang (1555– 1636), she distils how the spatial and temporal dimension of the motif that the work cites is overlaid with a personal temporality of the work process in dating single parts of the image, which show the emergence of the scroll over several months. At the same time, the topography of the river is linked with a genealogy of art history, since the styles of historical models are cited for individual mountains. A comparable personalisation and at the same time a stylistic historicisation is shown using two horizontal scrolls by Wang Hui (1632–1717); the itinerary of the Yangzi is thus transferred from an imperial order of knowledge to a genealogical one, whose most important point of reference is not the river itself, but its visual representation. Juliane Noth explores a similar question: she looks in her contribution at travel pictures and sketches by Huang Binhong (1865–1955), a painter who is considered one of the last representatives of literati painting as shaped by Dong Qichang, oriented on formal modes of earlier masters. Since in the first half of the twentieth century literati painting and its theoretical foundations were no longer self-evident, but had to redefine themselves, in particular vis-à-vis the demand for more realistic depictions but also in the face of modernist currents in art, Huang Binhong also had to readjust his painting. Like many Chinese artists active during the Republican period (1911–1949), he travelled a great deal and produced numerous sketches to ground the genre of Chinese landscape painting on personal observation. In so doing, he linked his visual impressions with the conventions of literati painting. At the same time, he complemented many images with topographic information that he took from his own travels, but also from local gazetteers and historical travelogues. His travel routes are thus linked to geographic descriptions of rivers and streams or the imagination of locations that famous travellers like Xu Xiake (1587–1641) visited. At the same time, his sketches in particular refer over and over to the moment of individual perception. Through this linkage of visual experience and reference to older sources, Huang places his own experience, his pictures, and his texts in a historical continuum with the cultural practices of earlier literati. The sources to which he refers on the visual level not only include

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works of literati painting, but in particular more popular models like the woodcut illustrations in local gazetteers or topographical compendia from the seventeenth century. The resulting dissolution of the lines separating text and image emphasises its invention as tradition in the very assertion of continuity. Crossroads as contact zones: artefacts of interaction The last section of the volume explores aspects of artistic mobility in relationship to topographic “moorings” and sites of anchorage in a literal sense as well: intended here are coastal regions and harbour towns that both in Asia and in Europe of the early modern period crystallise as particularly dynamic zones of cultural contact and hubs of expansive processes of transfer. The establishment of intercontinental sea routes that were travelled in regular rhythms led in Europe to a marked shift of mercantile activity from the old Mediterranean ports to the rising port cities on the Atlantic coast. In East Asia, the Portuguese traders and beginning in 1600 the European trade companies founded in rapid succession were able to establish a presence because they allowed political authorities in China and Japan better control over the profitable transfers in their “own” costal regions. In these efforts to make the points of crossing of land and sea routes useful for their own interests, artists and craftsmen were not just passive observers or instruments of mercantile or political protagonists. Trading centres rich in tradition, such as the port cities in the Pearl River Delta, continued to attract countless artists from the Chinese backlands; in the Japanese archipelago, the harbour cities of the island Kyushu, with the Bay of Nagasaki as most important mooring, became genuine destinations of artistic mobility. In Western Europe, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century increasing numbers of artists who in a previous generation would have turned to Italy now settled in the port cities of the Scheldt-Maas-Rhine Region. The contributions in this section approach this artistic-cultural drift to the coast from various perspectives: alongside the travel movements of individual artists specific kinds of mobile visual media are treated that played an important role in the historical process of the imaginative appropriation of the maritime sphere, the new valuation of the port cities as the “window to the world,” and the cultural mapping of entire coastal regions. The creative dimension of maritime zones of contact is here illustrated in the crossover of materials, modes of production, and pictorial styles. The political claims made on the coasts and their territorialisation could transform these precarious zones of contact at any time into military zones of conflict. The mutual interrelations between artistic mobility, visual practices, and military control in littoral spaces thus form an additional thematic focus of these contributions. The contribution by Joachim Rees and Nora Usanov-Geissler explores a parallel reading of artistic mobility in two littoral zones of contact where, since the mid-sixteenth century, mercantile interests, power-political ambitions, and religious controversies were superimposed in a conflictual way. Under scrutiny here are the north-western coastal regions of Kyushu, the island of the Japanese archipelago closest to the Asian mainland, and the Scheldt delta in the Netherlands, with Ant-

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werp as the most important trading centre. The authors explore art production in these conflictual zones of contact by focussing on two generation colleagues that were active in visual cultures geographically distant from one another: the painter Jan Brueghel (1568–1628), who lived in Antwerp beginning in his early childhood, and Kano Naizen (1570–1616), a member of the Kano House of painters, which worked for high-ranking political patrons. In the entourage of hegemon Toyotomi Hideyoshi, at the start of the 1590s Naizen undertook not only travels to Kyushu, but also brought the motif repertoire of trade with Indian-Portuguese merchants, which flourished intertwined with the missionary activities of the Jesuits since the mid-century in the harbour towns of Kyushu, into the pictorial medium of large screens (byōbu). After his return from Italy in the late 1590s, Brueghel in turn created ambitious oil paintings on copper and wood with expansive coastal landscapes integrating pictorial references to his own travels, to Antwerp as a hub of land and sea travel, and evangelical motifs of the Christian story of salvation. The authors argue that both the coastal representations of the Japanese artist and those of the Flemish painter could be interpreted as imaginative articulations of experiences and expectations: experiences of their own and observed mobility and expectations awakened by the nautical connectivity of the sea. The artist could clothe hegemonic fantasies of their patrons in suggestive visual formulas, like the Kano painters in the case of Hideyoshi’s attack of the Asian mainland; but the painters were also able to use their mobile visual media to allow individual and collective expectations of a peaceful continuation of oversea trade to circulate as material wish images. Finally, the authors explore the question of the visual-artistic implications of the presence of painters in hubs of maritime traffic. In answering this question, they primarily explore the interweavings between cartographic representations and pictorial spatial depiction. Although primarily a painter of landscapes and genre scenes, Brueghel had close professional and familial links to mapmakers in Antwerp; his coastal paintings can thus be read as commentaries on the role of sea travel in the increase of geographic knowledge. In the context of Japanese screen painting, imported world maps and atlases of primarily Antwerpian provenance around 1600 led not only to the formation of its own subgenre, painterly adaptations of world maps that suggest the nautical circumnavigability of the Northern Hemisphere also appeared on screens in the late seventeenth century, when overseas trade was subjected to intense political control throughout the Japanese archipelago. Evelyn Reitz explores a rarely treated “art form of interaction” in her contribution, discussing how ceramic tiles with blue and white decoration could be used in the coastal regions of northern Europe in various social milieus, local contexts, and historical periods as a resource for very different identity politics. The specific formal and material qualities enable this ceramic product to be interpreted both as a factor and as an indicator for the intensification of maritime trade between the North Sea and the Baltic. Lasting and robust, with standardised dimensions and significant weight, the tile loads served as ballast on the Hanseatic ships leaving Frisian harbours on their trips to the Baltic. There, the ceramic goods could be sold

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at a profit before the ships departed with bulk cargo (primarily grain and wood) back in a western direction. The earliest symbolic meaning that could be attached to this ceramic product is thus closely linked to the trade and city association the Hanseatic League, which through its links to the Teutonic Order took on a hegemonic position in the Baltic area over the course of the fourteenth century. As “signature pieces” of the federally organised Hanseatic network, the tiles remained part of a merchant domestic culture when the league itself had become irrelevant in terms of trade. These tiles with their striking blue and white decoration were known all across Europe as Delft tiles, and can be considered an early form of product branding, since in this way various production sites, modes of production, and décor iconographies were tied to a geographically and culturally clear provenance. Called “Delft tiles,” the ceramics participated in the cultural prestige of maritime trade. The proximity of the blue and white design to Chinese porcelain was reinforced over the course of the seventeenth century, since imported porcelain from Chinese workshops reached Europe in increasing numbers, especially via the trade routes of the Dutch East India Company. This associative link with the prestigious material cultures of East Asia ensured the tiles a fixed place in an aristocratic-stately ambience, as the author shows using the example of the park architecture of Nymphenburg Castle, which the Bavarian elector and later governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Max Emanuel, had erected in the years 1716 to 1722. The fact that the spread of these tiles can be grasped as a historical sequence of route-based “mobility” and temporary architectural “moorings” is shown by the author pointing to a detail of the historical restoration of Marienburg (Marlbork) Castle at the end of the nineteenth century: the Delft tiles used for the decoration of a water and washing room in the cloister of the former Ordensburg were previously acquired from an art dealer in Danzig who had himself found the material in the demolition of private homes in the area. In their new context, the Dutch tiles were taken from a burgher residence on the Baltic to decorate a medieval castle that in the nationalism of the late nineteenth century was declared a “bastion of Germanness” by Prussian authorities in an area that had been a mixed-language transit region for centuries. The case study of Ulrike Boskamp also leads to a contact zone under pressure. The author studies practices of mobility and image creation in the coastal region around Portsmouth in the decades around 1800, when this region was under strict observation by the political and military authorities in the course of wartime engagements between England and France. The population in this region was especially affected by the impact of a visual propaganda politics that worked with the category of Britishness towards creating an insular national identity, since the Channel has always served as a maritime zone of interlinkage rather than a border. The frictions and conflicts that emerged in the littoral contact zone can be reconstructed using various textual and visual sources that allow for various perspectivisations of individual mobility events. This is exemplified by using an early biography of the London painter George Morland (1763–1804) in which the arrest of the artist on the Channel coast is described in some detail. During a sketching tour on the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1799, Morland was arrested by the local

Introduction

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militia under the suspicion that he engaged in visual espionage for the French navy. Boskamp places this report in a narrative tradition of accusing of draughtsmen and painters of military espionage that stretches back to the fifteenth century. The conflict history contoured here between civilian experience of the landscape and the corresponding visual aesthetics on the one hand and military regimes of observation and recording illuminate the fraught relationship between mobility and moorings in the context of Western visual culture from various sides: that strategically important topographical situations and elements of military infrastructure could be clandestinely explored and graphically recorded represents a factor that points to the mobility practices of the military world. Boskamp sees another cause in the aspirations of the metropolitan art world to stylise their explorations in the periphery as a socially privileged form of movement that can only be properly interpreted by those who participate in the cultural code of experiencing aesthetic landscapes. In this view, the mobility conflicts here studied point to interferences between two socially and culturally differently coded moorings, the art metropolis of London and the military hub of Portsmouth. And yet the military harbour in the artistic topography around 1800 is not a void: using the art production of war prisoners incarcerated on prison ships, the author shows that in situations of forced physical immobility a continuation of artistic movement in the medium of the image is still possible.

Notes   1 Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2006), 2.  2 Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le Monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philipp II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979, 4th ed.) I, 259.   3 The explorers of the Protestant maritime powers in Europe sought maritime-terrestrial alternatives to the Portuguese carreira da Índia, the most important axis of maritime traffic between Western Europe and Southeast Asia. The navigation of this sea route was documented in manuscript sea books (roteiros), that were subject to strict secrecy and inspired literary forms beginning in the sixteenth century, see Jörg Dünne, Die kartographische Imagination: Erinnern, Erzählen und Fingieren in der Frühen Neuzeit (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), 188–201.   4 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1–3.  5 Clifford, Routes (cf. note 4), 3.   6 On various social groups and their specific forms of travel in Ming-period China, see Li-tsui Flora Fu, Framing Famous Mountains: Grand Tour and Mingshan Paintings in Sixteenth-century China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009), 61–77.   7 Richard E. Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994), 6.   8 Kenneth Ganza, The Artist as Traveler: The Origin and Development of Travel as a Theme in Chinese Landscape Painting of the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (Ph.D. dissertation, Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990), 2.   9 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 8 (Leipzig: Samuel Hirzel, 1893), “Reisen” 718 ff. 10 See Hans-Josef Niederehe, Straße und Weg in der gallorömischen Toponomastik (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 102. Vittoria Di Palma, “Flow: Rivers, Roads, Routes and Cartographies of Leisure” in

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17 18 19

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Mari Hvattum, Janike Kampevold (eds.), Routes, Roads and Landscapes (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 34 and note 34. “The differences between the two terms [‘road’ and ‘route’] are apparent from their etymology. Our common understanding of ‘road’ is a relatively modern variant, as road (rad, in Old Frisian, Middle Dutch rede, Middle Low German ret) originally meant not a thing at all, but the act of riding on horseback—i.e. a road was a place where one rode. Route, instead, comes from the Latin rupta, meaning broken. A via rupta is a way opened by force.” Michael Nylan, “Power of Highway Networks During China’s Classical Era (323 bce–316 ce): Regulations, Metaphors, Rituals, and Deities” in Susan E. Alcock, John Bodel, Richard J. A. Talbert (eds.), Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World (Chichester/New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 45–46: “With life conceived as a journey, the Dao/Tao was defined as a set of orientations toward the social roles and more theoretical issues which a person brought to and then acquired in life … A major thinker, by definition, proposed to rulers and peers a distinctive Way, an artful ‘technique’ fashioned to supplement a person’s natural defenses against ill-conceived initiatives and time’s relentless depredations. Each Way called for a thoroughgoing conversion of the person’s entire being and bearing, achieved through single-minded dedication to employing the existentially appropriate modes of operating in the social world.” Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, vol. 1: Arts de faire, 2nd ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 170. Jilly Traganou, The Tōkaidō Road: Travelling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 1. See David Christian, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History” Journal of World History, vol. 11, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 1–26, here 2. See in comparison Vadime Elisseeff, “Approaches Old and New to the Silk Roads” in The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce (Paris: UNESCO Publications; New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), 1–26. For a controversial discussion of the ideological implications of silk road research in Japan of the interwar period and current museum projects in China see Finbarr Barry Flood, David Joselit, Alexander Nagel, Alessandra Russo, Eugene Wang, Christopher Wood, Mimi Yiengpruksawan, “Roundtable on Globalization” October 133, (Summer 2010), 3–19, here 5–6. The most recent example of the continuous tendency to reify historically shaped and conceptually communicated imaginations of route systems as material infrastructure is the New Silk Road Economic Belt project, primarily driven by the Chinese government. Its logistic axis consists of a long distance rail connection from Chongqing in southwest China to the western German city of Duisburg, where access to shipping is guaranteed. During his visit to the city on March 30, 2014, the Chinese President Xi Jinping used the opportunity to promote the project, stressing the special responsibility of the two countries China and Germany, the eastern and the western endpoints of the “New Silk Road.” See the government report on Xi’s Duisburg visit: http://www.chinadaily. com.cn/world/2014xivisiteu/2014-03/30/content_17389965.htm (accessed on Sept. 9, 2014). Flood et al., Roundtable on Globalization (cf. note 16), 3. One of the influential studies that introduced this change in perspective is: Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992, 2nd rev. ed., 2008). Cf. Piotr Piotrowski, “Towards Horizontal Art History” in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence; The Proceedings of the 32nd International Congress in the History of Art (Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, CIHA), The University of Melbourne, January 13–18, 2008, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2009), 82–85; with similar emphasis: Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ Encounter, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2. See Di Palma, “Flow: Rivers, Roads, Routes” (cf. note 10), 34: “A route, on the other hand, is an abstraction: destination-driven, it projects or records the way from A to B. A road can be travelled along from beginning to end, or left at various points. Whether one follows it or not, a road continues to exist as an entity. Together with other roads, it forms a network. A route, on the other hand, is a line that connects two places, is more idea than object.” John Law coined this term in a study on an early modern subject that during the formative phrase of actor-network theory was only rarely considered. In his analysis of broad geographic and functional networks, such as Portuguese trade with India in the sixteenth century, Law identified ob-

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ligatory points of passage, for one in spatially fixed locations (like Lisbon, which combined maritime infrastructure, mercantile distribution centre, and monarchic residence), on the other hand in special linkages of things, knowledge, and representations, like the combination of compass and cartography. See John Law, “On the Methods of Long Distance Control: Vessels, Navigation and the Portuguese Route to India” in John Law (ed.), Power, Action and Belief: a new Sociology of Knowledge? (London: Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1986), 234–263. The establishment and fixation of these obligatory transfer stations can also be observed in East Asia during the same period, where both the Ming government and the Tokugawa shogunate attempted to negotiate maritime transfers via controllable routes and harbours. See Flood, with a focus on the region of the Middle East, in Objects of Translation (cf. note 19), 3. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), “Defining Diffusion,” 187–192, and “The Limits of Diffusionism,” 303–340. Tim Cresswell, “Towards a Politics of Mobility,” in: Hvattum/Kampevold (eds.), Routes (cf. note 10), 163–177. See Creswell’s collection of case studies On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (London: Routledge, 1996). Cresswell, “Politics of Mobility” (cf. note 24), 163. Cresswell, “Politics of Mobility” (cf. note 24), 164, 174. See the editorial of the first issue of the journal Mobilities, cf. Kevin Hannam, Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings” Mobilities 1/1 (2006), 1–22, and John Urry, Mobilities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007). For a review of recent studies on Sino-European exchanges in the eighteenh century, see Chenghua Wang, “A Global Perspective on Eighteenth-Century Chinese Art and Visual Culture” in Art Bulletin 96 (no. 4, December 2014), 379–394. Constantine N. Vaporis, “To Edo and Back: Alternate Attendance and Japanese Culture in the Early Modern Period” Journal of Japanese Studies 23 (no.1, Winter 1997), 25–67. An overview of various population groups in the Edo period is offered by Franziska Ehmcke, “Reisefieber in der Edo-Zeit” in Franziska Ehmcke and Masako Shōno-Sládek (eds.), Lifestyle in der Edo-Zeit. Facetten der städtischen Bürgerkultur Japans vom 17.–19. Jahrhundert (München: Iudicium, 1994), 55–70. Relevant for the time period chosen here: James R. Akerman (ed.), Cartographies of Travel and Navigation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Riitta Laitinen and Thomas V. Cohen (eds.), Cultural History of Early Modern European Streets (Leiden: Brill 2009); Thomas Szabó (ed.), Die Welt der europäischen Straßen. Von der Antike bis in die Frühe Zeit (Cologne and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2009); exh. cat. Global Lab. Kunst als Botschaft. Asien und Europa 1500–1700. Art as a Message. Asia and Europe 1500–1700, ed. by Peter Noever, MAK Wien (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009); Alcock/Brodel/Talbert, Highways, Byways (cf. note 11); also worthy of mention, although more focussed on interests of anthropology and early history, is James E. Snead, Clark L. Erickson, J. Andrew Darling (eds.), Landscape of Movement: Trails, Paths, and Roads in Anthropological Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2009). On the motif of exile in Chinese poetry and painting see Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard Yen-ching Institute, 2000); for the European context see Martin Papenbrock, Landschaften des Exils: Gillis von Coninxloo und die Frankenthaler Maler (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001). On the networks of the East India Companies as dynamic factors in the artistic and material cultures of Europe and Asia, see most recently Michael North (ed.), Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400–1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010). While beginning in 1600, the ships of Dutch and English trading societies brought ceramic products in significant amounts with some regularity, and in a much lower number visual works from East Asia to Amsterdam and London, 170 years would pass until a Chinese modeler used the boat connection to Europe and found access to the art institutions in the English metropolis. The modeller from Canton Tan-che-qua (Chitqua) came to London in August 1769 on a ship of the East India Company to London and soon attracted the attention of the art public, the court, and English porcelain makers with his near to life small-format clay busts. Johan Zoffany included his

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portrait in the 1772 group portrait of the founding members of the Royal Academy, see Mary Webster, Johan Zoffany 1733–1810 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 252– 254. 35 In terms of the function of graphic representations, whose information content remains unchanged in the process of spatial and media transfer, Bruno Latour spoke of immutable mobiles and emphasises their importance in the production of facts in the Western system of knowledge, see Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together” in Michael Lynch, Steve Woolgar (eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice (Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1990), 19–68. Many of the objects discussed in this volume, in contrast, emerge from changing and editing practices, think of the compilation of calligraphies, miniatures, and graphics in albums (muraqqa), treated in the contribution by Monica Juneja, or the addition of colophons to scroll paintings in East Asia. 36 On the relationship of Ogilby’s Britannia to other contemporary types of cartographic representation see Catherine Delano Smith, “Milieus of Mobility: Itineraries, Route Maps, and Road Maps” in Akerman, Cartographies of Travel (cf. note 31), 46–49; Di Palma, “Flow: Rivers, Roads, Routes” (cf. note 10), 35−37. 37 See Di Palma, “Flow: Rivers, Roads, Routes” (cf. note 10), 34: “Although a river, like a road, is an object in the landscape, it is not a constructed entity, but a natural one. Like a route, a river has a beginning (its source) and an end (its mouth), and to travel along it implies sticking to its course, but its sequences is a given, established by nature rather that human needs. Nevertheless, floating downstream (preferable to rowing upstream, but it’s the same no matter the direction) entails coming upon places, objects, scenes, and landscapes in a particular order. To travel the course of a river is in many respects like following an itinerary, involving a sequence of predetermined encounters with items on a list.“ 38 Ibid. 39 See De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien (cf. note 12), 176–179. 40 See David Ganz and Stefan Neuner (eds.), Mobile Eyes: Peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2013), 28: “Über die peripatetische Dimension der Wahrnehmung von Bildern zu sprechen, heißt immer auch, die Spannung zu bedenken, die zwischen der irreduziblen Freiheit des Rezipienten besteht, diesen oder jenen Weg einzuschlagen, und unterschiedlichen Strategien der Bahnung von Passagen der Wahrnehmung.” 41 Yi Gu, Scientizing Vision in China: Photography, Outdoor Sketching, and the Reinvention of Landscape Perception, 1912–1949 (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2009), 58– 83.

I. ART HISTORIES OF THE ROUTE: TRANSCULTURAL APPROACHES

Christian Kravagna

When Routes Entered Culture Histories and Politics of Transcultural Thinking Within the context of a conference/publication on artistic routes and transcultural art history it seems appropriate to make a few historical and theoretical remarks on both paradigms––the routes and the transcultural. It is obvious from the start that we cannot do so without making reference to James Clifford’s seminal book Routes, which was published in 1997.1 During the 1990s a wide range of scholarly work from various disciplines appeared that addressed what would later be identified as a paradigm shift in the study of culture. Many of these publications transferred focus from the study of cultures confined by national or ethnic boundaries to aspects of transnational contact and interchange, and from a modern conception of internationalism to a concentration on regional cultural manifestations within global horizons. Clifford’s book not only presented some of the most convincing reasoning for the conceptual delinking of culture and its containment in ethnic, linguistic, and territorial locations, it also provided many scholars from different fields of cultural analysis with a keyword that has since become pervasive. To my mind, Routes is still the best title of any recent volume on cultural studies based on notions of “travel and translation” (as Clifford’s book was subtitled). At this point I do not want to delve too deeply into Clifford’s points on travelling cultures, contact zones, and diasporic identity formations, instead I want to recall a story that the author draws on in the “prologue” to his book. Clifford begins his analysis of the habits of anthropological research and their problematic premises with an excerpt from an autobiographical tale by the Indian writer Amitav Gosh. The protagonist, who worked as an ethnographic fieldworker in an Egyptian village, gives an account of his encounter with widely travelled locals who disproved his assumptions about a pre-modern localized folk: When I first came to that quiet corner of the Nile Delta I had expected to find on that most ancient and most settled of soils a settled and restful people. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The men of the village had all the busy restlessness of airline passengers in a transit lounge. … It seemed to me sometimes that every man in this village was a traveller.2

Clifford’s literary introduction of what he calls a “new world order of mobility”3 and describes as the challenge to “trace old and new maps and histories of people in transit”4 refers to the considerable shock felt by the habitual traveller vis-à-vis the travelled peoples. Clifford identifies a profound experience of crisis in Western accounts of other cultures. In the field of anthropology, but also in many other disci-

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plines and genres of knowledge production, these accounts were traditionally based on a seemingly natural distinction between the Western traveller and the non-Western who was to be travelled to. The person collecting data and manufacturing knowledge is seen as a modern and mobile subject traversing space and time to come into contact with his or her object of study who is expected to represent the opposite: the pre-modern and place-bound culture. As the Cuban art critic Gerardo Mosquera once said with regard to the 1990s boom of exhibitions of non-Western art in Europe and the United States, “the world is practically divided between curating cultures and curated cultures.”5 This also holds true for the field of academic knowledge production throughout the last centuries: the division of the world into travelling cultures and travelled cultures fell along the colonial divide between the West and the Rest.

I. In 1975, more than twenty years before James Clifford addressed the epistemological challenge to the discipline of anthropology using Amitav Gosh’s encounter with a much-travelled native, Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie The Passenger appeared on the screen. The protagonist of the film, a British reporter named John Locke, played by Jack Nicholson, disappears while working in Africa. His wife and friend attempt to retrace his steps by watching some of the last film footage sent to his station before he vanished. In the crucial scene depicting this footage, we see Locke interviewing an African “witch doctor,” or rather attempting to interview him, since the interviewee responds to the journalist’s Eurocentric questions with only a silent smile. It is no coincidence that several questions related to travelling are amongst those rejected by the “witch doctor.” In this scene the African’s polite smile seems to imply an understanding of mobility that accepts the Western journalist’s travels and his presence in places far from home as normal, but deems it very unusual that a “witch doctor” should leave his “traditional” cultural area and spend years in Yugoslavia and France. The reporter’s questions reveal his assumption of a “natural” location for his counterpart and an implicit need to know where he belongs regionally. The scene is underpinned by laws of representation that correspond to the imperial world order up to the moment when the interviewee speaks and confronts the interviewer with the ideological implications of his questions. When the African answers with a question instead of the expected answer, he looks calmly into the camera and breaks through this logic with a bodily movement: “We see the African stand up and approach the camera. His hands reach out for it, his waist blocks out some of the image. There is a moment of darkness.”6 What is the meaning of this moment of darkness, which appears in the film as a moving confusion? It seems to mark the implosion of a representational space in which roles are assigned so that those who move freely are also those who produce the pictures and reports of encounters, whereas those who are represented must accept the imposed limitations of the representable and of mobility.

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In the prologue to Clifford’s book, the crisis of a discipline––cultural anthropology––that had been a constant and faithful companion to colonialism, is connected to the startling realisation of the routes of the Other. Antonioni goes one step further when he not only associates the routes of the Other with a crisis in representation in the West but also with the allegorical fading of the modern Western subject, which was once firmly based on his privileges of mobility and representation. When we juxtapose the reconsiderations of modern anthropology’s concept of culture since the 1990s (of which Clifford’s is only one prominent example) with this artistic expression from the 1970s, which makes a strong point about the dissolution of Western certainties regarding travel and the appropriation of the means of representation by the formerly colonised, we begin an unsettling journey into the historical understandings of cultures on the move and their means of storytelling. Today, as many disciplines––including art history––face unprecedented growth in the routes paradigm as well as the notions of cultural translation and the transcultural, we need to ask ourselves a few questions about the political underpinnings of these analytical terms. In comparing Antonioni’s film from the mid-1970s with Clifford’s book from the mid-1990s, I want to address the questions of when, how, and why a post-Eurocentric understanding of travel, culture, and representation came into being. Certainly, I am predisposed to discover paradigmatic changes in the work of artists rather than in the work of academics, but what concerns me here primarily is the relation between a critical examination of scholarly knowledge production after the so-called post-colonial turn (Clifford) and an artistic account of the crisis in Western representation and subjectivity before this turn (Antonioni). This juxtaposition may guide us towards a history of the diverse conditions and motivations behind notions of travel and the transcultural in art and theory. It is not just in the context of recent forms of globalisation that some academics began to replace traditional notions of culture and its analysis with a fascination for everything transcultural. The history of transcultural thought must be written in a less harmonious style because the creation of a transcultural paradigm is also the story of a struggle fought against established ideas of culture, purity, and race. From a historical perspective one notices that the slow and troublesome implementation of the “trans” into culture has been part and parcel of the decolonisation of scholarship. Although Samuel Huntington employed the term in a very different way, a veritable “clash of cultures” was taking place during the decades of decolonisation. I am obviously not talking of a conflict between two distinct cultures, like Christian and Muslim, as Huntington would have it.7 Rather, what I am referring to here is a clash of different models of cultural expression and its relation to ideas of ethnicity and race. This collision of radically different understandings of the cultural process took place within the colonial space and was given a remarkable reorientation alongside the movements of decolonisation. It may be helpful to bring to mind here a formulation coined by the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book In My Father’s House. Comparing his home region’s cultural life––which he illustrates with a syncretic wedding ceremony combining ritual ac-

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tivities from diverse religious backgrounds––with others in the West, Appiah distinguishes between the “accommodative style” of West African cultures and the “adversarial style” of the European approach to culture and cultural difference.8 While the “adversarial style” is based on opposition, exclusion, doctrine and the either/or, the “accommodative style” is marked by adoption, integration, coexistence, and plurality. These fundamentally different approaches to culture come into contact and conflict in the colonial process. Whereas Appiah is concerned with the question of whether it is possible to adopt Western adversarial styles to the African accommodative model, for our discussion of the history of transcultural thinking another contradictory process seems of more relevance. With colonialism the adversarial model was spread by force throughout the colonial world. But at the same time, the colonial encounter between European and non-European cultural practices created a proliferation of syncretic cultures. As a result of this double movement the denial and suppression of transgression and intermixture became a pivotal task in European philosophy, anthropology, and cultural theory. This was the historical moment when anything hybrid and impure became subject to denigration and prosecution. Reinforced since the era of European Enlightenment with its dogmas of reason and progress, the discourse of cultural and racial difference became instrumental in confirming the colonial boundaries. The theoretical production of racial and cultural purity was accompanied by the political administration of these ideas in the politics of racial segregation and cultural repression. Against the background of this centuries-long denial, repression, and extinction of the hybrid, but also in light of a current tendency to locate the transcultural almost everywhere and at anytime, I would like to explore the early histories of conceptualising the transcultural as a counter-model to colonial modernity.

II. If we ask ourselves when routes entered culture––as I put it in the title of my paper––we are obviously addressing a shift in analysing culture that replaces a focus on tradition, territory, and ethnicity by mobility and contact, exchange, and transformation. This shift is most simply described by Clifford’s wordplay “from roots to routes.” In fact, we can precisely identify the place and time when the routes paradigm entered the concept of culture. It was in 1928, in Brazil, when the poet Oswald de Andrade, the co-founder of Brazilian modernism, published his “manifesto antropófago,” which opens with the famous words: “Cannibalism alone unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.”9 Andrade’s radical manifesto was probably the first proclamation of a cultural self-conception coming from the colonised world that refused the Western model of exclusion and opposition in favour of ‘swallowing’ diverse cultures––European, African and Indigenous––through an act of symbolic cannibalism. It is no coincidence that Andrade repeats the word “Routes” (Roteiros) seven times in a single line when he attacks the “importers of canned consciousness,” celebrates the “Carib instinct,” calls for the “Carib revolu-

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tion,” and proclaims a concept of identity that is “only concerned with what is not mine.” This cry for a post-colonial disentanglement from the European model of the cultural self and the Other turns the use of cannibalism, one of the most powerful images of cultural and moral Otherness since the early days of colonialism, on its head and can be read as an avant-garde confrontation of Appiah’s “accommodative” cultural style with the imperialism of the “adversarial” style. When we operate today with a dynamic notion of culture borrowed from post-colonial studies, migration and diaspora studies, critical anthropology, and parts of globalisation theory, it is clear that several of the terms used to examine classical modern conceptions of culture became part of our theoretical language through works published in the early 1990s, like those of Clifford and Appiah.10 Against the backdrop of economic globalisation and the sociopolitical debates on migration and multiculturalism, critiques of a nationally defined conception of culture and of the idea of separate and ethnically distinct cultural spheres, made themselves heard toward the end of the twentieth century. While conservative authors like Samuel Huntington responded to these developments with warnings of a “clash of civilisations,” thereby operating according to the essentialist notion that each culture is a distinct entity unto itself, others opted for a more precise examination of the transitions, exchanges, and mutual exchange of cultural traits and practices, not only in the current era of globalisation but also throughout the history of modernity, colonialism, and decolonisation. For instance, Arjun Appadurai has analysed the process of cultural globalisation as a complex dynamic of diverse “flows” and “scapes,” emphasising the global production of locality and drawing attention to transnational identity-scapes.11 Homi Bhabha has focused on the “in-between of culture” and on the hybridisation processes that are part of cultural practices and the production of culture, which he presents as counter-movements to the sharp boundaries drawn between the cultures of the colonisers and the colonised, and has recognised a post-colonial “contra-modernity” within these processes.12 Mary Louise Pratt has historically examined “contact zones” as sites of agency, power relations, and resistance along colonial borders.13 James Clifford has countered anthropology’s fixation on a static and place-bound conception of culture with a paradigm of “routes,” advocating for particular emphasis to be placed on “traveling cultures.” With the concept of the “Black Atlantic,” Paul Gilroy radically severed the link between culture and territory. He examined the cultural marks left by the slave trade, colonialism, and diasporic movements across the Atlantic, in which he sees a “counterculture of modernity.”14 Recalling that these (and many other) widely read volumes were published in the 1990s, one might be inclined to situate the emergence of Transcultural Studies at a time when—to adhere for a moment to a common historical narrative—globalisation followed the divisions of the Cold War. However, by tracing the history of transcultural thought further back, an increasing number of variations on writings of this kind arose between the two World Wars. My assertion that routes entered the concept of culture, thereby making it “trans,” with the manifesto antro­ pófago in 1928 is, of course, not to be taken entirely seriously. To identify such a

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precise point of origin is absurd. Speaking more seriously, one might say that in the 1920s, in several parts of the world, a programmatic transculturalism emerged in modern art, and the transcultural paradigm was introduced in academic studies of culture with a trajectory that countered the racism of Western purity ideals in science and the arts. Let us stay in the 1920s for a moment while jumping from Brazil to India, from the poet de Andrade to the poet Rabindranath Tagore, probably the most travelled artist of his time, who tried in his own way to counter a European model of exclusion and opposition with an emphasis on routes and amalgamation. In an early text from 1902, Tagore already compared European and Indian cultural styles: “The unity to which European civilisation subordinates is rooted in conflict; the unity Indian civilisation subordinates to is based on amalgamation.”15 “Europe tries to secure society through the removal and extermination of the foreign,”16 he says, adding some critical remarks on colonial violence in America, Australia, and Africa. In another text from around 1912 Tagore made use of a spatial image: “The culture of ancient Greece developed within city walls. … These walls leave a deep trace in the human mind.”17 Tagore detected certain habits resulting from a spatial organisation of that sort, such as social fortification and cultural separation, which he ascribes to all modern cultures: “We separate folk from folk, knowledge from knowledge and man from nature.”18 Indian culture, on the other hand, is described as having been born in the woods with an open relation to others and a different method of making the foreign familiar. We can neither judge the romanticising aspect of Tagore’s considerations of Indian culture, nor can we elaborate at this point on the differences between Tagore’s and de Andrade’s ideas of cultural amalgamation. In the context of this article it is more relevant to have a brief look at the institutional manifestation of a routesbased approach to culture in Tagore’s educational programme for Santiniketan. It seems to me of great relevance here to refer to the curriculum of Visva-Bharati, the World University founded by Tagore in 1921 in opposition to the mono-cultural educational system established by the British Raj. This curriculum included courses with an explicit transcultural approach such as “Indo-Chinese Cultural Contacts” or “Contacts between Ancient India and the West,” which were taught by scholars from Europe, Asia, and America.19 It is not my aim with this paper to pinpoint the very first theory of transculturality, but instead to locate the early development of transcultural studies within the historical and political contexts from which they emerged in order to reveal their connections to de-colonial movements, anti-racist thought, and new post-ethnic notions of cultural identity. A review of the most important publications from the Americas reveals that the era in which transcultural studies began to appear in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States was the same era when the fascist systems emerged in Europe as the apex of the race ideologies that had been developing since the eighteenth century. The modern Western conception of culture is founded on the idea that a people, a nation, and/or a race are the bearers of culture and that it is necessary to demarcate boundaries between cultures and races in order to ensure

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their “purity” and consequently to dominate or even annihilate supposedly inferior races. Each of the contributions to early transcultural thought that will be discussed below is based on a serious, if at times problematic, attempt to overcome race as a determining factor of culture. Gilberto Freyre in Brazil, Fernando Ortiz in Cuba, José Vasconcelos in Mexico, and Melville J. Herskovits in the United States have each, in their own way, endeavoured to decouple race from culture, to view the boundaries between European, Amerindian, and African cultures as permeable and, instead of distinguishing between cultures or races, to acknowledge and closely examine their hybrid forms even to the point of downright propagating these hybrid forms as a means of undoing racist orders of domination. The set of problems that arise from these theoretical approaches, both on a political and social level, can also be read as a byproduct of slavery and its abolition. In Brazil, the liberation of the black population and the transition from empire to republic in 1889 brought about fundamental changes in the country’s social order and economic relations of production. The question of Brazilian national identity also emerged with these changes. One of the earliest political responses to the challenge of conceiving a new cultural identity was the so-called “embranquecimento,” which was to be supported by an immigration offensive whose goal was to intensify immigration from Europe and thereby to accelerate the modernisation of Brazil with an expanded white labour force. This policy of “whitening” arose from the European idea that progress was inextricably linked to the white “race.” In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, and in opposition to this concept of white superiority, some scholars and artists developed Brazilian identity concepts that were based on hundreds of years of sexual and cultural mixing between European, African, and Amerindian elements. Alongside the aforementioned Antropofagia movement in the arts and psychologist Arthur Ramos’s research on black cultures since the 1920s, wherein he observed, among other things, “the merging of African deities with Christian saints and the divinities in the Indian theology”20 within the “syncretic” religious notions and practices of Candomblé, the work of the sociologist Gilberto Freyre had a strong impact on Brazil’s post-racial identity model as well as on international transcultural research. In his book Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), first published in 1933, Freyre describes the “formation of an agrarian, slave-holding and hybrid society,”21 which had witnessed the ongoing intermingling of ethnic groups and mutual influence, in terms of both spiritual and material culture, since the very beginnings of Portuguese colonisation. Furthermore, Freyre attributes the strength of Brazilian society and the beauty of its culture to its hybridity. Later, Freyre was rightly accused of sugar-coating the colonial violence that had shaped relations during slavery. Nonetheless, the positive value Freyre placed on the creativity generated within processes of cultural hybridity gained widespread appeal in the 1930s, particularly amongst US American researchers and black civil rights activists who faced racial segregation in their own societies.22 Cuban concepts of transculturality, of which Fernando Ortiz is the most prominent theorist, were developed within the political and economic context of a

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post-colonial Cuba faced with the threat of neo-colonialism. Ortiz published his book Cuban Counterpoint. Tobacco and Sugar in 1940 during the Batista period of dictatorship, which catered to the economic interests of the United States and was in turn supported and sustained by the Americans. The fact that Ortiz founded the “Cuban Alliance for a Free World” shortly after his book was published is a clear indication of the anti-imperialist direction of his analyses of Cuban history, economy, and society. Ortiz depicts the history of Cuba as a complex interplay between tobacco and sugar. Unlike tobacco, the sugar economy was bound up with capitalism from the outset. According to Ortiz, the difference between tobacco and sugar was intensive versus extensive cultivation, quality versus quantity, individuality versus uniformity. Sugar required energy, machines, labour divisions, created time pressure, and intermittent “jobs” for many; it consumed and destroyed the land, because more energy and means of transport were needed to produce a greater volume. Tobacco, on the other hand, required knowledge instead of machines, a careful attention and selection of soil, light, and leaves; it offered regular jobs for a few, and prospered in smaller agricultural units. Tobacco generated an independent middle-class; sugar brought about the extremes between master and slave, the rich and the working class: “In the history of Cuba sugar represents Spanish ab­ solutism; tobacco, the native liberators.”23 According to Oritz’s theory, sugar not only led to slavery and was the reason that slavery persisted in Cuba for so long, it also stood for the deprivation of freedom in general, for Cuba’s status as a colony, and for its economic backwardness even after the demise of colonialism by “keeping Cuba in the economic status of a colony.”24 Ortiz’s descriptions of the sugar industry are reminiscent of the current economies of transnational corporations. In this context, the term transculturation served as a “substitute for the term acculturation”:25 Acculturation is used to describe the process of transition from one culture to another, and its manifold social repercussions. But transculturation is a more fitting term. I have chosen the word transculturation to express the highly varied phenomena that have come about in Cuba as a result of the extremely complex transmutations of culture that have taken place here.26

The history of Cuba is described as the history of its enmeshed transculturations. The Indigenous, Spanish, African, European, Jewish, and Asian groups who settled on the land bit by bit, were uprooted and had to adapt to a “new syncretism of cultures.” They were “faced with the problem of disadjustment and readjustment, of deculturation and acculturation––in a word, of transculturation”:27 I am of the opinion that the word transculturation better expresses the different phases of the process of transition from one culture to another because this does not consist merely in acquiring another culture, which is what the English word acculturation really implies, but the process also necessarily involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture, which could be defined as a deculturation. In addition it carries the idea of the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena, which could be called neoculturation.28

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To give one last example from the early period of transcultural theory, in the late 1920s the US American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits began researching black cultures in the Americas and their connections to Africa. He was in contact with his senior “colleagues” Freyre, Ramos, and Ortiz in the 1930s and 1940s and adopted terms they had developed, including Ramos’s syncretism.29 While Freyre’s and Ortiz’s studies on cultural contact and mutual transformation were instrumental to the development of post-ethnic concepts of national identity, Herskovits’s research was embedded within the context of racial discrimination in the United States. From the very beginning Herskovits detached culture from the idea of racial determinism. When Herskovits speaks of “acculturation” in his later texts, the term takes on greater complexity and comprises many of the meanings Ortiz subsumes under the term transculturation. In 1935 Herskovits defined the term in a Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation as follows: “Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups.”30 In his field studies in Western Africa, Suriname, Brazil, and the Caribbean, Herskovits developed a refined instrument for studying cultural transfer, the adoption and appropriation of cultural elements in situations of contact under conditions of colonial rule and slavery within the African-American context. The historiographical significance of his contribution to transcultural theory can be traced back to his book The Myth of the Negro Past, published in 1941, which was highly controversial at the time both within anthropology as well as in a broader discourse on US race relations. In it Herskovits demonstrates the perpetuation of African elements in the linguistic, religious, social, and cultural practices of blacks in the Americas. “Retention” and “reinterpretation” present the two processes whose relationships with one another allow for a description of the dynamics of transformation in cultural contact. These relationships can take thoroughly different forms: from an insistence on old elements, to “borrowings” from new ones, as well as their reinterpretation in particular aspects (language, belief, art), depending on the conditions under which they occur.31 Herskovits defined the political meaning of a scientific examination of the history and presence of African cultural elements in the United States: To give the Negro an appreciation of his past is to endow him with the confidence in his own position in this country and in the world which he must have, and which he can best attain when he has available a foundation of scientific fact concerning the ancestral cultures of Africa and the survivals of Africanisms in the New World.32

III. With this brief account of transculturality’s struggle for cultural decolonisation and the overcoming of race, my intention here was to remind us of the political trajectories of early transcultural thinking. However, one should not forget how the anthropological study of culture contact and the resulting changes were put to the

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service of colonial administrations, in particular during the Second World War, which required the closer co-operation of colonised people with the war administration, but also allowed colonisers to more effectively exercise control over increasing resistance movements. Recently, the Indian art historian Parul Mukherji has critically noted that the conferences she is invited to increasingly tend towards the adoption of a transcultural paradigm in place of a post-colonial approach. The critical problem with this trend might be an eventual loss of the political dimension. Can we derive from this that transculturality has become an academically sanctioned version of post-colonial critique in an attempt to rid ourselves of the problem of power relations? Certainly, some of the more reactionary scholars would welcome such a trend. In summer 2012, during a discussion at the International Congress of Art Historians in Nuremberg, the German art historian Horst Bredekamp openly called for an end of post-colonialism. Only when post-colonialism (and what he called the “guilty conscience” it instils in “us”) is finally a thing of the past, will we be able to approach research on global art history in a relaxed manner.33 When one considers, for example, the ongoing debates about the planned Humboldt Forum in Berlin with its wide-ranging problematic of national identity construction, colonial history, and the violent routes taken by so many objects in our museum collections, one recognises the imperial cynicism of such a proposition. The recent omnipresence of the transcultural demands a critical examination of the term’s application against the backdrop of its political and economic framework. In his 2005 book Hype um Hybridität (Hype on Hybridity), the Berlin-based political scientist Kien Nghi Ha discussed a similar phenomenon within the notion of hybridity: “How does it come that this notion is today so dominant and sexy, although it was only a dusty technical term in biology until a few years ago?” he asks. 34 “Hybridisation becomes a synonym for the groundbreaking and the revolutionary,”35 writes Ha, and he wonders “to what extent hybridity as a sign of a postmodern aesthetics and concept of culture is linked to a late capitalist logic of exploitation which produces, apart from efficiency, fascination, innovation and appropriation, new forms of hierarchies of taste and exclusion.”36 In a paper presented in Berlin in 2002, the Indian art historian Geeta Kapur made the following remarks: “Transcultural, a term coming into wide usage, rhymes too well with the transnational––which decidedly refers to the late and seemingly irreversible stage of capitalism ruled by Transnational Corporations across and beyond the powers and sanctions of the (developing) nation-states.”37 The “rights of people bounded by geographical location and political circumstance” are continuously superseded by Transnational Capital. “Transnational and transcultural suggest a gliding across and beyond discreet entities that are supposed to enter into relationship on some presumed or potential parity.”38 Recently, while working on the final edits for a book on Transcultural Modernisms, a colleague and I left the office to get a coffee. In the short distance to the coffee machine our attention was called to a poster pinned on the corridor wall. It advertised a masters programme in Transcultural Studies at the University of Hei-

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delberg using the remarkable image of a doctoral cap sitting on top of a globe: the insignia of Western knowledge dominating the whole world––the world of transcultural studies. It is strange that the university offers, as the poster tells us, the study of Visual and Media Culture, amongst others, but apparently is not prepared to reflect on the imperialism of its own visual culture. Is this an emblematic image of the incorporation of the once oppositional agency of the transcultural into the global economies of knowledge, as Geeta Kapur has suggested? Obviously, one cannot judge the individual contributions to such a programme by its problematic advertisement, but I think it is time for a critical examination of the rhetoric and the aesthetics of today’s transculturalism along the lines of Kien Nghi Ha’s exploration of the notion of hybridity. In a recent interview with Monica Juneja, who is working in the Heidelberg programme, she stressed the importance of paying attention to what she calls the “asymmetry, non-equivalence, and dissonance” in transcultural processes. Criticising a romanticising understanding of cultural flows and translations, Juneja emphasised the necessity of “looking critically at the dialectic between the dissolution of certain boundaries and the reaffirmation of other kinds of difference, of how deterritorialisation is invariably followed by re-territorialisation.”39 In a recent book titled Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration one reads: “The kind of art historical practice I would like to see goes all over the world and deals with all kinds of practices, representational systems, and cultural conditions––not only at the level of social history, but at deeper epistemological levels.”40 Although the author quotes the critical theory of Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak in the first pages of her essay, she concludes with a daydream about art history’s global business. This fantasy of omnipotence––a verbal equivalent to the Heidelberg poster––is representative, at least, of a fatal misconception of the post-colonial critique of Eurocentrism. If we think back to the fundamental crisis in ethnographic representation (Clifford) and the crisis of the Western subject (Antonioni) when exposed to the routes of the Others and their seizure of the means of representation, we might judge the mobilisation of a transculturally renewed academic universalism as the wrong answer to this crisis. The critique of Eurocentrism in scholarship cannot be refuted by simply resorting to the old colonial model of extending the object of knowledge to every place in the world. Today, many conferences and publications attempt to jump on the bandwagon of transculturalism, global art history, and the routes paradigm while often revealing little awareness of the epistemological and political consequences of post-colonial critique. Too many of these academic endeavours seem to be driven by a competition for funding and the sheen of cosmopolitan glamour rather than by any particular interest in connecting the paradigms of routes and cultural translation to the social and political surroundings of the societies they are acting in. This is remarkable when we remind ourselves of the transcultural beginnings I mentioned above, which were explicitly concerned with alternative modes of analysing and intervening into the power structures of societies. However, we must also grapple with an inherent problem in transculturalism’s history that derives from the travelling of routes-based analytical models in time

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and space. This mobility of concepts demands careful consideration of what is lost and what is gained in their journeys. For instance, Édouard Glissant, the Martiniquean poet and author of creolisation and archipelagic thinking, developed his concepts of “cultures composite” and the “poetique de la relation” on the basis of a precise observation of the particular history and geography of the Antilles. “Culture composites” (or complex cultures) as an effect of creolisation, have been described by Glissant as being in contrast to the “atavistic culture” whose version of identity is formed by an originating myth, a common root, an ancestral line––“an arrogant and deadly conception, which … Western cultures have mediated to the world,”41 as he put it. Glissant himself somehow globalised the concept of creolisation when he argued, “the world becomes creolized.”42 Although this is certainly not pointless, this tendency to translate a specific concept into a wide variety of other particular constellations is in danger of conceptually homogenising very different conditions of cultural change. The travels of a cultural concept like this can also result in a fruitful translation into the local politics of culture. Glissant himself refers to the call for a peace conference organised by Yugoslavian Roma in Sarajevo in 1995, a text in which he finds the term creolisation in connection with the demand for a “pluri-cultural civil society” rather than the division into ethnically defined territories in the former Yugoslavia.43 In this case, a once politically charged concept of identity that seemed in danger of losing power through generalisation gained new life in the struggle for a post-ethnic society.

Notes   1 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).   2 Amitav Gosh, “The Imam and the Indian” Granta, 20 (Winter, 1986): 135. Cited after Clifford, Routes (cf. note 1), 1–2.  3 Clifford, Routes (cf. note 1), 1.   4 Ibid., 2.   5 Gerardo Mosquera, “Some Problems in Transcultural Curating” in Global Visions: Towards a New Internationalism in the Visual Arts, ed. Jean Fisher (London: Kala Press, 1994), 135.   6 Mark Peploe, Peter Wollen, and Michelangelo Antonioni, Michelangelo Antonioni’s “The Passenger“: The Complete Script (New York: Grove Press, 1975), 78. Quoted after Martin Beck, “Half modern, half something else” in Routes: Imaging Travel and Migration, ed. Christian Kravagna (Frankfurt: Revolver, 2006), 38.   7 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).   8 Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).   9 Oswald de Andrade, “Manifesto Antropófago” Revista de Antropofagia, 1, (1928). 10 The following paragraphs are based on my text “Transcultural Beginnings: Decolonization, Transculturalism, and the Overcoming of Race” in Transcultural Modernisms, ed. Model House Research Group (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013). 11 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press, 1996). 12 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 13 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992). 14 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993).

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15 Rabindranath Tagore, “Indiens Vergangenheit als Gegenwart” in Rabindranath Tagore. Das goldene Boot. Lyrik, Prosa, Dramen, ed. Martin Kämpchen (Düsseldorf and Zürich: Artemis & Winkler, 2005), 396. 16 Ibid., 398. 17 Rabindranath Tagore, “Die Beziehung des Einzelnen zum Universum” in Rabindranath Tagore (cf. note 15), 403. 18 Ibid. 19 Uma Das Gupta, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 66–72. 20 Arthur Ramos, The Negro in Brazil [1939], trans. Richard Pattee (Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1951), 94. 21 Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 3. 22 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black in Latin America (New York and London: New York University Press, 2011), 12–58. 23 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar [1947] (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 71. 24 Ibid., 80. 25 Ibid., 97. 26 Ibid., 98. 27 Ibid., 98. 28 Ibid., 102–103. 29 Kevin A. Yelvington, “The Invention of Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean: Political Discourse and Anthropological Praxis, 1920-1940” in Afro-Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora, ed. Kevin A. Yelvington (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2006), 35–82. 30 Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herskovits, “A Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation” Man: A Monthly Record of Anthropological Science, vol. 35 (October 1935), 145– 146. 31 Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past [1941] (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005), Chapter IV. 32 Ibid., 32. 33 Horst Bredekamp, word-of-mouth statement made in the course of the panel discussion „Global Ethics for a Global History“, 33rd Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, Nuremberg, July 17th, 2012, at which the author of this article was present. 34 Kien Nghi Ha, Hype um Hybridität. Kultureller Differenzkonsum und postmoderne Verwertungstechniken im Spätkapitalismus (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2005), 39. 35 Ibid., 40. 36 Ibid., 57. 37 Geeta Kapur, “Politics of Translation or Political Translations: Curating as a Critique of Transculturalism” (Unedited draft for a paper presented at the festival “In Transit”, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2002) 3. See: http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/SpecialCollectionItem/2998 (last accessed May 30, 2014). 38 Ibid. 39 Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna, “Understanding Transculturalism” in Transcultural Modernisms (cf. note 10), 26. 40 Claire Farago, “On the Peripatetic Life of Objects in the Era of Globalization” in Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration, ed. Mary D. Sheriff (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 36–37. 41 Édouard Glissant, Kultur und Identität: Ansätze zu einer Poetik der Vielheit (Heidelberg: Wunderhorn, 2005), 19. 42 Ibid., 11. 43 Ibid., 44–47.

Martin Beck

Half modern, half something else The following series of images is taken from an eight-page booklet produced in 2002 by the artist Martin Beck as part of his work half modern, half something else for the exhibition Routes: Imaging Travel and Migration (Grazer Kunstverein, Graz), curated by Christian Kravagna. At the time, Beck engaged with the question of how the shift from the “modern” to the “postmodern” was articulated in spatial terms in the 1970s, taking protagonists such as Reyner Banham, Charles Jencks, and Michelangelo Antonioni as exemplary cases. Beck’s work on Antonioni’s film Professione: Reporter (The Passenger) from 1975 consists of several colour prints of desert scenes taken from the film and a video that covers the full length of the twohour film. However, only a short span of about two minutes is made visible, whereas the rest of the film remains in the dark. The booklet reproduces the frames of this segment and the corresponding passages in the script. In this scene, Antonioni’s “complex tale about the loss of cohesion and identity” (M. Beck) culminates in the African resistance fighter’s “postcolonial” appropriation of the English reporter’s camera. (Christian Kravagna)

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Tracking the Routes of Vision in Early Modern Eurasia I. In contemporary times the work of art itself has become an image of mobility, an embodiment of globalism and cosmopolitan exchange. These are now attractive buzzwords that proliferate in scholarship and are said to constitute a ‘global turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. The focus on displacement and encounter, long considered attributes of modernity, has in turn generated a scholarly interest in investigating the “pre-histories” of globalisation, the varieties and dynamics of exchanges, and the processes of transculturation that characterised societies prior to the advent of global capital and modern communication.1 Art history, though slower than other disciplines to respond to the challenge of transregional connections while constituting its objects of investigation, has now begun to pay closer attention to the transformative workings of spatial and cultural mobility. This has meant dealing with the tension that ensues when the existing taxonomies and canons of the discipline, which also determine its intellectual and institutional boundaries, are confronted with the wealth of evidence and questions brought forth by enquiry that is framed to follow the logic of complex circuits of exchange. The tension is a productive one that holds a promise of art history’s potential to contribute towards theorising globalisation. The notion of “routes” or “itineraries” that informs this collection of articles was put forward by the anthropologist James Clifford in a series of essays dealing with issues of mobility and translation in an age of transnationalism.2 Eloquently valourising “routes” over “roots,” Clifford argues for an understanding of culture that is constituted relationally as a product of displacement rather than a stable entity. Building on this notion, Finbarr Barry Flood has shown the way to reconfigure pre-modern cultural geographies by investigating “horizontal dimensions of mobility” together with the continuing and complex negotiations between the local and the translocal which, in his view, account for the fundamentally unstable and protean nature of cultures.3 The intertwined attributes of mobility and portability characterise a vast body of objects that we study as art.4 Tracing their trajectories has meant a shift of focus from a history of style and fixed meanings to a narrative of circulation, from the search for origins to an analysis of re-contextualisation. Yet mobility, or the more fashionable term “flows,”5 is simply an entry point, one which challenges us to take our enquiry to another register in order to find a precise language to theorise the morphology of the many possible, non-dichotomous models of relationalities that are engendered by contact and encounter. The prolific vocabulary of globalisa-

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tion—terms such as hybridity, creolisation, métissage—or the earlier language of interculturalism, which spoke of syncretism, borrowing, or appropriation had no doubt fulfilled an important explanatory function when these terms were coined, particularly under the aegis of post-colonial theory; above all they provided a corrective to a notion of cultures as bounded units and to the reified conceptions of alterity and identity that follow from such assumptions. And yet today, the interpretive potential of the terms mentioned above has, as they too have become globalised, suffered dilution from inflationary usage. The explanatory power of hybridity, for instance, remains limited by the presupposition, implicit in the term’s indelible biologistic overtones, of ‘pure’ cultures that then somehow blend or merge into a ‘hybrid’ that is treated as a state beyond enunciation or articulation. This term, like others, often ends up as a theoretical straightjacket into which experiences of global relationships can be accommodated without further investigation of the processes and agents involved—and thus at the cost of the precision needed to grasp the specificity and dynamics of these relationships. For instance, the notion of identity can be more fruitfully conceptualised as a nexus of relations rather than as a mode of demarcation. It becomes necessary therefore to move beyond metaphors or umbrella terms such as cultural flows, hybridity, or any cognate, deployed to capture the exchanges transgressing cultural, linguistic, and material boundaries. In other words macro-perspectives need to be supplemented by a descent into the thicket of localities—urban and rural, past and present, central and at the margins—in which the dynamics of actual encounters involving a host of actors, practices, and temporalities can be unravelled. In an art historical enquiry framed by the itineraries of travelling objects, genres that previously did not receive much scholarly attention because they were classified as ‘artefacts’ rather than ‘art,’ or fell under the rubric of prints, ornament, or objects for everyday use and were therefore considered intrinsically less worthy of analysis, become the main protagonists of the stories they are made to tell. The exponential growth of trade, exchange, and collection in the wake of European expansion during the early modern period is said to have brought with it a privileging of “optical authority” as a way of registering and controlling an unprecedented gamut of new experiences, desires, and knowledge.6 Yet the visual, the act of seeing as a participant in innumerable transactions across the divide of the familiar and the alien, acquired multiple valences as it resonated on new sites and was translated and reconfigured in new contexts. Material objects were both the media and the agents in processes of transculturation, making their ‘thingness’ a formative component of that encounter. Addressing these dynamics works to expand and complicate our conceptions of the visual, which both relates to and further constitutes synaesthetic notions of sight in cultural settings beyond Europe. The following investigation can be located within an ongoing discussion of the tangled relationship between art history and material culture. To what extent can the study of materiality enrich art history by introducing a fresh ontological awareness or by reinserting the process of an object’s coming into being in its interpretation? The incorporation of material objects as worthy subjects of art history with a view to

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breaking the hierarchies of the discipline, which continue to privilege a “dematerialised” notion of vision dating back to Renaissance art theory, is a first and welcome move towards refocusing art history as “a discipline of objects” (though it had “tricked itself into believing it is a discipline of images”).7 Indeed, studying the itineraries of things across spaces and cultural sites leads to a questioning of the taxonomic dichotomy between ‘image’ and ‘object’ as both are drawn into a complex of multi-sensorial transactions that make vision a profoundly transcultured concept.

II. The art historical problem of conceptualizing vision, which forms the core of this essay, goes beyond the investigation of simple mobility and adoption of motifs or iconographies or even pictorial formulae, though these are also part of a circulatory regime and are constituent elements of a work of art. The latter becomes a site for a reflection upon the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of its own practices as well as upon those which it encounters—these are dimensions that my paper will empirically flesh out in the following sections. My study of the ways in which vision is configured and reconfigured in the specific regional context of South Asia can be located in a small but articulate research field that brings together studies of visuality with European encounters with cultures in South America, Asia, and Africa.8 While my work has responded to many of the impulses that have emanated from this field, it positions itself at the same time in relation to recent moves in art history towards incorporating different regions of the world within a single framework of shared questions. The various initiatives in this direction have been written about elsewhere.9 At this juncture it is relevant, summarising the thrust of this research, to mention that theoretical stances in the field of “world art studies” have tended to alternate between two poles: between the view which considers ways of seeing as constituting a human universal, a common anthropological denominator that holds humans together across time and space “as they have been making art for millennia”10 and the extreme relativist position, which advocates the use of each cultural tradition’s core concepts of visuality and the image, whose incommensurability and fixity are assumed.11 As distinct from these positions I propose that rather than assuming it to be a factor common to human societies, vision itself needs to be a subject of historical investigation. This includes studying both the distinctive cultural possibilities that are built into the act of seeing as well as the formative shifts within its practices as new relationalities are negotiated in the wake of cultural encounters. Historicising vision means arguing that seeing and the representation of the ‘seen’ onto a two dimensional surface of a painted page are culturally and socially constituted processes that need to be unpacked beyond simple cultural relativism. This in turn implies a deconstruction of those systems of representation that art history has canonised as modern and scientific in a universalist sense; in other words, it calls for a reflexive engagement with the ways in which the disci-

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plines, interpretive moulds, and languages that have evolved to explain and theorise these practices, are themselves a product of modern concerns. A few words about the geographical framing of this study: while the focus of my research is South Asia, I constitute this unit of investigation within a transcultural frame. In other words, this essay examines the history of visual representation and practices as formed through migration and the interrelationships between material objects, images, and actors spread across a vast Eurasian zone during the early modern period12 and connected through conquest, diplomacy, evangelisation, and economic transactions, as well as through ritual, gifting, and kinship networks. The Mongol conquest of the eastern Islamic regions, often mythologised as a cataclysmic upheaval, was at the same time generative of a political geography that fostered an unprecedented dynamism enabled by the migration of artists, rulers, objects, and forms.13 Early modern empires such as the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals, all look back on the post-Mongolian context as a formative period of many developments in the arts, especially manuscript painting. To what extent is the encounter with the world beyond the locality mediated through and constituted by the painted image? And following from this, how does the image, through its processes of production and enactment of multiple regimes of sight and time, become a metonym for mobility and communication across cultures, even though this may not necessarily mean the uniform diffusion of a shared, more ‘rational’ or ‘scientific’ way of seeing? Let us enter the subject with two images from North Indian courts which raise a number of questions to take this enquiry further. The first image is a painting, dated to somewhere around 1765, from the North Indian province of Awadh, a successor state of the Mughal Empire (fig. 1, pl. I). The viewer gazes both into the interior of a palace and outside of it into the surrounding gardens, pavilions, and terraces. The palace complex is peopled with women and their attendants, the vista extends far into the distance beyond the architecture to a river lively with boats and noblemen playing water polo; further in the distance we can observe a procession led by a ruler seated on an elephant with standard bearers carrying a banner. We are presented with a panoramic view, which both opens up interior spaces and stretches outwards to a distant horizon. The use of such encompassing views can be seen as a compositional device dating to at least three quarters of a century earlier. European images—mainly Flemish and North European paintings and engravings, which created panoramic views through perspectival vision, had been available to North Indian artists since the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.14 However, unlike the European models, the page we are looking at is not organised according to a single vanishing point, instead it contains many views from different perspectives and different planes, which are plotted onto a single composition, and allow the viewer access to details of each unit that are far more visible than in reality. This phenomenon of presenting a field with potentially multiple vignettes rather than one coherent spatial unit, or of combining different or contrasting pictorial modes and plotting multiple temporalities onto a single plane can be observed in South Asian manuscript painting over a long period: examples date from the high noon

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Fig. 1: Faiz Allah (attr.), Palace, harem and garden, manuscript illumination, 1765, Copenhagen, The David Collection.

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Fig. 2: Madhu Khanazad, Aflatun plays music to the animals, manuscript illumination, ca. 1595, London, British Library.

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of pictorial production at the Mughal courts under the patronage of the Emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, and about which much has already been written. The second image dates to a century and a half earlier—it is a painting by the artist Madhu Khanazad, which was produced in the court workshop of the Mughal emperor Akbar at Lahore in 1595 (fig. 2). It belongs to a Persian manuscript, the Khamsa of the poet Nizami.15 The text was first composed in Iran at the turn of the thirteenth century and underwent many re-editions. Three hundred years later a new, and this time richly illustrated, edition was produced in North India. In this particular episode, Aflatun, the Persian name for Plato, forms part of the circle of Greek philosophers at the court of Alexander—or Sikandar, as he is called in Persian. To outdo his rival Aristu (Aristotle), Aflatun invents an instrument based on the laws of universal harmony, on which he plays soul-stirring music that can attract wild animals and charm them to the point of intoxication. In the words of the poet Nizami: when he played on it “neither did the young wolf attack the sheep nor did the fierce lion pay attention to the wild ass.”16 Nizami’s commentary became the basis for an earlier interpretation of this image, where it was read as an example of a cultural transfer of Orphic notions of universal harmony grafted onto Solomonic ideals of perfect justice symbolised by the peaceful concord of animals; this ideal was then adapted by the Mughal rulers to ideologically frame notions of kingship.17 Without undermining this earlier view I would like to look at this image from another perspective, drawing attention to some of its features that have remained unexplained in earlier interpretations. I refer here to aspects that go beyond the literary requirements of the text and are therefore unique to the visual representation of the subject, an aspect which marked the practice of court artists both in Iran and North India.18 To begin with, the musical instrument which Aflatun plays has been described in the text as an arghanun, an organ whose creation is credited to the tenth-century philosopher Al Farabi; it was made by stretching a gazelle skin perfumed with musk over a gourd to which strings were set.19 In Madhu Khanazad’s painting the instrument is a European pipe organ, based on a real example that had made its way to North India through one of many networks of object exchange, and which in the painted image comes to function as a sign of cultural difference. This is reinforced by a further characteristic of the painted image. Embedded in the organ is a collage of coloured drawings, each one proclaiming its specific cultural moorings: the bust of a man, whose hat is a marker of his European identity; below is the image of an artist painting a European; on the left above, a Christian scene, either a nativity or the annunciation, several examples of which were available to and copied by local artists; and below a drawing of Majnu in the desert communing with animals (fig. 3 detail). The organ reappears together with the drawings of European figures on the margins of a folio of the Jahangir album, preserved in the Berlin State library.20 This particular mode of engagement with migrant images and traditions constitutes a practice of referencing or citation from different visual traditions—both the local and the distant—as a particular form of incorporation, one which motions towards difference, and juxtaposes without assimilating or erasing that difference. That which is appropri-

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Fig. 3: Madhu Khanazad, Aflatun plays music to the animals, detail with European pipe organ.

ated is not fully absorbed, but simply made visible by juxtaposing with a different pictorial mode. Little attention is paid to a coherent narrative; on the contrary, the inserted elements disrupt the narrative even as they remain alien to it. The explanations offered for the phenomena described in both the images above—of juxtaposing either seemingly incongruous modes of vision or of single elements used as pictorial codes—all recognise mobility as an evident and crucial factor. At the same time, however, they rest on the premise that a canonical pictorial mode—the naturalist-perspectival mode of illusionism, based on certain forms of recession and organisation of space around a single vanishing point together with the use of techniques like trompe l’œil and sfumato—developed as a modern, rational form of sight and of plotting the world in Europe where a ‘medieval way of seeing’ was being repudiated. Following a linear logic, modern vision then is believed to have travelled to other regions of the world as a fully formed and self-confident mode. The encounter with local regimes of visuality is frequently characterised in terms of partial absorption or of a failure to attain the full technical mastery required by illusionist forms. An art historical discourse about the “difficulties” experienced by North Indian artists in creating figures in space that would make for spatial coherence is marked by a consensus around the idea of failure to attain a perfect pictorial vision and underlines much of the writing on the subject.21 The assumptions underlying this quasi-consensual position in the historiography of South Asian pictorial practices from the early twentieth century and well into recent times form part of the underpinnings of art history’s disciplinary self-positioning. Art history’s emergence as a modern discipline in the nineteenth century, together with the modern university where it was located, was, it has been argued, accompanied by a “return” to the Renaissance. Cast as a canonical forma-

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tive moment of Western art, a historical juncture when claims to art’s modernity were seen to crystallise against a medieval background of cult objects and artisanal production, the Renaissance came to serve as a the privileged object of art historical knowledge.22 A founding figure of this genealogy was Erwin Panofsky, whose pivotal essay of 1927 (given as a talk in 1925), “Perspective as Symbolic Form” provided the scholarly apparatus with which to make an essentially modern epistemological balance between subject and object theoretically explicit.23 For Panofsky the advent of perspective—“the transformation of psychophysiological space into mathematical space… an objectification of the subjective,”24 representing vision as disembodied and distant—was at the same time the advent of a reflexive self-awareness about the nature of art. In other words, this reflexivity opened the door for a serious study of art’s history: the moment of grasping perspectival vision was also the moment that art history as a discipline became possible.25 While Panofsky’s construct was subjected to critical revision in later years by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hubert Damisch as well as in discussions within film studies26, its powerful narrative of origins has profoundly shaped Western scholarship’s engagement with art outside of the West. The historical juncture when artists in Europe, beginning with Cézanne and continuing with the Cubists, Expressionists, and Surrealists, staged a powerful revolt against the pictorial principles of naturalist art, coincided with the introduction of art schools providing teaching of academic art and ‘modern’ methods of figural drawing as well as the introduction of art history in the distant colonies.27 Canons, which were destabilised under the aegis of artistic modernism in Western Europe, transported a “hyperreal”28 conception of the West to Asian contexts and continued to remain an entrenched basis of historiography; these were then absorbed within indigenous nationalist approaches to art historical writing, once colonial texts had been purged of the crassest of anti-colonial judgments.29

III. Let me now return to the examination of pictorial practices with a view to addressing issues that look beyond the above framework. In what follows, the images I will discuss could be regarded as a condensation of temporal moments, which then act as a space to make difference—or heterogeneity, to use Clifford’s term30—encountered through circulation visible; the image acts as a site upon which to negotiate and theorise about its self-constitution through transculturation. The Jesuit missions were initially the principal agents involved in the transmission of visual and material artefacts––engravings, paintings, crucifixes—from centres in Europe to locations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; the images that we view as vehicles of Western visual practice were shaped by Christianity on its global routes via its missions. These were primarily engravings produced at centres such as Antwerp and included the famous Polyglot Bible as well as Flemish, German, and Italian prints whose production was anchored in a context of Christian devotional

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Fig. 4: Philips Galle after Maarten van Heemskerk, Saint Matthew and the Angel, engraving, 1562, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

imagery: they were intended as a source of Christian narratives in keeping with the Council of Trent’s conviction that images possessed the power to capture “the visual senses and lead man to recognition of a higher truth.”31 In other words, such images were about visualising Christian doctrine and closing the gap between faith and reason. From that perspective the seemingly fluid connection between real and pictorial space was meant to mirror the heavenly in earthly terms along an articulated continuum, though equally subject to interruptions and disjunctures that also emanated from the devotional character of the representations. A couple of examples illustrate this. The print Saint Matthew and the Angel (fig. 4) refers to the truth of the Gospel signified by the writing of the word by St. Matthew, a motif which was read in the South Asian context through the filter of archetypal debates, both scholarly and theological, about truth and falsity. The second example is an engraving by Raphael Sadeler of a painting by the Flemish artist Martin de Vos—Dolor—which pays homage to Dürer’s St Jerome in his Study and portrays the contemplative life of a Christian saint (fig. 5). Both these prints provide examples of attempted spatial illusion, which is, however, only partially accomplished technically. In both prints breaks in the lines of recession are observable. This is especially evident in the Sadeler print, which effects a demarcation of inner and outer space, each subject to a different treatment. The interior features a

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Fig. 5: Raphael Sadeler after Maerten de Vos, Dolor, engraving, 1591, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

large painting of the Last Judgment in the background, demonstrating that perspectival space went hand-in-hand with religious connotations. Both these prints break up the picture plane into fragments, making each the product of a distinct pictorial mode, a phenomenon in Flemish art that Victor Stoichita has designated as “splitting” or the production of antitheses. Initially condemned by contemporary theorists as “pictorial heresies,” this mode of theorising pictorial practice acquired considerable resonance in North European painting and its printed replicas.32 I will return to the specific cultural response to this feature in a South Asian setting later in this essay. The reception of these images in the North Indian court ateliers was not necessarily articulated as a superior mode of representation that was optically exact and needed to be mastered and universally applied. Rather, their visual characteristics were perceived as representing an alien (coming from firanq)33 or specifically Christian mode of pictorial practice, a distinct visuality that was classified in such terms and could be acquired through copying and deployed to present subjects considered Western/Christian. Certain motifs—such as the window with the baroque curtain— came to function as codes for Western subjects and pictorial modes, as seen in this rendering of the Mughal artist Kesu Das of the subject of St. Matthew and the Angel 34 (fig. 6, pl. II). The awareness of different modalities of seeing and translating the ‘seen’ into image was inscribed within the few textual accounts available on the art of painting in the courts. For example, the chronicler, philosopher, and court historian, Abu’l Fazl Allami draws up a chronological sequence of artists and the pictorial modes they stood for: he ascribes the highest respect to the Persian master Bihzad, then refers to the “magic making” of the European artists, who possessed the quality of making “inanimate objects appear to come alive.”35 These and other responses to European images in the South Asian courts and the pictorial effects they achieved were wide-ranging and ambivalent. The theme of illusion exercised enormous fascination: engagements with it through practices of copying, juxtaposing, or creating playful reversals display an intrinsic attraction to the ena-

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Fig. 6: Kesu Das, Saint Matthew and the Angel, gouache on paper, 1588, Oxford, Bodleian Library.

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bling potentialities of naturalistic visual regimes—the “magical” power Abu’l Fazl and Jesuit accounts refer to. At the same time, illusionist ways of seeing, when they travelled to South Asia, entered a field of opposing pulls because vision itself—in the Asian contexts I examine—was implicated through a set of theological and literary discourses wherein the image was perceived both as a space of desire and yet as having a seductive power that could lead to a form of capitulation leaning dangerously close to idolatry.36 In the discussion of the engagement with illusionist art it might be useful not to think of it as purely a matter of acquiring expertise over a set of techniques and a form of coded information in order to enhance the narrative performance of an image. Instead, we need to address the philosophical underpinnings of this way of seeing and representing the world. In the early modern Eurasian context investigated here, the semantic content of illusionist vision appears to have functioned as a metaphor for philosophical and theological questions. Indeed, the entire edifice of ethical and epistemological discourses upon which the interpretation of illusionism and its particular uses—selective and in combination with non-illusionist forms—rests forms a vast subject awaiting detailed research. At this juncture I can only refer to some of the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of a supposedly coherent or controllable vision of the world. In the literary texts and aesthetic discussions that were a shared resource among the elites of imperial courts across Central and South Asia during the centuries following Mongolian invasions, an illusionist representational mode was identified as a form of deception that eroded the space between the viewer and the image and fostered a relationship between the two that could blur the boundary between absorbed viewing and idol-worship.37 This view expressed a discernible tension between theological and philosophical caution against idolatry and the captivating powers of the image—the latter reveals a fascination with the communicative potential of the visual medium and its ideological uses, as can be observed in the rich reservoir of paintings of court life as well as allegorical representations of political ideals produced in all major imperial centres of the Eurasian regions. The tension was articulated, for instance, through the foundation myths about painting. One example was narrated in the Sikandar Nama—stories from Alexander’s court—and translated in different languages over centuries; it travelled with migrant warriors to new sites where they established kingdoms. Among these was the story of a competition between the painters of Rum und Chin (Greece and China)––retold in the Khamsa by poet Nizami, which then travelled in numerous versions across Asia––where Alexander judged which side had the most skilled artists.38 The two groups of painters used a wall as a surface upon which they could demonstrate their skills and were separated by a curtain. While the Greeks painted a picture on the wall, the Chinese simply polished the surface to mirror-like perfection. When the curtain was drawn the painting was reflected in the mirror, the lesson being: one form of illusion replicates itself. Another circulating tale was that of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, also an artist who, upon his arrival in China, was deceived by the appearance of a pond made of perfectly polished glass; he tried to fill

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his pitcher, but ended up breaking the glass. In revenge he painted a completely naturalistic dead dog with its entrails torn out beside the real pond, which prevented the villagers from coming there to get their daily supply of water.39 A recent study of pre-modern Islamic book culture draws our attention to the close, often inextricable, relationship between the aesthetic and intellectual agendas of manuscripts and illustrations, wherein an image as the eye perceived it was not to be conflated with an image of the mind. Early Islamic texts resorted to the use of pairs of similar but non-identical images as a pedagogical device wherein the viewer was encouraged to critically compare the images on paper with other sources of knowledge in order to abstract a “mental” image of a phenomenon.40 The distinction between “appearance” or “outer form” (zahir, surat) and “truth” or “inner meaning” (batin, manavi), which was articulated in Islamic mystic thought and poetry, was further elaborated in the Indian context by thinkers such as Abu’l Fazl who put forward arguments about writing and painting. While seeing and knowing stood as the axes along which the critique of painting per se was expressed, Abu’l Fazl assures the reader of his history that the Emperor Akbar was an excellent judge of both and therefore capable of using “outer form” to lead to “inner meaning.”41 Going beyond mere eulogy, the court historian built up an argument in a way that negotiated theological tensions while providing an explanation for Akbar’s patronage of painting and above all his deep interest in a wide range of new art forms, notably European paintings and prints, the “rare forms” used by “the painters of firanq,” as he referred to them.42 It would appear that intellectual stances and beliefs such as those described above, circulated and made up a shared universe across Asia and the Mediterranean, all cautioning against the slippery gap between truth and illusion. The Hindu cosmos, for instance, was governed by the belief that while the gods had the power to confuse the real and the illusory (maya), devotees were constantly challenged to distinguish one from the other. This message was conveyed by a painting from the court of Bikaner, drawn from the text Bhagwata Purana, whose narrative on the life of Krishna was transmitted through recitations over generations of devotees.43 The painting depicts the story of Krishna who responds to a prank played by the God Brahma by creating a group of perfectly simulated young cowherds and their flock within a natural and architectural setting whose life-like appearance manages to deceive the world. In this case the artist seems to be no longer governed by the necessity of drawing upon naturalistic pictorial means as a language to portray a Christian subject. The mastery of techniques of illusion and sfumato, attained over a century and a half since their arrival at the Mughal centres from whence migrant artists carried them across regional courts, was skilfully used in this instance to draw attention to philosophical questions about vision. In other words, multiple and contrasting regimes serve to problematise the dangers of maya or illusion to create naturalistic effects, which are meant to deceive. It can be argued that it is the availability of contrasting modes that enables the creation of a transformed conception of pictorial space. Drawing upon Michel de Certeau’s designation of space (espace) in literary-cum-urban topographies44 as an intersection of mobile ele-

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ments—as opposed to the stability of a place (lieu)—pictorial space too, as the above examples reveal, can function as a polyvalent unity of opposing orders. Space is no longer univocal or stable; its inclusion of multiple “vectors of direction”45 allows it to bring narrative together with iconic functions and in the process introduce a fresh dynamic into an image brought to life through words and recitation, as is the case for a large number of paintings that accompany narratives, such as the Bhagwata Purana. Artists of many of these works continue to draw upon a sub-stratum of iconic practices that date as far back as an early Buddhist representation of the jātaka tales where linear narrativity is renounced in favour of indexical signs that serve as reminders of the Buddha’s presence;46 yet they are now able to infuse its iconicity with a fresh dynamic wherein the narrative content can evoke a variety of memories, actions, and emotions.

IV. When investigating cultural constructs of vision, the interactive moments are also about the encounter between the material and the visual. It involves, on the one hand, questioning the notion of art as primarily visual: in the South Asian context where seeing was one element of a “corpothetic” sensibility47 we need to address the interface between the material, visual, aural, and sensorial as palpable objects from distant shores were transposed onto the two dimensional plane of an image, be it painted from a crucifix, a globe, or an hour glass, or cut-out from prints and pasted, redrawn, relocated, or reframed. Mobile materiality in the form of images as objects induced a form of cultural self-fashioning that involved, together with cognitive skills, bodily routines and the senses. Furthermore, these transactions with alterity and mimesis were not confined to courtly patrons who commissioned and pored over the finished works: artists, irrespective of individual faiths, training, or identification with particular styles revealed the capacity to copy, emulate, and dialogue with different styles, each of which was classified and labelled. Scribal notes on the margins of manuscripts, paintings, or preparatory drawings often record the names of the artists involved in the production of a work, sometimes they even state the number of days spent painting each image as well as list occasional instructions from the patron conveyed via librarians or those in charge of the workshops (taswirkhana).48 The evidence of the artists’ names shows that paintings that appear stylistically irreconcilable were created by the same hand and testify to the ability and actual practice of artists to work in more than one idiom at any given time. This intriguing evidence, according to Seyller, raises doubts about the tendency in art historical writing to ascribe “individual” styles to court painters.49 From a transcultural perspective, it can be used to destabilise dichotomous models of relationalities, which alternate between complete absorption and resistance or refusal.50 Instead of flattening difference or even ignoring its sharp edges or disjunctures, transregional circulatory practices would appear to have generated fresh perceptions and representations involving recognition, an effort to fix, name, clas-

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Fig. 7: Page from Gulshan Album, gouache and gold on paper, early 17th century, Tehran, Gulshan Library.

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Fig. 8: Left: Page from Gulshan Album (detail). Right: Georg Pencz, Geometria from The Seven Liberal Arts, engraving, first half 16th century, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

sify, and ultimately domesticate difference. Yet even the move to control meaning did not preclude a dialogical engagement, rather it depended on and partook of it. Material interaction with pictorial vision found a home within albums produced by artists for their patrons. These were created according to a practice of literally reusing picture fragments or pictures to compose new images or to collect them in the form of albums. The album, or muraqqa, was a central unit for the collection and display of images. It was composed by physically cutting out fragments from existing paintings to be pasted on to the pages of the album. The Persian term muraqqa means patchwork and refers to the cloak worn by mendicants or Sufis with patches taken from the garments of revered saints.51 The album brought together paintings—or cut-outs of them—from Persia, Northern Europe, Turkey, the Deccan and juxtaposed them to highlight their culturally alien qualities in a way that preserved the visibility of plurality while seeking to grasp and master it. Albums of paintings from Northern India furnish instances of the ways in which the album could become a site for compiling migrant images, either cut out and re-located or, more often, first copied by local artists from other sources and then cut and pasted (figs. 7, 8). Images and fragments were drawn from diverse sources and placed together on pages of albums with each page becoming a space for multiple “stories”52 revealing an explicit eschewal of a linear narrative (fig. 9). Instead, the simultaneity of times and regimes enabled through acts of abstracting, relocating, and juxtapos-

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Fig. 9: Page from Saint Petersburg Album, composed of four fragments, early 17th century, Saint Petersburg, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oriental Studies.

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ing, of painting over to smooth edges, and of layering, is constitutive of new pictorial space in which the agency to map the world is enacted through the modes of seeing it. The physical act of cutting, reassembling, and pasting—the act of combining which at the same times keeps the elements separate—works to suggest geographical and cultural distance and simultaneously a voyage through the haptic relationship with the material across this distance; boundaries are delineated, crossed, and reset. As material expressions of the ideals of connoisseurship, and a celebration of the love to collect, classify, and canonise through selection, albums were conspicuous for their opulent materiality. Their precious bindings differentiate between the textures of leather, lacquer, embossed surfaces on the exterior, and a radiant gold sunburst (Shamsa) as frontispiece. Viewing the album was an often solitary, exclusive, and introspective experience embodied in posture and gesture—a human form bent over the manuscript stand or holding the miniature album within joint palms, to pore over each detail of the page, a self-contained stance shutting out the world beyond. Narrative images—like the example from Bhagwata Purana cited above— were viewed with a prior oral knowledge of the content and were often sung or recited, which was the aural filter through which seeing took place. While the miniature album is rare to encounter or recover today—in view of its being often taken apart and its folios sold on the art market as individual pieces—a few stray examples are still available for scrutiny and are often reproduced in studies of Mughal art. One such example is the Gulshan album, which derives its name from the Gulshan/Gulistan Library in Tehran, where it is conserved today.53 The album was composed of works by Persian masters as well as a large number of European images that were copied and then cut and pasted, often with a view to registering and classifying heterogeneity.54 Different component elements of an album page are frequently held together by figurative borders sourced from different works and archetypal figures, as figs. 7, 8 and 9 illustrate. Borders (hashiyas) work as frames to both contain an image and connect it to the space beyond. Interestingly, such borders are regularly interspersed with figures and objects—craftsmen making paper, calligraphers at work, a manuscript stand, or a pot containing gold leaf burnishing—whose subject is the production of paintings, manuscripts, and albums (fig. 10). The frame then becomes a space where the coming into being of an image as an act of production is made visible; it articulates a process which illusionism effaces from the painted surface. The object-quality of the two dimensional album-page was highlighted through a further, purely material dimension: the use of colour as palimpsest. While colour, which in the Latourian sense comprises a range of raw substances that are transported across distances, can be transformed and sublimated into aesthetic effect,55 pigment, given its chromatic materiality, can make the painted surface a field of force. The picture becomes a surface through which to experiment with the indexicality and materiality of colour: in the paintings studied here colour is used in many possible ways—either as a translucent watery surface to suggest the insubstantiality of distant landscapes, or in opaque layers to render faces as resistant to

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Fig. 10: Page from Mughal Album, gouache, ink and gold on paper, ca.1600, Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution.

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emotive tremor (like the over-painted faces of deities), alternatively in conjunction with other materials such as beetle wings to render the glistening effects of jewellery or to evoke the life of the dark night. Pigment, described by Natasha Eaton as “affective material,”56 could impart to the image a sensuous presence that exceeds utilisation and simply asserts itself as resistant matter. Chromatic surfaces—silver and especially gold—both echoed and rendered tangible the innumerable references to precious metals in literary genres.57 The resplendent materiality of gold adorning album pages challenged the notion of an image as illusion by asserting its value as a precious object by making its thingness palpable. The use of gold, which prevailed across the Eurasian empires, in the form of gold dust used in manuscripts,58 underwent a transformation in the workshops of the Indian courts where it was used as liquid paint created through the melting of gold leaf. The phenomenon, by which albums were created as a physical act of transfer and recontextualisation of fragments, was then reconfigured as a pictorial juxtaposition, actually painted but resorting to an illusion of cutting and pasting the visual regimes that came with migrant images. This practice was used to create specific viewing habits, frames, and codes, all of which sought to reflexively problematise the complexity of vision and its potential to signify and mobilise that went beyond a ‘factual’ observation of the world and nature. These ideas are clustered in the following work, which was a more self-conscious attempt to lay bare the transactions built into the act of image production as the fabrication of illusion. A painting from the Jahangir album in Berlin simulates the idea of a collage through four figures placed next to each other above and below on the flat picture plane (fig. 11, pl. III). Three of the figures are clearly artists: the one on the right is shown painting a landscape with agile figures, possibly the scene of a hunt, while the other paints what seems like a picture of the Virgin Mary. The artist sits in front of a window that looks like a picture—suggesting on the one hand the overlap between the window and the painted view as in the Albertian formula, which was then transported through different kinds of usages in the prints that travelled to South Asia. In the print of Saint Matthew receiving the angel, discussed earlier (fig. 3), the artist effected a break both in terms of space and scale: the inner space, treated as a fragment of the spectator’s space, deploys the qualities of trompe l’œil that inscribe it with a projective, intrusive quality; the wall abruptly breaks to suggest an aperture, a window with a receding view of the outside showing miniaturised figures, buildings, boats which, though they ignore scale, could represent a painted view. The figures of the saint and the angel do not face the window/image or even register an awareness of it—rather, it is the spectator’s eye that is meant to take in both fragments at one glance. Victor Stoichita’s analysis of the interactions between such split-levels in paintings and prints from Northern Europe reads these breaks as intrinsic to the Christian contexts of these images: antitheses are frequently a device of allegorisation and transmission of Christian truths.59 The use of the window/niche/painting in the image of artists from the Jahangir album—as in other examples where court artists pick up the motif—plays on different significations of the window in a new context: for instance, the window designated an

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Fig. 11: Artists at work, page from Jahangir Album, gouache on paper, early 17th century, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

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opening into the inside world, an internal mirror through which to filter the outside world and see the immanence of God, an analogy that is frequently used in Islamic mystical texts. And yet the act of juxtaposing the window/image to other planes within this Mughal image works in the Derridan sense of a parergon60: it brings into the representation the realities of multiple positions and emphasises the lack of stability in a story that can shift ground and even move across time and scale. On the top left of the collage-like composition an artist is shown offering a picture in the characteristic humble posture, to someone outside of the picture frame. A closer look at the object he offers reveals it to be a self-portrait, which is proffered to a person who occupies the space of the viewer. Following the frequently used Indo-Persian literary device of placing stories within stories, this fragment features a picture within a picture that can multiply infinitely. The simultaneity of artists and their work within a pastiche-like composition problematises multiple, conflicting modes of organising pictorial space. Like parerga, the individual fragments here work as notations that unseat certainties in order to show the complexity of pictorial practice when confronted with plurality.

V. Art historical practice today, also confronted with the challenge of theorising plurality, has tended to alternate between the poles of human universals and radical cultural relativism. The disciplinary move away from recounting a history of style and towards relocation in the somewhat amorphous field of visual culture proceeds—often implicitly—on the assumption of the visual as an anthropological constant. The above investigation has argued for the need to historicise vision by examining interactive moments when mobile images and objects enter into complex relationalities engendered along the routes they travel. It falls in line with recent critical voices that have questioned the privileging of European epistemologies,61 and have argued that extending investigations to cultural sites outside of Europe would induce a questioning of the assumptions of universality and teleological models. While a strain of scholarship today has urged going beyond a simple juxtaposition of regional investigations to rethink our contexts by questioning and examining processes of inscription, accommodation, or resistance, this is still a largely uncharted course that continues to beg a number questions about the terms of a framework within which transregional investigations could meaningfully be pursued. Problematising routes as a constitutive space might be one way towards inflecting the act of seeing both geographically and materially.

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Notes   1 This paper is part of my ongoing research on regimes and the practices of imaging making in the Mughal and regional courts of South Asia during the early modern period. An earlier, shorter version will appear in Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, eds., Global Artistic Circulations and the History of Art (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming 2015). David Armitage, “Is there a Pre-History of Globalization?” in Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective, ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (London: Routledge, 2004), 165–176; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Explorations in Connected History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005) 2 vols.; Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).   2 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the late Twentieth Century (Cambridge MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999).  3 Flood, Objects of Translation (cf. note 1), 3–5.   4 For instance, the field of study designated Islamic Art was established through the acquisition and collection of large numbers of mobile objects, see Stephen Vernoit, ed., Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors and Collections 1850–1950 (London: Tauris, 2000).   5 The notion was coined by Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 27–47.   6 Dana Leibsohn, “Introduction: Geographies of Sight” in Seeing across Cultures in the Early Modern World, ed. Dana Leibsohn, and Jeanette F. Peterson (Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 1.   7 Michael Yonan, “Towards a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies” West 86th 18/2 (2011), 232–248, here 240. See also Christopher Pinney, “Creole Europe: A Reflection of a Reflection” Journal of New Zealand Literature 20 (2002), 125–161.   8 Claire J. Farago, “Vision itself has a History: ‘Race’, Nation and Renaissance Art History” in Reframing the Renaissance: Art and Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, ed. Claire J. Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 67–88; Claire J. Farago and Robert Zwijenberg, eds., Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art in and out of History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Robert S. Nelson, ed., Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: seeing as others saw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Pinney, “Creole Europe” (cf. note 7); Hans Belting, Florenz und Bagdad. Eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks (Munich: Beck Verlag, 2008); Mary D. Sheriff, ed., Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art since the Age of Exploration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Leibsohn and Peterson, Seeing Across Cultures (cf. note 6); Monica Juneja, “Braided Histories? Visuelle Praktiken des indischen Moghulreichs zwischen Mimesis und Alterität” Historische Anthroplogie 16/2 (2008), 187–204.   9 James Elkins, ed., Is Art History Global? (New York: Routledge, 2007); James Elkins, Zhivka Valiavicharska, and Alice Kim, eds., Art and Globalization (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010); Matthew Rampley, “Art History and Cultural Difference: Alfred Gell’s Anthropology of Art” Art History 24, no. 4 (2005), 524–551; Kitty Zijlmans, and Wilfried Van Damme, eds., World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008); Monica Juneja, “Global Art History and the ‘Burden of Representation’” in Global Studies. Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture, ed. Hans Belting, Jakob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter Weibel (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz, 2011), 274–297. Matthias Bruhn, Monica Juneja, and Elke A. Werner, eds., “Universalität der Kunstgeschichte?“ Theme Issue Kritische Berichte 40/2 (2012). 10 John Onians, The Art Atlas (London: Lawrence King, 2008), 11. 11 James Elkins speaks of “indigenous terms”: James Elkins, “Different Horizons for a Concept of the Image” in On Pictures and Words that Fail Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 188–209. For a critical take on Elkins, Parul D. Mukherjee, “Putting the World in a Book: How Global Art Can be Today” in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence, ed. Jaynie Anderson (Carlton: Miegunyah Press, 2009), 109–115; Juneja, “Global Art History” (cf. note 9), 279–80. 12 The concept of a Eurasian zone was presented in Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 735–762. It has proved to be a useful and influential unit of framing since then.

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13 Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, eds., The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Thomas Lentz, Glenn D. Lowry, and Jonathan Rabinovitz, eds., Timur and the Princely Vision. Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989); Linda Komaroff, ed., Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006). 14 Ebba Koch, “The Hierarchical Principles of Shah Jahani Painting” in King of the World: The Padshahnama, an Imperial Manuscript from the Royal Library, ed. Milo C. Beach, Ebba Koch, and Wheeler M. Thackston (London: Azimuth Editions, 1997), 130–143. 15 Barbara Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsah of Nizami, (London: British Library, 1995); Karin Ådahl, A Khamsa of Nizami of 1439: Origin of the Miniatures, a Presentation and Analysis (Uppasala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1981). 16 Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsah of Nizami (cf. note 15), 58. 17 Robert Skelton, “Imperial Symbolism in Mughal Painting” in Content and Context of Visual arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla P. Soucek (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 179–191; Ebba Koch, Shah Jahan and Orpheus. The Pietre Dure Decoration and the Programme of the Throne in the Hall of Public Audiences at the Red Fort of Delhi (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1988), 29. 18 Artists did not execute paintings as literal illustrations of textual accounts. See John Seyller, Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Walters Art Museum Khamsa of Amir Khusraw of Delhi (Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2001), 112–113. 19 An organ of this type is the subject of a painting by an unnamed artist, dating to around 1600, conserved at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Inv. M.80.6.7. 20 Jahangir Album fol. 1a, reproduced in Ernst Kühnel and Hermann Goetz, Indische Buchmale reien aus dem Jahangir-Album der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: Scarabaeus Verlag, 1924), Plate 28. 21 While Koch interprets this play with contrary aesthetics in Mughal painting as expressions of “hierarchical principles” within imperial ideologies, others have read this phenomenon as a failure to absorb fully a level of technical mastery required by illusionist forms: Koch, “The Hierarchical Principles” (cf. note 14); Milo C. Beach, “The Gulshan Album and its European Sources” Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin 63 (1965), 63–91; Jeremiah P. Losty, “Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh, 1750–1780” in After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, ed. Barbara Schmitz (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2002), 34–55. 22 Margaret Iversen and Stephen Melville, Writing Art History. Disciplinary Departures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 15–16. 23 “Perspektive als symbolische Form,” lecture delivered in 1924 at the Warburg Library, Hamburg, published Erwin Panofksy, “Die Perspektive als symbolische Form” in Vorträge der Warburg-Bibliothek 1924–25, ed. Fritz Saxl (Berlin: Teubner, 1927), 258–330; a modern English translation Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood (New York: Zone Books, 1991). 24 Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form (cf. note 23), 66. 25 Iversen and Melville, Writing Art History (cf. note 22), 122–123. 26 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le doute de Cézanne” (1945), repr. in Sens et non-sens (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 13–33; Hubert Damisch, L’origine de la perspective (Paris: Flammarion, 1987); Iversen and Melville, Writing Art History (cf. note 22), ch. 6. 27 Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Post-Colonial India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004). 28 The term was coined by Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History” in Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 37. 29 For a discussion of this historiography, Monica Juneja, “Das Visuelle in Sprache übersetzen? Der wissenschaftliche Diskurs und die Polyvalenz indischer Bilder” Zeitenblicke 7/2 (2008), http:// www.zeitenblicke.de/2008/2/juneja/index_html (last accessed February, 2014). 30 Clifford, Routes (cf. note 2), 3.

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31 Ebba Koch, “The Influence of the Jesuit Missions on the Symbolic Representations of the Mughal Emperors” in Islam in India. Studies and Commentaries, ed. Christian W. Troll (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 14–29. 32 Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image. An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 3ff. 33 Abu’l Fazl Allami, A’in-i Akbari, trans. H. Blochmann (Delhi: Low Price Publications, repr. 2001, first published 1927), 2 vols., vol. 1, 102–103. 34 Among other examples of this usage: The disputing physicians, folio from Khamsa of Nizami, by Miskina, reproduced in Brend, The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa (cf. note 15), fig. 3; or a leaf from an album commissioned by Jahangir featuring the Virgin and Child by the painter Basawan (painted ca. 1590 subsequently included by Jahangir in the album), San Diego Museum of Art. I have discussed this image at some length in: “Die Madonna des indischen Malers Basawan” in Kanon Kunstgeschichte. Einführung in Werke und Methoden, ed. Kristin Marek and Martin Schulz (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, forthcoming 2015), vol. 3. 35 Abu’l Fazl Allami, A’in-i Akbari (cf. note 33), vol. 1, 113–115. 36 For an incisive and nuanced account of idolatry in Islam, Finbarr B. Flood, “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm and the Museum” The Art Bulletin LXXXIV, no. 4 (2002), 641–659, here 643ff. 37 Ibid. 38 David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400–1600. From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 143–144. 39 Brend, Mani paints a dead dog by Sur Gujarati, from Khamsa of Nizami, reproduced in The Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa (cf. note 15), figs. 33–34. 40 Persis Berlekamp, Wonder, Image and Cosmos in Medieval Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 41 Abu’l Fazl Allami, A’in-i Akbari (cf. note 33), vol. 1, 103. 42 Ibid., 102–103. 43 Reproduced in Molly E. Aitken, The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), fig. 1.8 and 30–31. 44 Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien. Arts de faire (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1980), 208–210. 45 Ibid., 208. 46 Robert L. Brown, “Narrative as Icon: The Jātaka Stories in Ancient Indian and Southeast Asian Architecture” in Sacred Biography in Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia, ed. Juliane Schober (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 64–109; Vidya Dehejia, Discourse in Early Buddhist Art. Visual Narratives of India (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2005). 47 The term is borrowed from Christopher Pinney, “Piercing the Skin of the Idol” in Beyond Aesthetics. Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, ed. Christopher Pinney and Nicholas Thomas (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001), 157–178. See also Diana L. Eck, Darśan. Seeing the Divine Image in India, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), who describes seeing as “a kind of touching,” 9 and ch. 2. 48 John Seyller, “Scribal Notes on Mughal Manuscript Illustrations” Artibus Asiae, vol. 48, 3–4 (1987), 247–277, here 261. 49 Ibid., note 60. 50 This model of argumentation marks Hans Belting’s study Florenz und Bagdad (cf. note 8), where discussions of Asian regions are trapped in essentialisms as the complex histories of engagement with European imagery in these regions have not been investigated. Contrary to Belting’s assumptions, artists, patrons, and writers on art in the Eurasian regions following the Mongol conquest did not eschew the question of images, rather they confronted it directly, discussed its legality, and juxtaposed it with Western modalities of image-making, as I have discussed above for the case of North India. 51 Roxburgh, The Persian Album (cf. note 38), 181–82; Elaine Wright, Muraqqa. Imperial Albums from the Chester Beatty Library Dublin (Alexandria, Virginia: Art Services International, 2008), xviii. 52 De Certeau uses the term “récits”, L’invention du quotidien (cf. note 44), 205–207. 53 Mohammad-Hasan Semsar, Golestan Palace Library: A Portfolio of Miniature Paintings and Calligraphy (Tehran: Zarrin and Simin Books, 2001).

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54 Beach, “The Gulshan Album” (cf. note 21), 66, where he refers to this eclectic quality as an “indiscriminate” combination of religious and secular elements. In the words of James Clifford, collage is a “way of making space for heterogeneity, for historical and political, not simply aesthetic…” Clifford, Routes (cf. note 2), 3. 55 Michael Serres and Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture and Time (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008). 56 Natasha Eaton, “Notes from the Field: Materiality” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 1 (2013), 14. 57 Cited in Natasha Eaton, “Nomadism of colour: painting, technology and waste in the chromo-zones of colonial India ca. 1765–ca. 1860” Journal of Material Culture 17 (2012), 65. 58 Sheila S. Blair, “Color and Gold: The Decorated Papers used in Manuscripts in Later Islamic Times” Muqarnas 17 (2000), 24–36, here 27. 59 Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image (cf. note 31), 3–16. 60 Jacques Derrida, La verité en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), 44ff. 61 Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, Art is not what you think it is (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Nelson, Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance (cf. note 8), Leibsohn and Peterson, Seeing across Cultures (cf. note 6).

Illustrations Fig. 1: Faiz Allah (attr.), Palace, harem and garden, 1765, Awadh, Illuminated manuscript page, 455 × 318 mm, Copenhagen, The David Collection, inv. 46/1980 (photo: Pernille Klemp). Fig. 2: Madhu Khanazad, Aflatun plays music to the animals, ca 1595, illuminated manuscript page, 302 × 198 mm, from Khamsa of Nizami, fol. 298a, London, British Library. Fig. 3: Detail of fig. 2. Fig. 4: Philips Galle after Maarten van Heemskerk, Saint Matthew and the Angel, 1562, engraving, 168 × 226 mm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, purchased with the support of the F.G. WallerFonds. Fig. 5: Raphael Sadeler after Maerten de Vos (1465), Dolor, 1591, engraving, 220 × 279 mm, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fig. 6: Kesu Das, Saint Matthew and the Angel, 1588, gouache on paper, 382 × 242 mm, Oxford, Bodleian Library. Fig. 7: Page from Gulshan Album, early 17th century, gouache and gold on paper, 411 × 256 mm, Tehran, Gulshan Library. Fig. 8: Left: detail of fig. 7; right: Georg Pencz, Geometria from The Seven Liberal Arts, engraving, 74 × 51 mm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Fig. 9: Page from Saint Petersburg Album, fol. 88a, early 17th century, composed of four fragments, all copies by different artists: two copies of the Madonna, a copy by Manohar Das of Aritmetica from The Seven Liberal Arts, and a copy of a portrait of a noblewoman in Spanish dress by a pupil of Velasquez, copy here by the Mughal artist Gul Muhammad. Saint Petersburg, Library of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Ms E14. Fig. 10: Page from Mughal Album, circa 1600. Calligraphic Folio by Mir Ali mounted on a page with marginal paintings showing stages of manuscript production. Gouache, ink and gold on paper, 348 × 233mm. Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, inv. F1954.116r. Fig. 11: Artists at work, page from Jahangir Album, early 17th century, gouache on paper, 400 × 535 mm, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung, Libri Picturati A 117, fol. 21r.

Eugene Y. Wang

Why Was There No Chinese Painting of Marco Polo? The vexed art of itinerancy Why was there no Chinese painting of Marco Polo’s travel to Yuan China? 1 The question is tricky, if not downright ill-considered, since there is no extant account of his travels in Chinese sources, let alone a painting on the subject. Historians have long-since accounted for the absence of any corroborative Chinese account of his extensive career in Yuan China,2 thus it is pointless to belabour the point. Nor does it make any sense to recycle the recent assertion that Marco Polo never went to China in the first place. Many specialists on the subject have convincingly put that suggestion to rest.3 In fact, it makes more sense to use Marco Polo as a means of raising the following general art historical questions rather than to dwell on his itinerancy in China: What were the chances that a European traveller would have been pictured in Yuan (1271–1368) China? How would he have been portrayed? Were the odds stacked against Europeans being portrayed in a straightforward way? In other words, was the faithful portraiture of individual foreign visitors a wellestablished pictorial convention at the time, or were they typically subsumed into genres other than portraits? And, finally, can we extrapolate some morals about the art of itinerancy from this historical case study? Fortunately we do have a good case by which we can elucidate these issues. Half a century after Polo’s departure from China, a Florentine named Giovanni Marignolli (fl. 1338–1353) travelled to Yuan China in 1342 as a papal emissary. He was recognised by Yuan China far more than Marco Polo ever was. Not only did the Chinese write about his visit, it also inspired some paintings. At least three fourteenth-century Chinese artists—Zhou Lang, Zhang Yanfu, and Ren Xianzuo (ca. 1287–1358)—painted in response to the event. Two versions of this—by Zhou and Ren respectively—are extant. The first (fig. 1, pl. IV) is a painting by Zhou Lang.4 The second version is a set of similar scrolls: the master scroll, which was painted by Ren Xianzuo and dates to 1342, is now in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing (fig. 2, pl. Va).5 Although the surviving scroll is truncated or cropped, a more comprehensive composition survives in a copy made by Ren Xianzuo’s son, Ren Bowen, and was produced some years later (fig. 3, pl. Vb). The son’s work included the portion at the beginning that had been cut out of the father’s scroll.6 Of the two versions, Zhou’s (fig. 1, pl. IV) was commissioned by the Yuan court, while the Ren version (fig. 2, pl. Va) was presented to the court in hopes of gaining official recognition.7 A comparison between the two versions reveals that Zhou made some curious decisions in the court-commissioned work. To begin with, there is a striking contrast between Zhou’s monochrome ink version and Ren’s full

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Fig.1: Zhou Lang, Tribute Horse from Europe, handscroll, 1342 (Ming copy?), Beijing, Palace Museum.

Fig. 2: Ren Xianzuo, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, 1342, Beijing, Palace Museum.

polychrome treatment. Although one might reasonably expect that this ceremonial occasion would have deserved all the pomp and circumstance the artist could muster, Zhou’s understated monochrome treatment appears, to our modern eyes, to have given the event short shrift. Just as striking is Zhou’s indifference towards the empirical facts about the European envoy and the gifts presented. By contrast, Ren’s version apparently makes a point of capturing the specific details. It establishes the travellers’ identities as decidedly foreign. For instance, a fine distinction is made between a Caucasian-looking man—an imaginary portrait of Giovanni Marignolli—and his dark-complexioned South Asian-looking escort; indeed, we

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know that Giovanni Marignolli’s itinerancy included South Asia. Ren’s version also evokes the travellers’ itinerancy through a number of other suggestive details. The exotic Persian- or Central Asian style saddle designs, for instance, hint at his extensive travels through foreign countries before reaching the final destination in China. By contrast, these carefully rendered details make Zhou’s version, where the horse is depicted unsaddled and there is no indication about its origins or about the itinerancy of its rider, all the more curious. In Zhou’s version it is clearly the horse that trumps everything else about the scene. The painting reveals no interest in the event of the European delegation’s

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Fig. 3: Ren Bowen, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, late 1340s, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Avery Brundage Collection.

visit: Nowhere in the composition is there a figure that even remotely suggests a European, and the papal gift horse is clearly the primary subject of the painting. Even on the subject of the horse, Zhou’s painting is free with the empirical facts. The court record specifies that the European gift horse was of “totally black [complexion], and that its two rear hooves are white.”8 According to this description it may have resembled the black steed with two white rear hooves used by the Ming emperor, Xuanzong (1398–1435), for hunting,9 or it may have been similar to the Dutch Warmblood, a thoroughbred breed from Gelderland and Groningen. By contrast, Zhou’s version presents a mottled horse, instead of a “pitch-black” one, with four white hooves. What could this mean?

Circumstances: the Celestial Steed as omen To further elucidate the circumstances surrounding Zhou’s work, I will begin with a discussion of the emperor and his entourage (fig. 1, pl. IV), who are depicted in anachronistic sartorial styles. For instance, the emperor is dressed as a Mongol ruler—or a generic Great Khan; however, none of his attendants wears a Yuanperiod robe.10 What is the reason for this discrepancy? The answer lies in the accepted trope of the emperor as the “son of heaven.” Traditional Chinese discourse typically compared the emperor to the North Star, also known as the Emperor Star, which was attended by constellations and planetary deities—Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, etc.11 Among them, Mercury invariably appears as a young female holding a brush. Thus, it comes as no surprise that in Zhou’s painting a brush-wielding lady appears behind the emperor, apparently intended to suggest the presence of Mercury attending the Emperor Star. Because the Mercury deity typically wears a “monkey-crown,” its appearance here in connection with the Emperor Star was not unusual. At the time this pictorial convention was used to make this Mercury/monkey association explicit, as can also be seen in another thir-

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teenth-century painting (fig. 4).12 The monkey connection was also considered a fitting reference to the emperor’s biography. Not only was Emperor Shundi, Toghōn Temür (1320–1370) born in the year of monkey (1320), at the age of twelve, before he ascended the throne, he was exiled to the southeast coastal region (in the area that is now Guilin) where he befriended a troop of monkeys. His affinity for the creatures was attributed to his birth year.13 However, even more symbolic weight was invested in representations of Mercury. The planetary deity was often compared to the Imperial Secretariat,14 a top-echelon government agency that formulated policies and promulgated the ruler’s orders.15 Months before Marignolli’s arrival in China, Emperor Shundi appointed two Grand Councillors to the Imperial Secretariat: Toghtō, as the senior Grand Councillor, and another Mongol official as the Assistant Grand Councillor.16 These two were, in effect, the highest ranked civil officials in the empire.17 This goes some way towards explaining why two female astral deities flank the young Shundi, and likewise, why two bearded ministers attend to the emperor in his adult appearance in Zhou’s painting. The prominence of the Grand Councillors—in particular, Toghtō—attending the throne in Zhou’s painting is also no coincidence. Toghtō had shown steadfast loyalty to Toghōn Temür during the young ruler’s early years.18 Toghōn Temür was a mere thirteen-years old when he ascended the throne in 1333 as the tenth emperor of the Yuan dynasty, and Chancellor Bayan (d. 1340) became the de facto power-wielding ruler. Bayan was, in fact, the primary mover behind the circumstances that led to Marignolli’s visit to China. He was distressed by the political and cultural landscape of the China that he saw around him. The hierarchical structures, real or imagined, of the good old days of the early Yuan rule under Khubilai (r. 1260–94) were becoming increasingly blurred. Ethnic Chinese were learning Mongolian and adopting Mongolian names while the Mongols themselves were doing the opposite and eagerly embracing Chinese culture. Bayan wanted to reverse the situation and to redraw ethnic lines by reinforcing non-Chinese privileges

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Fig. 4: The Planet Deity Mercury attended by a Monkey, hanging scroll mounted as panel, early 13th century, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

and rule in China. It was against this backdrop that the Bayan administration dispatched an embassy in 1336 to the papal curia to request that the Catholic authority extend its religious influence to Yuan China. By the time the European delegates reached Beijing in 1342, however, the political landscape had changed. Bayan’s harsh measures had gone too far. One of his cruellest initiatives was the 1337 proposal to exterminate members of the ethnic Chinese population bearing the family names of Zhang, Wang, Liu, Li, and Zhao. The emperor, Toghōn Temür, seventeen-years-old at the time, had the good sense to reject this measure. In 1340, with the help of Toghtō, Bayan’s conscionable nephew, the emperor succeeded in ousting Bayan. The post-Bayan administration reversed all of the ethnic-cleansing measures and harsh policies of the Bayan years. Thus, by the time the European embassy reached Beijing, the cultural politics that had driven the initial Yuan appeal to the papal curia in 1336 was already history. Furthermore, Benedict XII (d. 1342), who had become pope in 1334, died the same year that Marignolli reached China. Whatever symbolic significance the papal curia had invested in its gifts to China were no longer of consequence. Amongst the many gifts brought by the delegation only the European horse was not reduced to the status of an insignificant toy or plaything; quite the contrary, it continued to

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have a great deal of value for Yuan China, though of a kind unanticipated by the papal authority. Seen as a gift sent from heaven, the papal horse played into a culture obsessed with omens, that is, with manifestations of the heavenly mandate. Any unusual signs—astral aberrations, abnormal phenomena in the physical world, or sudden appearances of unusual fauna and flora—would have been construed as an intimation from heaven.19 In this context, the arrival of the papal horse in the seventh month of 1342 was particularly timely. A few months earlier, Toghōn Temür had discharged Bayan and replaced Toghtō as his trusted senior advisor. The year 1341 marked Toghtō’s ascension to the top administrative position and the beginning of a new era known as “Toghtō’s Reform.” With the reign title changed to Zhizheng (1341–1370), all things “under heaven” were seen as entering a cycle of renewal.20 Typically, such occasions would have been celebrated with great fanfare. Gifts and tributes from distant lands were particularly welcome, as they signified peace under heaven. The European delegates and the Yuan Chinese court were thus meeting at cross-purposes. Marignolli wanted to convert the Yuan emperor to the Catholic Church, and the Yuan court was far more interested in the significance of the European horse as an auspicious omen for Toghtō’s new administration. With these varied motives in the background, it comes as no surprise that the European and Chinese accounts of the event differ vastly. Marignolli, for instance, recalled: … we came to Cambalec [i.e. Dadu; Beijing], the chief seat of the Empire of the East. Of its incredible magnitude, population, and military array, we will say nothing. But the Grand Kaam, when he beheld the great horses,21 and the Pope’s presents, with his letter, and King Robert’s too, with their golden seals, and when he saw us also, rejoiced greatly, being delighted, yea exceedingly delighted with everything, and treated us with the greatest honour. And when I entered the Kaam’s presence it was in full festival vestments, with a very fine cross carried before me, and candles and incense, while Credo in Unum Deum was chaunted, in that glorious palace where he dwells. And when the chaunt was ended I bestowed a full benediction, which he received with all humility.22

His account is a credible one, as the description of a Catholic liturgical procession and the chanting of the choir has an empirical basis.23 By the time Marignolli visited China, the Roman Catholic Church had already established a foothold in Beijing and other Chinese cities. Indeed, the choir of the cathedral was so loud that it could be heard even in the imperial court compounds. Ren’s painting, the unofficial version, indirectly testifies to this reality. The more comprehensive composition by Ren Bowen (fig. 3), in particular, registers the penetration of Christian culture into fourteenth-century Chinese awareness. For instance, the European man is depicted in a red gown with his long dark hair worn down over his shoulders (fig. 3, pl. Vb). This depiction reveals that the painter probably associated the papal embassy with what he vaguely understood to be Asian Christians—Nestorians, Manichaeans, etc.––even though these groups had

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Fig. 5: Young man, wall painting from Nestorian Temple at Khocho, 602–654 CE, Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst ‒ Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

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Fig. 6: Jesus Christ as a Manichaean Prophet, hanging scroll, 14th century, Kōshū, Yamanashi Prefecture, Tenmokusan Seiunji.

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Fig. 7: Wang Zhenpeng, Mahāprajāpatī Nursing the Infant Buddha, handscroll, 14th century, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.

long-since broken from mainstream Christianity. Indeed, historical Nestorian figures were often depicted with this hairstyle (fig. 5),24 and images of Manichaeans also frequently included this type of hairstyle (fig. 6).25 Founded by Manes in Persia in the third century, Manichaeism was a religious practice that mixed Christian, Gnostic, and pagan elements.26 It extended its influence to China in the seventh century, and by the fourteenth century it had merged with secret societies and religious sects such as the White Lotus and other Millenarian traditions. The distinctive hair was retrofitted onto Buddhist iconography. Thus, Śākyamuni’s aunt Mahāprajāpatī nursing the young Gautama in a fourteenth-century painting is depicted with the same hairstyle (fig. 7).27 Incidentally, in this painting Mahāprajāpatī is also depicted in the guise of the Virgin Mary. In Buddhist iconographic conventions she had never been shown holding an infant boy. However, the Christian subject masquerading as Buddhist iconography here is unmistakable.28 Marignolli’s account of the Catholic pomp and circumstance surrounding his audience with the Yuan emperor is therefore entirely credible. That is the Italian side of the story; but what of the Chinese? The Yuan court’s official account begins with a detailed profile of the physical attributes of the papal gift horse.29 It notes that the rider, with “yellow hair, beards, and blue eyes,” spoke an incomprehensible language, and that the horse had accomplished “seven ocean-crossings” before he reached the “Middle Kingdom.” Emperor Shundi is said to have come to Ciren Hall to view the European horse and was visibly impressed by it. He decreed that the horse be kept at the imperial stable (Tianxian), be fed with meat, grain, and alcohol-milk,30 and that Kangli Naonao (1295–1345),31 the director of the Hanlin Academy and the emperor’s tutor, commission a skilful painter to capture its likeness.32 Zhou Lang was Naonao’s painter of choice.

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Celestial Steed: picturing the voices of eulogy and beyond The Chinese official account consists of two parts: first, the prose preface that records the event and details the empirical facts; second, an ode to the celestial horse. Ren’s painting is tantamount to the prose version; it is prosaic in disposition, sufficient care is taken to record empirical facts, details, and trivia, and it is set in the “real world.” In comparison, Zhou’s painting is a pictorial ode set in a mytho-geography. It is crucial to keep this distinction in mind when looking at these two pieces, otherwise we would be hard pressed to explain the single most confounding aspect of Zhou’s painting: It is supposed to depict the Italian’s meeting with the Yuan emperor. Had the scenario here been intended to document a real-life situation, a Yuan painter would have likely been cautiously decorous in picturing the hierarchic order and the supremacy of the emperor. Even the horses would have been depicted in accordance with this convention. For instance, an early Yuan painting by Liu Guandao (fl. 1264–1294) depicting Kublai Khan’s (r. 1260–1294) hunting excursion shows the attendants’ horses lowering their heads in abject submission to the great khan in the centre.33 By contrast, the horse in Zhou’s painting shares the centre stage with the emperor (fig. 1, pl. IV); it is the indisputable focus of attention, exhibiting none of the equestrian submission seen in Liu Guandao’s painting. Zhou gets away with this seemingly indecorous manner of depiction precisely because his painting has shifted genre. No longer a documentary depiction, it transcended a real-world situation by staging it as a period drama. Figures appear in period costumes, which are decidedly not fourteenth century. The painting’s real subject, therefore, is a mythological “heavenly horse.” The lore of heavenly steed(s) revolves around Emperor Wudi, who ruled the expansive Han Empire around 100 BCE. Wudi obtained horses from the Western Region, which he took to be an auspicious omen, a sign of the heavenly mandate for peace and prosperity under his rule. The proverbial heavenly horse had inspired paintings long before Zhou Lang’s time (fig. 8), and it also attracted a sizeable body of rhapsodic writing. These writings were codified into a set formula. Nowhere is this more evident than in the poetic essays required for the imperial recruitment examination. The Ode to Heavenly Horse was one of the designated essay topics used in the 1314 and 1333 exams, and exemplary odes from the top-ranked candidates circulated as woodblock-printed primers among aspiring imperial-exam candidates.34 One can thus easily gauge the formulaic nature of such writing. It is also revealing that some of the top-ranked candidates who went on to become high-ranking officials in the capital city of Beijing were amongst those who composed eulogies to the European horse. It is safe to say that they had learned a script for such descriptions well before the European horse arrived in 1342. Indeed, they would not have even had to observe the horse closely before the words began to roll from their tongues or flow from their brushes. The fourteenth-century rhapsodies on the legendary heavenly horse followed a set template. Because the heavenly horse hails from the far west (“west of the Western Region”), it was imagined to have sprung from the water. The reason for this is

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Fig. 8: Earthenware jar with Celestial Steed, Western Han dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE), Zürich, Museum Rietberg.

that the far west is, in traditional Chinese mytho-geography, a pond where the sun and moon sink daily. And because a dragon is the creature seen to best epitomise the spirit of water, the heavenly horse is conceived of as a “dragon horse.”35 In the mid-1340s, shortly after Marignolli’s presentation of the papal horse in 1342, a decorative design for a blue-and-white porcelain vase came into currency.36 The vase features six galloping, seafaring horses, each framed in a scalloped enclosure with an upward opening leading to a flying dragon above (fig. 9). The design fully visualises the imaginary scenario that was often described in the odes to the celestial steed: it arises from water and has the disposition of a flying dragon. The numerology of six is also significant here, since a set of “six flying horses” is said to be the vehicle used in the Son of Heaven’s far-flung tour. Zhou’s painting is subtler in evoking the celestial. In light of the mythical context of the celestial steed, the painter took care to leave the horse unsaddled (fig. 1, pl. IV). Thus, it harmonises in spirit with the seafaring horse on the porcelain vase and suggests the primordial condition out of which it arose. It is also tempting to speculate about possible correlations between the painting’s formal features and the aptness with which certain topographic associations are evoked. The ink wash, nearly absent in other parts of the painting, is applied here liberally on the horse’s body. It either intentionally or inadvertently evokes the appearance of a horse emerging fresh from the water. More likely, the liberal wash does what it is expected

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Fig. 9: Porcelain jar with seafaring horses and flying dragon, late 1340s, collection unknown.

to do, that is, evoke tonal resonances and musical qualities (yun). If the contemporary examination officials’ comments on the examinees’ essays regarding the “Dragon Horse” are of any use in understanding this image, they do reveal certain aesthetic criteria with which the scholar-officials evaluated students’ essays. One of these was “haunting rhythms.”37 Other details (fig. 1, pl. IV) hint at the painter’s ingenious adaptation and internalisation of familiar tropes and conceits accrued to the heavenly-horse lore. One court official who saw the European horse, praised its “tiger’s glare and dragon’s prance.”38 This drew on stock phrases typically associated with the celestial steed. The painter played his part in perpetuating these formulations: The tiger-patterned robe of the imperial guard reiterates the “tiger’s glare.”39 The horse enacts the role of the legendary celestial steed of China’s antiquity, and its affinity with the Son of Heaven, past and present, was therefore assumed. The ancient ruler’s excursions typically involved an entourage that included fierce sword-bearing warriors or imperial guards (huben).40 This ceremonial convention explains the curious appearance of the European horse’s two attendants (fig. 1, pl. IV). Their Chinese-style robes indicate that they are not foreigners,41 but rather the proverbial imperial lifeguards (huben) of antiquity. The scenario here is focused not so much on a Western horse as on a celestial steed—the “Western” and “heavenly” are synonymous in traditional parlance. Moreover, the military officer wears a civilian robe over his military outfit. The sartorial undertone in this gesture is clear: now it is a time of peace and prosperity—a theme recurrent in courtly odes to auspicious omens. In short, Zhou’s painting is a visual eulogy to the legendary “celestial steed,” not a documentary reportage of the arrival of a European horse.

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Because the painting was executed in the vein of an ode, it has a poetic voice. Indeed, some fourteenth-century Chinese writers took it upon themselves to speak on behalf of Europe, despite the fact that no one had invited them to do so. For instance, a man named Wang Yi (1321–1372) wrote “Presenting a Heavenly Horse: on behalf of the Kingdom of Farang [i.e., Europe].”42 The essay assumes the voice of a humble vassal in a foreign land, “west of the Western Region.” In a self-deprecating tone, the speaker admits the “poverty” of his own country. Admiring Chinese civilisation, he sends the horse as a tribute and submits to the Yuan emperor. Wang Yi, a native of Yiwu, in the southeast coast of China, had never seen the European horse first-hand. In fact, his journey to the Yuan capital of Dadu in 1348 was probably his first visit. As a provincial visitor to the metropolis, however, he did not mince his words in criticising the rampant corruption he saw around him. It is not hard to see why he assumed a European voice. Both—a Yiwu native and the imagined voice of a European vassal state—were outsiders to the capital Dadu, and both could therefore speak from an outsider’s perspective. Zhou Lang, the court-designated painter of the European horse, also hailed from southeast coastal China.43 He would have likewise found it easy to relate to Wang Yi’s outsider’s stance. Zhou’s decision to paint the heavenly horse as a mottled one (fig. 1, pl. IV) instead of pitch-black, as the court record suggests, is deliberate. The mottled horse is identifiable as the equestrian type known as the “Jade Flower.” The name recalls the Tang emperor Xuanzong’s (685–762; r. 712–756) favourite stallion, once pictured by the eighth-century artist Cao Ba, and made famous by the poet Du Fu (712–770).44 The scenario in which the Son of Heaven comes to see his heavenly horse being painted appears to be the underlying script or template at play here. For any educated elite, the painting would have recalled Du Fu’s poem, the subject of which was Cao Ba, a one-time imperially recognised horse painter. Although Cao eventually lapsed into oblivion after the mid-eighth-century upheaval caused by the An-Shi Rebellion, the poem recalls the glorious years of the Kaiyuan reign (713–741) when the painter, in the prime of his career, was summoned to the emperor’s throne to paint his favourite stallion, the Jade Flower, also known as the “heavenly steed.” Cao’s painting was a source of wonder. It “enlivened the dragon of heaven, dashing through to make slight of all ordinary horses ever born… A veracious comparison to its real self.” So pleased was the emperor with the work that he awarded the painter gold, “leaving the stable officers and keepers dejected and despondent.” But the poem eventually shifts from those good old days to the present, that is, to the post-Kaiyuan years when the once noble painter was reduced to the status of a poverty-stricken commoner, receiving “disdainful looks and cold shoulders,” with all his erstwhile fame and reputation fading into oblivion. Whether intentional or not, Zhou’s composition cues this voice, which would have been familiar to his contemporary Yuan viewers. Instrumental to the shaping of this voice was Ouyang Xuan (1283–1357), one of the official eulogisers of the European horse, who made his name in the imperial recruitment examination of 1314. The topic for the exam in his region was an Ode to the Heavenly Horse, and he was ranked among the top four candidates in the region. This means that Ouyang and

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his followers had a “script” which they used to describe the papal gift horse even before it reached China.

Seven Seas The formulaic nature of the perception of the European horse cannot be overstated. To be sure, the fourteenth-century Chinese easily turned a real European equestrian presence into yet another replay of the old mythic scenario in which the sudden appearance of a Western, or “heavenly,” horse was conceived as an auspicious omen for the new era. However, it is one thing to see the European horse as an epitome of an ancient myth; it is quite another when one actually confronts a real horse from a really distant land. It must have been cognitively both a challenging and exhilarating experience. The long-cherished mytho-geography now came face-to-face with real geography. The horse, after all, hailed from the real west of the Western Region. Previous tributes and gifts to the Yuan court had come in many dazzling forms, ranging from elephants, rhinoceros, dark monkeys, white tigers, peacocks, or even Japanese captives from Korea.45 There had even been numerous instances of prefectures and foreign lands sending horses as tributes or gifts in Yuan times before 1342.46 The most recent, prior to the European gift horse in 1342, was a tribute consisting of “Western horse[s],” wine, and exotic birds sent by Tarmashrin Khan (r. 1331–1334), the khan of the Chagatai Khanate, in 1332.47 None of these previous gift horses merited an official commission of painting, however. Only the tributes of a different kind, those containing some “auspicious grain,” one of the prototypical omens favoured by rulers since antiquity,48 received serious attention. Although the emperor commissioned Zhao Mengfu, one of the most eminent scholar-officials of the time, to picture the “auspicious grain,”49 the Yuan court had not commissioned paintings of any previous foreign tribute horses. This reveals how much symbolic weight was attached to the European horse in 1342 as a truly “celestial steed” from the “moon grotto,” materialising in China at this time as an auspicious omen.50 By 1342, the Chinese had gained a practical geographic knowledge of the world. The scholar-officials eulogising the papal horse repeatedly spoke of the “Seven Seas” separating Europe and China. Both medieval Arabian and European sources mention “Seven Seas,” though they vary in their different sets of seven. In fact, the Chinese knowledge of the Seven Seas most likely came from the Arabs. The ninth-century Muslim author Ya’qubi, for instance, spoke of the need to cross “Seven Seas” before reaching China: Whoever wants to go to China must cross seven seas, each one with its own color and wind and fish and breeze, completely unlike the sea that lies beside it. The first of them is the Sea of Fars, which men sail setting out from Siraf. It ends at Ra’s al-Jumha; it is a strait where pearls are fished. … The seventh sea is called the sea of Sanji, also known as Kanjli. It is the sea of China; one is driven by the south wind until one reaches a freshwater bay, along which are fortified places and cities, until one reaches Khanfu [Guangzhou].51

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A quick comparison of Ash-Sharif al-Idrīsī’s World Map of 1154 and a traditional Chinese world map suggests two worldviews.52 The Arabian map is organised around the Seven Seas; and the Chinese map around Four Seas. The Seven-Sea view was seen as practical geography; in contrast, the Four-Sea view was seen as classical knowledge. The new concept of the “Seven Seas” apparently unsettled and renewed the Chinese geographic imagination of the world. Probably taking cues from the Arabs, in the fourteenth century the Chinese made strides in producing navigational maps of the real world. The 1402 Kangnido map in Korea, for instance, conflates two fourteenth-century Chinese maps that were produced in 1330 and 1370 respectively.53 The fourteenth century also saw a resurgent Chinese interest in the Western Region and beyond. The tale that dramatises the seventh-century monk Xuanzang’s journey to the West, popularly known as the Monkey Story, also took shape around this time in both pictorial and written forms.54 The arrival of Marignolli’s European horse in 1342 may have sparked and spurred this surging interest in the Western world. Meanwhile, the cognitive mapping based on old mytho-geographic models died hard. In fact, it trumped practical geographic know­ ledge in most cases.

Conclusion How does our story speak to the theme of the volume; that is, to the art of itinerancy? The case highlights several issues and reveals new questions in need of answers. The first issue concerns boundary-crossing and generic conventions. In this era of globalisation, we now readily speak of geographic boundary-crossing as a cultural move. Our study shows that, at the conceptual level, boundary-crossing has to start with a generic transgression. The 1342 event suggests the ease with which a geographic and cultural boundary-crossing can be assimilated into a domestic agenda. The key was the role played by generic convention in shaping perceptions. Unfettered and freewheeling in imaginary realms, poetry had little use for the empirical exactness of a real-world geography; likewise, couched in poetic tropes and allusions as it was, the pictorial ode did not mesh well with cartography. It was therefore very hard for these genres to cross over the established parameters. The second issue concerns the mechanism of cognitive habits. What was the fourteenth-century cognitive problem underlying the Chinese view of the world? How did the reshaping of geographic knowledge occur without the benefit of our modern maps? For instance, did the change in number—from four seas to seven seas—significantly change the Chinese worldview? And did the mythological imagination of heavenly horses springing from primordial ponds help the Chinese to become accustomed to the idea of Seven Seas? The third issue is a methodological one. This case study reveals an unsettling irony: The cultural interaction detailed above belies the perception of entrenched self-absorption and self-isolation in China. This irony is worth savouring. The

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court-commissioned version, apparently artistically more refined and nuanced, relies on an old cognitive model. In contrast, both Ren’s version and the blue-andwhite vase design, displaying a poorer taste, seem to be more engaged with the new reality. Ren’s version is explicit about the arrival of foreign travellers with their distinctly Western-Region hairstyles and exotic sartorial styles; the vase, depicting six seas, is inadvertently closer to the new cognitive map of the “Seven Seas.” Accordingly, modern scholars may likewise work with two sets of cognitive models. One is the map-derived form of enquiry typically favoured by historians that looks into images of cross-cultural travels and itinerancy primarily for visual evidence to substantiate narratives of boundary crossings, expansions, diplomacy, and ethnic tensions. Art historians—at least some of us—seek to turn this operation on its head. We do not take cross-cultural and boundary-crossing images at face value; instead, we attempt to reveal that such images are not always what they appear to be. Instead of merely accepting the tribute gift of a European horse, the Yuan Chinese were also projecting their own domestic agenda onto the foreign animal. We can thus now return to our initial question: Why is there no Chinese painting of Marco Polo? As Marignolli’s case demonstrates, the odds would have been stacked against his chances of depiction. Perhaps Polo would have had a better chance if he had known to bring a horse from the “west of the Western Region” with him. Even so, his Chinese hosts would have been too fixated on the Heavenly Horse to bothering wasting any ink on him. However, if the new trend signalled by Ren’s painting is any indication, subsequent visitors from the West were to stand a better chance.

Glossary of Chinese Characters Cao Ba Ciren Hall Dadu Du Fu huben Kaiyuan Liu Guandao Ouyang Xuan Ren Bowen Ren Xianzuo Shundi (Toghōn Temür)

曹霸 慈仁殿 大都 杜甫 虎賁 開元 劉貫道 歐陽玄 任伯溫 任賢佐 順帝

Tianxian Wang Yi Wudi Xuanzang Xuanzong (Tang dynasty) Xuanzong (Ming dynasty) Yiwu yun Zhang Yanfu Zhao Mengfu Zhizheng Zhou Lang

天閑 王禕 武帝 玄奘 玄宗 宣宗 義烏 韻 張彥輔 趙孟頫 至正 周朗

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Notes   1 Thomas Allsen notes that Marco Polo’s The Description of the World is “basically a geography, or better yet, an ethnographical geography, not a merchant’s handbook or, as is most commonly assumed, a book of travels.” Thomas Allsen, “The Cultural Worlds of Marco Polo” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31, no. 3 (Winter 2001), 375–376.   2 Morgan notes: “… no other Italian merchants, … are mentioned either, and no one would argue that this shows that none visited China during the Mongol period. It may simply be, as has been suggested, that Polo, though in favor at the Mongol court, held no formal office sufficiently important to gain him entry into the archives.” D.O. Morgan, “Marco Polo in China-or not. Review of Did Marco Polo Go to China? by Frances Wood” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 6, no. 2 (July 1996), 223. Allsen, “The Cultural Worlds of Marco Polo” (cf. note 1), 376–377.   3 Allsen, “The Cultural Worlds of Marco Polo” (cf. note 1), 376–377.   4 Scholars are divided in considering whether the scroll is a Yuan original or a Ming copy. See Yu Hui 余輝, “Yuandai gongting huihuashi ji jiazuo kaobian 元代宮廷繪畫史及佳作考辨” Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 90, no. 4 (2000), 49–59, esp. 54–55. The scroll and context are ex­ tensively treated by Lauren Arnold, Princely Gifts and Papal Treasures: The Franciscan Mission to China and Its Influence on the Art of the West, 1250–1350 (San Francisco: Desiderata Press, 1999).   5 Yu Hui 余輝, “Jiufeng daoren sanjuntu kao 九峰道人三駿圖考” Wenwu, no. 1 (1993), 93–96.   6 The scroll, now in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, is noted in Sherman Lee and Wai-kam Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty, 1279–1368 (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1968), cat. no. 189. A Ming copy of the same scroll, similar to the San Francisco scroll but bearing spurious inscriptions, is in the Freer Gallery, Washington D.C., ink, colour, and gold on silk, 35,2 ×45,8 cm, inv. F1915.16. See Kei Suzuki, Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1982), vol. 1, I–198.   7 Yu, “Jiufeng daoren sanjuntu kao” (cf. note 5), 94.  8 Zhou Boqi 周伯琦 (1298–1369), “Tianmaxing yingzhizuo bing xu 天馬行應制作並序” in Yuanshi xuan 元詩選, ed. Gu Shili 顧嗣立 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1987), 1864.   9 The painting, Emperor Xuanzong of Ming in Hunting, ink and colour on silk, 29,5 × 34,6 cm, is now in the collection of Palace Museum, Beijing. 10 The Portraits of Four Yuan Scholars in the Cincinnati Museum of Art depicts four eminent fourteenth-century scholar-officials in the Yuan court. See Lee and Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols (cf. note 6), 81, fig. 14. Their sartorial style gives us a good frame of reference. 11 See Xiao Jun 肖軍, ed., Yonglegong bihua 永樂宮壁畫 (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2008), 39. 12 The painting, traditionally attributed to Zhang Sigong 張思恭, is now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 13 See The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368, ed. Herbert Franke and Denis Crispin Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 567. 14 See Meng Sihui 孟嗣徽, “Wuxing ji nianbaxiu shenxingtu tuxiang kaobian 五星及廿八宿神形 圖圖像考辨” Yishushi yanjiu 藝術史研究 2 (2000), 517–556. 15 Charles Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 194. 16 Song Lian 宋濂, Yuan shi 元史 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1976), 860. 17 Elizabeth Endicott-West, “The Yuan Government and Society” in Cambridge History of China, vol. 6 (cf. note 13), 589. 18 Song, Yuan shi (cf. note 16), 860–861. 19 Ibid., 862. 20 Ibid., 860. 21 Zhou Boqi noted only one papal gift horse. Zhou, Yuanshi xuan (cf. note 8), 1864. 22 Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Hither (London: Hakluyt Society, 1866), vol. 2, 340. 23 Tong Xun 佟洵, “Tianzhujiao zai Meng Yuan diguo de chuanru yiji xiaowang yuanyin chutan 天 主教在蒙元帝國的傳入以及消亡原因初探” Zhongguo tianzhujiao 中國天主教, no. 5 (2004), 29–31.

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24 For Nestorianism in Asia, see Aubrey R. Vine, The Nestorian Churches: Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia from the Persian Schism to the Modern Assyrians (London: Independent Press, 1978). 25 James Watt et al., The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 122–124, lists several fourteenth-century images with Manichaen connections. 26 Robert A. Pretty, Adamantius: Dialogue on the True Faith in God (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 9–17. James Robinson, ed., The Coptic Gnostic Library: A Complete Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000), vol. 4, 21. Jason BeDuhn and Paul Mirecki, Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), 20, 127, 159. 27 Lee and Ho, Chinese Art under the Mongols (cf. note 6), cat. no. 200. 28 Arnold, Princely Gifts (cf. note 4), 134, fig. 10–11, notes an image of the Madonna of Humility, introduced to China during the early fourteenth century by the Franciscans, who brought illuminated books with them. 29 The Yuan court designated Zhou Boqi to be the official recordkeeper. 30 The Chinese phrase is jiudong 酒湩. Here dong 湩 means milk. 31 Kangli Naonao 康里巎巎 (1295–1345), a descendant of the Central Asian Kangli tribe, was director of the Hanlin Academy and Emperor Shundi’s tutor. See Watt, The World of Khubilai Khan (cf. note 25), 227–228. 32 Zhou, Yuanshi xuan (cf. note 8). 33 The painting, now at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, can be accessed at http://www.npm. gov.tw/exh96/orientation/ch_b6_2.html (last access 10.06.2014); http://www.npm.gov.tw/masterpiece/fPreview.aspx?sNo=04000995 (last access 10.06.2014). 34 Huang Rensheng 黃仁生, “Yuandai keju wenxian sanzhong fafu 元代科舉文獻三種發覆” Wenxian 文獻 (2003); Han Geping 韓格平, “Leibian liju sanchang wenxuan gengji kekao gufu de kaoguan piyu 類編歷舉三場文選庚集科考古賦的考官批語” Wenxian jikan 文獻季刊, no. 1 (2012), 175–184. 35 See Wang Ting 王頲, “Gongjun zuosong: Tianma shiwen yu Malinuoli chushi Yuanting”貢駿作 誦: 天馬詩文與馬黎諾里出使元廷” in id., Jiaze tuanyun: Zhongwai guanxi shidi yanjiu 駕澤 摶雲:中外關係史地研究 (Haikou: Nanfang Chubanshe, 2003), 92–110. 36 Its date can be deduced from its affinity with the meiping vase with its dragon and fiery pearl design, dated 1346. Reproduced in Ning Zhichao 宁志超 and Li Jie 李佶, Wuhua tianbao: Yuandai ciqi shehui lishi wenhua chengyin tanxi 物華天寶: 元代瓷器社会历史文化成因探析 (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 2007), 250–251, pl. 142. It is similar to a blue-and-white porcelain jar in the Topkapi Saray Museum. See Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum (London: Sotheby’s Publications; New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pt. II, 407, pl. 586. See also Mikami Tsugio 三上次男, ed., Sekai tōji zenshū 世界陶磁全集, vol. 13, Ryō Kin Gen 遼金元 (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1981), pl. 53. 37 Han, “Leibian liju” (cf. note 34), 182. 38 Jie Xisi 揭傒斯 (1274–1344) likens the papal horse to Quanqi 權奇, a term used to designate the heavenly steed in Han dynasty sources. Jie Xisi 揭傒斯, Wen Angong wenji 文安公文集, juan 14; also in Zhang Xinglang 張星烺, Zhongxi jiaotong shiliao huibian 中西交通史料匯編 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2003), 359. 39 In Du Fu’s poem, the painter Cao Ba not only painted the Tang emperor’s horse, but also the “virtuous premier(s)” 良相 and “fierce general(s)” 猛將. They appear as paired civilian and military officers in Zhou’s painting. 40 “They wore (only) their civil robes and caps, with their ivory tokens of rank stuck in their girdles; and the officers of the guard huben 虎贲 put off their swords.” Sun Xidan 孫希旦, comp., Liji jijie 禮記集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1989), 1027, translation follows James Legg, trans., Li Chi Book of Rites (New York: University Books, 1967), vol. 2, 124. 41 The two figures are comparable to their counterparts in Ren Renfa’s 任仁發 (1255–1328) Nine Horses in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (William Rockhill Nelson Trust 72–78), and the Two Dignitaries Holding the Tether of a Magnificent White Stallion, manuscripts, ink and colour on paper, Library of the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, H. 2153–123b, H. 2154–33a, reproduced in Watt, The World of Kubilai Khan (cf. note 25), 23, figs. 35, 36.

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42 Wang Yi 王禕 (1321–1372), Wang Zhongwen ji 王忠文集, juan 12. Zhang, Zhongxi jiaotong shiliao (cf. note 38), vol. 1, 366–367. Wang, “Gongjun zuosong” (cf. note 35), 98. 43 He was a native of Yongjia. 44 Du Fu probably wrote the poem in 764. Xiao Difei 蕭滌非, Du Fu shi xuanzhu 杜甫詩選注 (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1996), 223–224. 45 Korea sent in sixteen Japanese captives in 1286. Gong Yu 龚予 et al., eds., Zhongguo lidai gongpin daguan 中國歷代貢品大觀 (Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Chubanshe, 1992), 605. 46 Gong, Zhongguo lidai gongpin (cf. note 45), 599–639. 47 Song, Yuan shi (cf. note 16), 36.800–801. 48 Lillian Tseng, Picturing Heaven in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Asia Center Publications, 2011), 128–130. 49 Song, Yuan shi (cf. note 16), 24.537. 50 The dominance of horse images in traditional omen catalogues can be gauged by their frequent occurrence in omen images. See Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 234–245. 51 Paul Lunde, “The Seas of Sindbad” Saudi Aramco World 56, no. 4 (July–August 2005), 20–29. 52 Ash-Sharif al-Idrīsī’s World Map is contained in Pleasure of He who Longs to Cross the Horizons (Nuzhat al-mushtāq fīikhtirāq al-āfāq, dated 1154), copy of 1553. It was drawn up for a geographic work for King William II of Sicily. It is now kept in Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Manuscript Pococke 375, fols. 3b–4a. It is reproduced in Bjørn Axelsen and Michael Jones, “Are all Maps Mental Maps?” GeoJournal 14, no. 4 (1987), 448, fig. 2. Hyunhee Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in Pre-Modern Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 3, fig. 0.1, 85, fig. 2.4. Park dates al-Idrīsī’s World Map to 1153, while Axelsen and Jones affix the date to 1161. The Chinese map, Comprehensive Map of the Four Seas (Sihai zongtu 四海捴圖), preserved or copied in Korea, is now kept at the British Library, MAPS.C.27.F.14. 53 The full title of the 1402 Korean map is The Map of Integrated Regions and Terrains and of Historical Countries and Capitals (Honil gangli yeokdae gukdo jido). Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds (cf. note 52), 4, figs. 0.2, 104, 3.2. It draws on two fourteenth-century Chinese world maps: 1) Shengjiao guangpi tu 聲教廣被圖 produced by Li Zemin 李澤民 around 1330; 2) the Hunyi jiangli tu 混一疆理圖 made by Qing Jun 清浚 around 1370. 54 See Isobe Akira 磯部彰, “Saiyūki” shiryō no kenkyū「西遊記」資料の研究 (Sendai-shi: Tōhoku Daigaku Shuppansha, 2007), 131–198.

Illustrations Fig. 1: Zhou Lang, Tribute Horse from Europe, handscroll, ink on paper, 30.3 × 134 cm, Ming copy (?), 1342, Beijing, Palace Museum. Fig. 2: Ren Xianzuo, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, ink and colours on silk, 32.2 × 188.7 cm, 1342, Beijing, Palace Museum. Fig. 3: Ren Bowen, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, ink and colours on silk, 36.2 × 220.3 cm, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Avery Brundage Collection. Fig. 4: Anon., The Planet Deity Mercury attended by a Monkey, hanging scroll mounted as panel, ink, colours, and gold on silk, 121.4 × 55.9 cm, early 13th century, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 11.6121. Fig 5: Young man, Nestorian Temple at Khocho, wall painting, 44.5 × 22.4 cm, 14C date: 602–654 CE, Berlin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, inv. MIK III 6952 (photo: the author). Fig. 6: Jesus Christ as a Manichaean Prophet, hanging scroll, ink, colours, gold, and gold leaf on silk, 153.4 × 58.7 cm, 14th century, Kōshū, Yamanashi Prefecture, Tenmokusan Seiunji. Fig. 7: Wang Zhenpeng, Mahāprajāpatī Nursing the Infant Buddha, handscroll, ink on silk, 31.9 × 94.4 cm, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 12.902. Fig. 8: Earthenware jar with painted decoration of Celestial Steel, Western Han dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE), Zürich, Museum Rietberg (photo: the author).

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Fig. 9: Porcelain jar painted with cobalt blue under transparent glaze, ca. late 1340s, collection unknown (reproduced from Ning Zhichao and Li Jie, Wuhua tianbao Yuandai ciqi shehui lishi wenhua chengyin tanxi (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2007), pl. 136b).

II. SYMBOLIC ITINERARIES AND TOPOGRAPHIES: FRAMING ROADS AND ROUTES

Elizabeth Kindall

Geo-Narrative in Seventeenth-Century China Topographical painting in China includes depictions of specific places in individual scenes, as well as depictions of journeys through landscape that involve several scenes, creating a panorama. Scholars of Chinese art have discussed topographical painting as religious, political, social, cultural, and stylistic narratives of their creators and audiences. For example, in his groundbreaking study, Richard Vinograd identified what he called “landscapes of property” in relation to Wang Meng’s 1366 painting Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains. According to Vinograd, paintings like Qingbian Mountains present “serial views of the environs of the retreats of their painters.”1 These environs were overlaid with personal references to the painter. Similarly, Flora Fu has examined Picture of Mount Tai by the sixteenth-century painter Ye Cheng as a “commemoration of the patron’s travels and ambitions.”2 The patron of Picture of Mount Tai, Qiao Yu (1457–1531), was reported to have sought out famously strange landscapes in which to travel.3 In readings such as these, the painter or patron is the key player and the narrative focus. The landscape, meanwhile, serves as the backdrop or intermediary sphere through which the focal persona voyages. My study of place paintings, however, has led me to see a type of painting that inverts this priority.4 The focal persona remains an important element of such works; however, I have identified the journey landscape as the active agent of these paintings’ narratives. In this role, it is the landscape, not the focal persona, that narrates the journey and explicates its meaning. I have labelled landscape journey paintings that lend themselves to this reading “geo-narratives.” I have borrowed and adapted the term geo-narrative from geographic information science, where it is used for studies that analyse and interpret narrative materials like oral histories, life histories, and biographies to produce quantitative data about specific geographic regions.5 Instead of implying narratives that retrieve geographical information, however, I employ this term to identify painted geographies that reveal a specific narrative. This paper introduces this functional landscape type, suggests some of its identifying attributes, and argues for its importance through close readings of two types of works by one seventeenth-century painter.

Defining and identifying geo-narrative landscape paintings To read a landscape painting of an identifiable place as a geo-narrative requires that viewers interpret the implications of its specific physical paths, topography, and views as landscape markers that position them culturally, historically, and spiritually by placing them topographically. In this way, the topographically specific landscape of a geo-narrative painting narrates the journey and ultimately creates

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the meaning of the work. Geographically specific landscape paintings perform this narrative function by presenting viewers with a sequence of specific topographical experiences within identifiable areas. Particular constructed and natural landmarks, painted focalisers such as figures and views, and written text define the topographical experiences illustrated. Geo-narrative paintings illustrated known sites and topography with an established range of historical, religious, and cultural connotations that had developed over centuries through the activities, stories, and records of previous visitors. Indeed, there was a range of legendary, written, and oral history for even the most distant edges of the empire, as was the case for areas like Guizhou and Yunnan. Painters and recipients could reference select people, incidents, and ideas from amidst this vast, historically layered cultural menu of specific sites through their careful selection of certain topography and architecture. Each environmental selection allowed them to express an individualized experience, communicate a particular meaning, and build a cohesive landscape narrative. In this way, painters used popular vistas and bridges, tarns and towers, caves and temples to construct personal, individualized journeys. Multiple strategically placed focalisers guide viewers through the constructed experiences of a geo-narrative. These elements usually take the form of scholar or monk figures that may be seen to represent specific people named in the inscriptions or paratextual material attached to the painting. Such painted figures actively participate in the topographical experiences that narrate the work—they admire vistas, travel meaningful routes, and consider historically relevant geological or architectural memorials. Certain landscape views also play the role of focaliser. In this case, elements of the surrounding scene, like a viewing platform or strange rock formation or written inscription, will highlight the specific topographical experience that narrates the work, such as an historically resonant poetic view of a lake or an emblematic distant view of a mountain range. An essential element of the geo-narrative experience is the written text that accompanies it.6 Both the inscriptions and paratexts found on these paintings identify and elaborate on the narrated topographical experience. Many such works include a profusion of explanatory written material in the form of inscriptions on the painting and colophons added to the end of the scroll or album. Where this written documentation appears to be lacking, it may have been removed and remounted as a separate artwork. In such cases, the reputation of the writer was usually of a higher stature than the painter. The commentary written on geo-narratives usually provides the name of the artist as well as the recipient or patron of the work. It also identifies the geography pictured, and sometimes it will candidly explain why the painting was created. Most texts also reinforce the geo-narrative goal of the work by elaborating on the topographical experiences pictured. These discussions may take the form of a personalized travel account.7 Some writers, however, utilized the more regulated style of traditional gazetteers in describing the location and history of certain natural and architectural elements along the route. Other writers chose the opposing impressionistic style of verse and presented their discussions of the depicted areas in

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a poetic form. Regardless of style, these texts are a vital component of geo-narrative paintings because they often provide precise information that is unavailable in the pictures themselves, such as the historical context within which the works were created, why they were painted, for whom they were intended, and even the viewing process. It should be noted, however, that these texts were written as companion elements to the pictorial imagery of their respective paintings; they were one complementary aspect of the works as a whole. The information they provide enhanced and deepened viewers’ experience of the topographical narratives. Geo-narrative paintings relate a dizzying array of geographic experiences for a variety of audiences. They recount visits to specific scenic locations, retreats to religious sites, and entire tours through famous locales.8 The experiential knowledge that viewers brought to the topography of each painting was a fundamental element in the reading of such works. Varying levels of experiential knowledge could be attained through journeys to the sites or familiarity with the verbal reports or recorded experiences of others who visited them.9 Despite their disparate artists, commentators, subject matter, and style, however, the overarching goal of the journeys narrated by these paintings was always to guide viewers through specific topographic experiences that would, ultimately, transform their understanding of the sites by revealing a deeper underlying meaning.

Case one: filial geo-narratives Geo-narrative paintings narrate a structured topographic experience for viewers through an identifiable landscape whose greater significance and ultimate purpose is slowly revealed. The paintings of the Filial Son Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673), which record certain experiences on his remarkable journey to the wild southwest, illustrate the visual potential and functionality of the geo-narrative classification.10 Two types of geo-narrative paintings created by Huang Xiangjian are discussed here. One geo-narrative type was painted for the public sector. The second was created for a more private, select audience, the artist’s father, Huang Kongzhao (1589–after 1676). As a young artist, Huang was raised in Suzhou, the richest cultural centre of the seventeenth century, where topographical painting was practised as a lively and sophisticated genre. Later, he survived a traumatic journey through war-torn southwest China as the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) collapsed. On his return home, Huang drew from the artistic devices and social strategies of his native Suzhou to formulate complex geo-narrative paintings. In these works, he employed the multidimensional symbolism and experiential knowledge he had gained of the famous and obscure sites and views of southwest China. The travel landscapes he painted move viewers through distinctive layers of topography and meaning toward a transformative conclusion. Huang Xiangjian was the son of Huang Kongzhao, a degree-holder in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, one of the most prosperous and culturally preeminent cities of

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late-Ming China. Huang Xiangjian probably read the classics for the official examinations in order to serve in the imperial bureaucracy of this period, but there is no record that he passed, which was the common fate of the majority of degree candidates at this time.11 In 1643 Huang Kongzhao was appointed district magistrate of Dayao in Yunnan Province, and his wife and nephew—referred to as “cousin Xian”—travelled with Huang’s father to this distant posting. The Ming dynasty fell the following year, in 1644. By 1645 the city of Suzhou was controlled by the Manchu invaders. In the meantime, Huang had gone eight years without any communication from his family, and so, in 1652, he set out to find them, travelling mostly on foot. Months later, against all odds, he did find them amidst scenic but dangerous Yunnan province. On 12 July, nearly two years later, Huang and his parents arrived back home in Suzhou. The Huang family used all of their resources to return home, and they arrived to find that their possessions had been confiscated and their house destroyed. A variety of actions were required to help the family survive in the long term. One of these activities was their social promotion. The Huang family and their friends began a campaign to publicize the loyal and filial actions of the father and son. Huang’s travel diaries and his production of numerous paintings illustrating the Huang family odyssey are the extant evidence of this campaign. One definite goal of the campaign was to achieve the title ‘Filial Son’ for Huang Xiangjian. A majority of the geo-narrative paintings Huang created were intended to support this aspect of the campaign. Prior to his journey Huang was just one of thousands of educated men without a government degree or official position. His paintings, in correlation with the publication of his travel diaries, however, transformed viewers’ perception of him and allowed him to claim one of the most honoured roles in Confucian society: Filial Son.12 Filial Sons were granted gifts of rice, money, government appointments, and a host of social benefits. Theoretically, the designation Filial Son honoured any Confucian household just as a civil service degree or honorary imperial appointment would. Materially, this title provided all the benefits that accompanied a rise in social status. Public notices, ceremonies, and local gossip advertised newly minted degree holders, honorary appointees, and imperially acknowledged Filial Sons. Most of Huang’s paintings narrate his personal transformation into a Filial Son. They also advertised this status to the social elite whose admiration for such individuals would keep the impoverished Huang family alive through gifts and favours in the short term, and positions, such as that of tutor or painting instructor, in the long term. The majority of Huang’s oeuvre consists of geo-narrative paintings created to present his transformation into a Filial Son. To convince viewers of this transformation, Huang created geo-narratives in which the geography of his southwest odyssey narrates his filiality. The focused goal of these works was carefully correlated with the other elements of the overarching campaign. The landscape itineraries Huang created synchronize with the basic components found in his writings and celebrated by the friends who wrote colophons and prefaces to his published dia-

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Fig. 1: Huang Xiangjian, Xiangshui Pass, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

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ries. Each of these parts of the campaign—the paintings, travel records, colophons, and prefaces—in turn, align with the structure of a classic filial piety tale. As in classic filial piety narratives, each of these components of the campaign introduces the character of Huang Xiangjian, narrates his filial acts, and suggests the rewards of these acts.13 Huang communicated these four elements of a filial piety narrative through the topographical imagery of his southwest landscapes to explicate his filial nature. The foundation of any filial son narrative is, obviously, the character of the filial son himself. Huang pictorialised this in his presentation of his diminutive painted self contending with the environmental and societal adversities of the southwest journey (fig. 1, pl. VI). A figure representing Huang moves through the challenge conveyed in each painting, and in so doing, illustrates his stalwart character. The majority of paintings Huang created picture him alone on the way to Yunnan or accompanying his family on their return (fig. 2). Each scene dramatically renders the perilous circumstances and strange sites they encountered en route, primarily in Guizhou and Yunnan. The short inscriptions Huang wrote in the upper corners of his paintings further augment the danger and emotion of each illustrated episode. They also highlight the pictorial representations of his filial character through discussions of his filial thoughts, references to his filial actions, and quotations from classic filial texts.14 The actions of a Filial Son were another primary component of a filial piety tale. Huang dramatically narrates his filial acts in his paintings. This explains why his paintings do not present a coherent recreation of his itinerary: they were created to narrate his filiality, not his route. Indeed, a coherent recreation of his trail would have submerged his filial deeds beneath the exotic shroud of particular sites in the miasmic southwest. To narrate his filiality, therefore, Huang created geo-narratives representative of the types of filial acts he performed en route. Huang presents his filial acts in his paintings, usually in album format, as synchronic records, in which each leaf becomes its own geo-narrative tracing his journey toward filiality. Huang, both alone and with his parents, is pictured undertaking a variety of basic filial acts: he climbs treacherous mountains (fig. 1, pl. VI); fords rushing rivers (fig. 3); crosses deep chasms; treks through foreign vegetation; suffers terrible weather (fig. 2); confronts threatening animals and people in the form of soldiers (fig. 4) and native inhabitants (fig. 5); seeks shelter; and attempts to not get too lost. Huang further clarifies and intensifies the filial acts he pictures through the inscriptions he prepared for each painting.15 To attain the title Filial Son, Huang could not be conventionally filial. Basic Confucian precepts required every member of society to be filial, but only the most filial would be rewarded with an official title. Therefore, Huang had to be, as the family friend Li Kaishu (act. mid-seventeenth century) wrote, “the Filial Son of filial sons.”16 To this end, Huang narrated his journey as a heroic odyssey that was attempted by few and completed only by him amidst the tumultuous Ming-Qing dynastic transition. Hero-tales of this type were popular in the seventeenth century, and the active hero was increasingly celebrated during the Ming-Qing transition in

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Fig. 2: Huang Xiangjian, Scenic Frontier of Yunnan, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

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Fig. 3: Huang Xiangjian, Qinglang Military Station Town, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

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Fig. 4: Huang Xiangjian, Baikoupo, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

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Fig. 5: Huang Xiangjian, Jiming Pass, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

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life and in literature.17 Lynn Struve notes the continuation of this vogue into the mid-Kangxi period (r. 1662–1723) when “a marked preference is shown for a more martial brand of heroism similar to that of the traditional Chinese ‘knight-errant’ (yu-hsia), and for subjects who, though they may not have died in the changeover, took vigorous, necessary, practical, and physically demanding action to save their dynasty and their people.”18 Huang presents himself as heroically filial by narrating a pictorial landscape of extreme obstacles that he and his family had to overcome. In each painting he emphasizes the urgency of their predicaments and their active response. Overwhelming natural elements: colossal mountain ranges, rugged terrain, flooding streams, ‘malarial’ vapours, and soaking rains dominate each scene. Huang also alludes to the dangerous human interactions found amidst these environmental challenges, such as minority tribe villages and the elephant cavalry of local rebel troops, and he places the focal challenge of each geo-narrative prominently in the middle to lower foreground. Huang arranges each of the pictorialised elements of a filial piety tale discussed above into an intricate, complementary whole to narrate the journey of one man into the role of Filial Son. Small representative figures of Huang and his family trek through a variety of overwhelming landscapes. These miniscule figures focalise the dangerous situations in which they are engaged and amplify the staggering monumentality of the southwest. The heroic figure of Huang, however, moves ever forward through this sweeping terrain. He is always in action, undeterred by the physical or psychological intensity of the pictured moment, as he faces the extra­ordinary, sublime vistas of the southwest. Huang intensifies the pictorial accounts of his filial geo-narratives further by literally activating the landscape. The distinctive topography of each southwestern scene is rendered in such a way as to reinforce the immediacy of the pictured predicament. The environment of each locale surrounds and envelops Huang and his family in the pivotal moment of action. Time and again, Huang paints himself and his party midway through a mountain range or in the centre of a river (figs. 2 and 3); when he is not mid-stride, he is about to begin (fig. 1, pl. VI). Huang’s landscape compositions intensify and purposefully overwhelm the action of each scene. One strong diagonal usually dominates each composition and moves the eye swiftly through the major elements of the scene. The clarity and strength of these diagonals continuously push the eye on to the next active form within the composition. The animated sections of landscape that form these diagonals also appear to move and shift before the viewer’s eyes, actively twisting and curving. The moment of action and overpowering landscapes are similarly narrated in the accompanying inscriptions. Finally, in viewing Huang’s filial geo-narratives the viewer becomes aware of the rewards of the filial acts performed. The first reward is clearly pictured. The Huang parents, usually in palanquins, are illustrated on their way home (fig. 2). They are pictured at least once and sometimes several times, in most albums. The majority of viewers would have been aware that the Huang odyssey concluded with their safe return to Suzhou. Huang also implies a variety of secondary filial rewards that

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are less obvious. Of these, the one of most interest is his newfound experiential understanding and ability to paint the sites and geography of the distant southwest through which he had travelled. Yet the final reward of the filial geo-narratives Huang illustrated must be understood and granted by the viewers themselves: acknowledgement of the painter as a Filial Son. Huang’s seventeenth-century audience appears to have granted this ultimate filial reward. A variety of events indicate the transformation that Huang’s geo-narrative paintings effected as part of the Huang family campaign. They assisted in shifting Huang Xiangjian’s societal position from unacknowledged Suzhou sub-elite to nationally renowned and imperially recognized Filial Son. Evidence of this may be found at the national level in the play, Union over Ten-Thousand Li (Wanli yuan), by the dramatist Li Yu (ca. 1610s–ca. 1680s), in which the Huang family story was presented as a heroic filial piety tale. Huang as Filial Son was also recognized as worthy of attention and discussion amongst a variety of social groups. For example, the Qing official Liang Qingbiao (1620–1691), a Ming-loyalist sympathizer, wrote a yuefu poem about a performance of the play Union over Ten-Thousand Li.19 Imperial recognition of Huang as Filial Son was achieved by 1705 under the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662–1722) during his Southern Tour.20 The Huang family friend Zhou Danling (ca. seventeenth century) reports in a colophon that a Huang Xiangjian painting was presented to the Kangxi Emperor as evidence of his filiality.21 The success of this petition for imperial recognition of Huang’s Filial Son status resulted in the erection of a monument to Huang soon after his death. It was a pillar to “Filial Son Huang” that stood at the entrance of Liuguozi Lane in his hometown of Suzhou.22 The pillar is no longer extant. Today, it is his geo-narrative paintings that proclaim his transformation into a Filial Son.

Case two: biographical geo-narratives A second type of geo-narrative created by Huang was geared toward a more select and private audience. Indeed, its core audience was one individual, Huang Xiangjian’s father, Huang Kongzhao. In 1658 Huang painted the large, eight-leaf landscape album in ink and colour on paper that I will refer to here as the Diannan album, which is an abbreviation of its frontispiece.23 The original title of the album is unknown. Six of its leaves illustrate sites in Yunnan, one portrays a region of Guizhou, and another shows the topography of the Guizhou-Huguang border. The transformative experience of this geo-narrative album is the realization that it presents a pictorial biography of the artist’s father. Whereas Huang’s body of work transformed him into a Filial Son, this set of landscape paintings narrates the lifelong journey of Huang’s father toward sagehood through a set of unique sites filled with topographical metaphors for personal growth and illumination. The complexity of the route and the multidimensional symbolism of the sites of this geo-narrative require that we divide it into three different analytical dimensions. The first layer presents the physical topography and the attendant experience

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Fig. 6: Huang Xiangjian, The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

of journeying through it. The second dimension consists of the cultural topography as manifest in historically established symbols representative of generalized principles as well as specific condensation symbols of persona, social group, and class. The final stratum may be labelled personal topography and is infused with the personality, beliefs, and experiences of a single person—the artist’s father, Huang Kongzhao.24 Huang Xiangjian presents the physical journey experience of the Diannan album as eight topographically distinctive regions of landscape. The inscriptions, compositions, inhabitants, and scenic outlooks of each region allow viewers to immerse themselves in the journey experience. Each leaf presents a type of the distinctive topography for which southwest China was famous, such as subtropical flora, medicinal hot springs, precipitous cliffs, and extraordinary mountain formations.25 The inscriptions further identify the general area, describe the topography, and guide viewers’ experience of the painted subject matter of each leaf. Huang Xiangjian interlaces a multitude of themes, sub-themes, and personalities into the emblematic southwest landscapes that compose the physical topography of the Diannan album. Each element he includes embodies one facet of the personality of an ideal seventeenth-century gentleman such as Huang Kongzhao: recluse, loyalist, nature-lover, traveller, philosopher, Buddhist, and official. Collectively, these elements form the fundamental criteria by which the life of a gentleman was defined. Figures engaged in classic gentlemanly activities imbued with the broadly accepted symbolism of intellect, principle, and cultivated awareness are a focal point in each leaf. In one of the leaves, for example, two figures converse as they walk beneath the pines of Mount Taihua (fig. 6, pl. VIIa and fig. 7, pl. VIIb). For centuries, men had been pictured conversing or listening to the wind in the pines.26 The act of listening to the wind stirring amidst pines could symbolize their refined and contemplative sensibilities. Gentlemen were also equated with the long-lived strength and vitality of the trees themselves. Like these evergreens, the

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Fig. 7: Huang Xiangjian, The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

principled gentleman was constant, no matter the political weather or wind. In another leaf, a figure sits quietly in a small hut built into the entrance of a cave (fig. 8). He may be practising any number of Buddhist meditational techniques or the Confucian “quiet sitting” (jingzuo) practised by seventeenth-century gentlemen. A deer curled up asleep in front of the cave implies the meditative calm of the moment. Deer also have strong Buddhist and Confucian connotations. The deer here might be associated with the deer park of the historical Buddha and with monastery grounds generally, so it may symbolize a place of meditation to enlightenment. The presence of the deer also suggests the Confucian White Deer Grotto Academy (Bailudong Shuyuan) on Mount Lu where the two reclusive intellectuals, the brothers Li Bo (d. 831) and Li She, lived with their pet, a white deer, in the eighth century.27 To create a true geo-narrative Huang Xiangjian integrated a final dimension of meaning into the topography of the Diannan album. This layer was infused with the personal experiences, beliefs, and memories of his father. For example, the album presents the topography of the general area of the southwest where Huang Kongzhao served in local government.28 A more arcane example may be seen in the way Huang Xiangjian topographically intertwines the life-experiences of Huang Kongzhao with an eminent philosopher he admired, Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren, 1472–1529). This is done in a variety of ways, but the most obvious ref-

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Fig. 8: Huang Xiangjian, Stone Cave and Indented Peak, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

erence may be found in the magnificent sunrise Huang renders in one of the leaves (fig. 9, pl. VIIIa). In the 6 March 1653 entry of his travel diaries, Huang Xiangjian reports that at dawn he and his family passed through the Weiqing area pictured, and a bit further down the road in Longchang, his father wrote an elegy for Wang Yangming. This was entirely appropriate because Wang Yangming had served as the head of the Longchang Post Station from 1508 to 1510.29 In the album leaf, Huang Xiangjian summons an image of Wang Yangming by illustrating the region in which Wang served and reinforces this reference by presenting a rebus of his name through the depiction of the sunrise at this site: “Yangming” means “sunlight” or “sun-like brilliance.” Hence, Huang alludes to his father’s topographical bond with Wang Yangming by illustrating his area of jurisdiction. Huang then reinforces this reference further by literally blanketing the geography in the rosy glow of the rising sun (“Yangming”), and hence imbuing the landscape itself with the history and memories his father associated with his icon. This is just one of many interpretations that might be applied to the impressive sunrise of this leaf. Another distinctly provocative reading that aligns with the life experiences and development of Huang Kongzhao reads the sunrise as an allusion to his loyalty to the fallen Ming dynasty through a visual pun on the Ming family surname, Zhu, which may be translated as “crimson.” In this interpretation, Huang Kongzhao is provided with a landscape over which the glorious Ming family still rules, and this is captured pictorially

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Fig. 9: Huang Xiangjian, Dawn on Lotus Peak, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

through the crimson-covered scene. In the Diannan album, Huang Xiangjian merged contemporary, traditional, and remembered conceptions of the physical topography of the southwest with the cultural topography of seventeenth-century Suzhou educated gentlemen and the personal topography of his father. Huang Kongzhao, and a select group of friends, might appreciate its geo-narrative any number of ways. It is in the privileged journey these dimensions join to create for Huang Kongzhao, however, that the geo-narrative of the album lies. The eight scenes of the Diannan album geo-narrative consist of eight independent trips that, when read together, combine to form the spiritual biography of Huang Kongzhao’s journey toward sagehood. Many seventeenth-century gentlemen like Huang Kongzhao did not seek something like the static Western conception of a completed growth process or ‘adulthood’, but instead engaged in a continual process of self-realization toward “becoming a person” (chengren). This group of gentlemen viewed maturation as a lifelong process in which the self had virtually unlimited potential for development.30 Selfhood was sought by the person, but was also perceived as part of the larger scheme of humanity. The “ultimate self-transformation” of Confucian religiousness incorporated both critical moments of enlightenment in a person’s life as well as their continuous progress toward the spiritual cultivation of this wisdom.31 Those deemed successful were called “sages.”

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Many seventeenth-century gentlemen sought sagehood. They were aided in these endeavours by texts that discussed authors’ thoughts on the development of sagehood, such as Reflections on Things at Hand (Jinsi lu) by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Lu Zuqian (1137–1181). Biographies of those who partially or fully realized sagehood are contained in the final chapter of this text, entitled “On the Dispositions of Sages and Worthies.”32 Biography was an important element of Confucian spiritual development. William Theodore de Bary has pointed out that the majority of characteristics associated with a sage were essentially personality traits and that it was his life and how he realized the goal of sagehood that was of most import.33 The life and work of the sage was to be the model for future seekers. Rodney Taylor explains, “Such a figure serves as a model or exemplar and his life itself is the measure of his understanding.”34 Ming-dynasty writers, Taylor points out, were particularly interested in examining their progress in matters of self-cultivation and recorded their pursuits in works such as Gao Panlong’s (1562–1626) autobiography, Recollections of the Toils of Learning (Kunxue ji) and Hu Zhi’s (1517–1585) autobiography of the same name.35 Between 1565 and 1680, a number of gentlemen chose to present their lifelong progress toward sagehood in the form of a travel narrative.36 Wu Pei-yi (1927–2009) has labelled the combination of Ming-dynasty autobiography and travel literature “spiritual autobiography.” These two writing genres already shared many common attributes. Both were usually written in the first-person and the autobiographer or traveller was the protagonist. They related factual events, and they were also interested in a temporal organization related through spatial and/or chronological movement.37 In these writings spiritual autobiographers such as Deng Huoqu (1498–1570?) and Gao Panlong merged their life stories with personal travel narratives by recording specific incidents of a journey, often within a certain period of time in their lives. Most spiritual autobiographies include a significant initial experience, visiting sites associated with sages and worthies, periods of physical danger and extreme hardship, ascents to great heights, and breakthroughs to unsurpassed topographical views. Most importantly, Wu Pei-yi points out that these writers related a double journey in quest of an “absolute truth” in which vigorous upward movement accompanied spiritual progress. At journey’s end, the “hazardous ascent brought each to a salient point, where a sudden illumination struck the seeker.”38 The topographic experiences Huang Xiangjian narrates in the Diannan album combine to reveal the deeper underlying meaning of the journey landscape. Huang uses the physical geography of eight distinct southwest areas to illuminate the significant historical, cultural, and personal topographies of his father to form a pictorial spiritual biography. This understanding transforms the journey into a geo-narrative that relates Huang Kongzhao’s lifelong quest for sagehood. In this journey the path of each expedition parallels the “strenuous upward locomotion accompanying spiritual progress” described in contemporary texts. Six of the eight leaves also suggest or illustrate the outlook available from a great height indicative of the significant moment of sudden illumination that strikes the seeker (fig. 6, pl. VIIa and fig. 9, pl. VIIIa).

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Fig. 10: Huang Xiangjian, Numinous Peaks and Billowing Clouds, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

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Fig. 11: Huang Xiangjian, The Ancient Buddhist Monastery of the Brahman, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum.

Huang Xiangjian links the eight journey stages of the Diannan album into one spiritual biography by integrating himself into each leaf. His painted self treks the roads, witnesses the human activities, and moves viewers along the gradual upward trajectory of the album-wide journey. As a focaliser, he journeys through the life landscape of his father. He proceeds towards two gentlemen chatting beneath or listening to the wind in the pines (fig. 6, pl. VIIa). He has passed one gentleman admiring a spring and one or several gentleman bathing in a hot spring. He will emerge from the cliffs of Jianchuan to look out onto distant travellers making their way toward a city. On a steep path high above, he passes two gentlemen on a path below admiring some aspect of the cliffs of Heqing (fig. 10, pl. VIIIb). Huang Xiangjian is present as these figures re-enact the life events and beliefs of his own father. I would suggest that one of the figures in each of these interactions, the one often shown in a red robe, actually represents his father (fig. 7, pl. VIIb). Yet Huang does not interact with these figures, for they exist in another time and place. They are, in essence, manifestations of the interests, beliefs, personal experiences, and trajectory of his father’s life. Huang begins the narrative journey along the Li River bank in the lower right of the first leaf. He completes the journey by admiring the distant view from a high precipice at the far left of the last leaf (fig. 11). His general trajectory moves viewers from the lowest geographical elevation represented in the album to the highest––metaphorically, his father’s life from beginning to end. A high geographical plateau and distant view narrate

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the moment of spiritual enlightenment and final sagehood for Huang’s father in the last leaf. Here, the painted figure of Huang sits on a high precipice admiring an endless chain of mountains that progress into the horizon (fig. 11). This is the only leaf in which Huang is not on the move. Instead, he sits and contemplates the grand view that concludes the album. Having travelled through the geo-narrative of his father’s life and accomplishments in Yunnan, Huang reaches this enlightened vantage point and now views them in their entirety. It is to this type of transformative experience that all geo-narratives aspire, if we, as viewers, choose to seek it.

Glossary of Chinese Characters Bailudong Shuyuan 白鹿洞書院 成人 chengren Dan dao hui 單刀會 Dianhuan riji 滇還日記 Diannan shengjing 滇南勝境 Gao Panlong 高攀龍 Ge jiang dou zhi 隔江鬪智 胡直 Hu Zhi Huang Kongzhao 黃孔昭 黃向堅 Huang Xiangjian Huang Xiaozi jicheng 黃孝子紀程 jingzuo 靜坐 近思錄 Jinsi lu 困學記 Kunxue ji Li Bo 李渤 Li Kaishu 李楷叔 李涉 Li She 李玉 Li Yu Liang Qingbiao 梁清標 Liu Bei 劉備

Liuguozi 六國子 龍場 Longchang 呂祖謙 Lü Zuqian Ma Lin 馬麟 喬宇 Qiao Yu 太華 Taihua Tang Yin 唐寅 王蒙 Wang Meng Wang Yangming 王陽明 (Wang Shouren 王守仁) 萬里圓 Wanli yuan Weiqing 威清 Xunqin jicheng 尋親紀程 Ye Cheng 葉澄 yu-hsia (youxia) 遊俠 樂府 yuefu Zhou Danling 周旦齡 Zhu Xi 朱熹

Notes   1 I am grateful to Karin Gludovatz, Juliane Noth, and Joachim Rees of the DFG Research Group “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art” (FOR 1703) for inviting me to present my ideas concerning geo-narrative at their international conference “The Itineraries of Art. Topographies of Artistic Mobility in Europe and Asia, 1500‒1900” at the Freie Universität Berlin. Many thanks especially to Juliane Noth for her careful reading of my paper and helpful editorial comments. Richard Vinograd, “Family Properties: Personal Context and Cultural Pattern in Wang Meng’s Pien Mountains of 1366” Ars Orientalis 13 (1982), 12.

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  2 Flora Li-tsui Fu, Framing Famous Mountains. Grand Tour and Mingshan Paintings in Sixteenth-Century China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009), xxiii.   3 Ibid., 85.   4 See Elizabeth Kindall, “Experiential Readings and the Grand View: Mount Jizu by Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673)” The Art Bulletin 95, no. 3 (September 2012), 412–436; Elizabeth Kindall, “Envisioning a Monastery: A Seventeenth-Century Buddhist Fund-Raising Appeal Album” T’oung Pao 97 (2011), 104–159; Elizabeth Kindall, “Visual Experience in Late-Ming Suzhou ‘Honorific’ and ‘Famous Sites’ Paintings” Ars Orientalis 36 (2009), 137–177; and Elizabeth Kindall, “The Paintings of Huang Xiangjian’s Filial Journey to the Southwest” Artibus Asiae 67, no. 2 (2007), 297–357.   5 See, for example, Mei-Po Kwan and Guoxiang Ding, “Geo-Narrative: Extending Geographic Information Systems for Narrative Analysis in Qualitative and Mixed-Method Research” The Professional Geographer, vol. 60, no. 4 (2008), 443–465.   6 I am grateful to Juliane Noth for emphasizing the importance of this characteristic in an earlier draft of this paper.   7 For a history and discussion of this writing style, see Richard E. Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes. Travel Writing from Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).   8 See Elizabeth Kindall, Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son. The Paintings and Travel Diaries of Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming).   9 Scholars such as Susan Bush and Minna Törmä have addressed the various roles of site experience in relation to Chinese painting. See Susan Bush, “Tsung Ping’s Essay on Painting Landscape and the ‘Landscape Buddhism’ of Mount Lu” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 132–163; and Minna Törmä, Landscape Experience as Visual Narrative. Northern Song Dynasty Landscape Handscrolls in the Li Cheng-Yan Wengui Tradition (Helsinki: Tiedekirja, 2002). 10 This study focuses on those elements of Huang’s work that suggest they might be read as geo-narratives. For a more detailed examination of Huang Xiangjian and his oeuvre, see Kindall, Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son (cf. note 9). 11 None of the preface writers or colophonists for the printed version of Huang’s travel diaries cites an official position or degree for him. See Huang Xiangjian 黃向堅, Xunqin jicheng 尋親紀程 and Dianhuan riji 滇還日記, pt. 5, fasc. 7 (cum. v. 39), Huang Xiaozi jicheng 黃孝子紀程, 1–31, in Zhibuzu zhai congshu 知不足齋叢書, ed. Bao Tingbo 鮑廷博 (1728–1814) (repr., Shanghai: Gushu Liutongchu, 1921). 12 The travel records of Huang Xiangjian, Xunqin jicheng and Dianhuan riji may be found in the following collectanea: Zhibuzu zhai congshu, ed. Bao Tingbo (repr., Shanghai: Gushu Liutongchu, 1921), pt. 5, vol. 7 (cum. v. 39), 1–31; Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編 (Changsha: Commercial Press, 1939), Lunli xiaoshuo 倫理小說 section, vol. 2686; Xiaofanghu zhai yudi congchao 小方壺齋輿地叢鈔, ed. Wang Xiqi 王錫祺 (Hangzhou: n. p., 1887–1894), vol. 41, 240a–248b; and Biji xiaoshuo daguan 筆記小說大觀 (repr. Taibei: Xinxing Shuju, 1962), vol. 5, 5211–5217. Lynn A. Struve translates sections of A Record of the Journey in Search of my Parents in Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm. China in Tigers’ Jaws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 162–178. For a full translation of both travel records, see Kindall, Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son (cf. note 9). 13 Keith Nathaniel Knapp, Selfless Offspring. Filial Children and Social Order in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 28. 14 For one such inscription, see Kindall, “The Paintings of Huang Xiangjian’s Filial Journey to the Southwest” (cf. note 4), 337. 15 For some examples of these inscriptions, see ibid., 305–309. 16 Li Kaishu 李楷叔, “Huang Xiaozi jicheng xu 黃孝子紀程序” pt. 5, fasc. 7 (cum. fasc. 39), Huang Xiaozi jicheng xu, 4a–5a, in Zhibuzu zhai congshu, ed. Bao Tingbo (repr., Shanghai: Gushu liutongchu, 1921). 17 The Romance of the Three Kingdoms historical novel in which Guan Yu 關羽 and Zhuge Liang 諸 葛亮 play major roles enjoyed a wide circulation of readers, and Yuan-dynasty plays such as The Lone Swordsman (Dan dao hui 單刀會), dealing with Guan Yu’s adventures in the south, and The Duel of Wits Across the River (Ge jiang dou zhi 隔江鬪智), in which Zhuge Liang protects the throne of Liu Bei 劉備 against the various plots of the court of Wu, were also popular. See Chung-

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wen Shih, The Golden Age of Chinese Drama. Yüan Tsa-chü (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 44, 34–35. See also Three Kingdoms. A Historical Novel, attrib. to Luo Guanzhong 羅貫中, trans. Moss Roberts (Beijing and Berkeley: Foreign Languages Press/University of California Press, 1991). Lynn A. Struve, “Ambivalence and Action: Some Frustrated Scholars of the K’ang-hsi Period” in From Ming to Ch’ing. Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China, ed. Jonathan Spence and John E. Wills Jr. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 332. Wai-yee Li, “Introduction” in Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature, ed. Wilt L. Idema, Wai-yee Li, and Ellen Widmer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 36 and no. 111. The play is reprinted in Guben xiqu congkan san ji 古本戲曲叢刊三集 (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1954), vol. 39. Liang’s yuefu poems are also mentioned in Zhao Erxun 趙爾巽 et al., Qingshi gao 清史稿 (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1976–77), ch. 498, 13770. The Kangxi emperor spent a total of 15 days in Suzhou over the course of his 1705 Southern Tour. See Silas H. L. Wu, Passage to Power. K’ang-hsi and His Heir Apparent, 1661–1722 (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 87. Chen Kuilin 陳夔麟, Baoyuge shuhualu 寳迂閣書畫錄, 4 vols. (repr. s.l., 1915), vol. 2, 46b. Gu Zhentao 顧震濤, Wumen biaoyin 吳門表隱 (Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1999), 165, 180. The presentation of one of Huang Xiangjian’s paintings to the Kangxi Emperor may be related to this petition, as an accompanying document of the request or in thanks for its being granted. Each leaf measures 30.3 cm high x 69 cm wide. For a reproduction, see Zhongguo gudai shuhua tumu 中國古代書畫圖目, 23 vols. (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1988), vol. 7, 24–0473; and Montagnes Célestes. Trésors Des Musées De Chine. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 30 mars–28 juin 2004 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux; Association Française d’Action Artistique, 2004), 180–183. It is part of the collection of the Nanjing Museum, which labels it A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Xunqin jicheng tu 尋親紀程圖). I am calling it the Diannan album as an abbreviation of the frontispiece by the Suzhou native He Zhuo 何焯 (1661–1722), which reads “Diannan shengjing 滇南勝境 [Scenic Frontier of Southern Yunnan]”, even though it, too, is inaccurate. Diannan shengjing is only the name of a region on the Yunnan-Guizhou border. This is a variation of the ideas of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, as discussed by James Robson, Power of Place. The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue) in Medieval China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 7. For some examples of Ming-Qing views of the southwest, see Chen Ding 陳鼎 (born ca. 1650), Journey to Yunnan (Dian youji 滇遊記) in Xuehai leibian 學海類編 (Taibei: Wenhua Shuju, 1964), vol. 10, 5937–5945; Wang Shixing 王士性, “Record of a Journey to Mount Jizu (You Jizu shan 遊鷄足山)” in Wang Shixing dilishu sanzhong 王士性地理書三種 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1993), 147–150; Xie Zhaozhe 謝肇淛, Dianlüe 滇略 in Siku quanshu zhenben sanji 四庫全書珍本三輯, vol. 155, juan 2, 8b–10a; and Julian Ward, Xu Xiake (1587–1641). The Art of Travel Writing (Surrey, UK: Curzon Press, 2001). See, for example, Ma Lin 馬麟 (ca. 1180–after 1256), Listening to the Wind in the Pines in Huishu Lee, Exquisite Moments. West Lake & Southern Song Art (New York: China Institute Gallery, 2001), 51, fig. 23; or Tang Yin 唐寅 (1470–1524), The Sound of Pines on a Mountain Path and Wind in the Pines and Flowing Streams in Anne de Coursey Clapp, The Painting of T’ang Yin (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 181, fig. 72 and 184–185, fig. 73. John W. Chaffee, “Chu Hsi and the Revival of the White Deer Grotto Academy, 1179–1181 A.D.” T’oung Pao 71 (1985), 40–62. Ibid., 41. Paintings honouring officials through depictions of their realms of governance were an established genre by this period. See Kindall, “Visual Experience in Late-Ming Suzhou” (cf. note 4), 141–148. Julia Ching, To Acquire Wisdom. The Way of Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 27, 30. Tu Wei-ming, “The Confucian Perception of Adulthood” in Adulthood, ed. Erik H. Erikson (New York: Norton, 1976), 113–114; and Robert E. Hegel and Richard C. Hessney, eds., Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 7. Ibid., 116.

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32 William Theodore de Bary, “Neo-Confucian Cultivation and the Seventeenth Century ‘Enlightenment’” in The Unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, ed. William T. de Bary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 153–160 for a discussion of the Jinsi lu. For a translation, see Wing-tsit Chan, Reflections on Things at Hand. The Neo-Confucian Anthology Compiled by Chu Hsi and Lü Tsu-ch’ien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). 33 de Bary, “Neo-Confucian Cultivation and the Seventeenth Century ‘Enlightenment’” (cf. note 33), 157; and Rodney L. Taylor, The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1990), 46. 34 Ibid., 49. 35 Ibid., 66–71. 36 Wu Pei-yi, The Confucian’s Progress. Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), xii. 37 Ibid., 95. 38 Wu Pei-yi, “An Ambivalent Pilgrim to T’ai Shan in the Seventeenth Century” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 65–88, 86 n. 5.

Illustrations Fig. 1: Huang Xiangjian, Xiangshui Pass, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, twelveleaf album, ink on paper, 24.4 × 14.7 cm, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum (photo: the author, permission from Suzhou Museum). Fig. 2: Huang Xiangjian, Scenic Frontier of Yunnan, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, twelve-leaf album, ink on paper, 24.4 × 14.7 cm, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum (photo: the author, permission from Suzhou Museum). Fig. 3: Huang Xiangjian, Qinglang Military Station Town, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, twelve-leaf album, ink on paper, 24.4 × 14.7 cm, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum (photo: the author, permission from Suzhou Museum). Fig. 4: Huang Xiangjian, Baikoupo, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, twelve-leaf album, ink on paper, 24.4 × 14.7 cm, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum (photo: the author, permission from Suzhou Museum). Fig. 5: Huang Xiangjian, Jiming Pass, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, twelve-leaf album, ink on paper, 24.4 × 14.7 cm, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum (photo: the author, permission from Suzhou Museum). Fig. 6: Huang Xiangjian, The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum). Fig. 7: Huang Xiangjian, The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum). Fig. 8: Huang Xiangjian, Stone Cave and Indented Peak, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum). Fig. 9: Huang Xiangjian, Dawn on Lotus Peak, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum). Fig. 10: Huang Xiangjian, Numinous Peaks and Billowing Clouds, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum).

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Fig. 11: Huang Xiangjian, The Ancient Buddhist Monastery of the Brahman, detail, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), eight-leaf album, ink and colour on paper, 30.3 × 69 cm, 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum (photo: the author, permission from Nanjing Museum).

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Historicity and the Route Remarks on the Relations between Art and Anthropology in the Illustrations of the Travel Account of James Cook’s Third Expedition Yet it is highly to be wished, that, after the commencements we have, the accurate and natural-historic manner of delineating the human species may be extended uninterruptedly to all the regions of the Globe. … Cook’s last Voyage, if we may trust what fame says of its engravings, commences a new and higher period, the continuation of which in other parts of the world I ardently desire, and that they may be rendered of more general utility and more extensively known.1

This remark from Johann Gottfried Herder’s Outlines of a philosophy of the history of man (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784) reveals the close connections between anthropology, art, and travel in the late eighteenth century. In expressing a wish for more reliable depictions of humans around the globe, Herder refers to the illustrations from the account of the third expedition to the Pacific conducted by James Cook (1776–1780).2 This lavish publication was part of a broader literary and graphic processing of the European exploration of the world3, one that is revealed by the coalescence of travel and travelogue in Herder’s words.4 Cook’s Voyage was published in 1784––the same year as Herder’s Outlines––and focussed on information about people living in different parts of the Pacific.5 This article will examine the engravings from this publication in order to shed light on the relationship between anthropology, travel, and the production of images. The main aim here is to analyse the temporal patterns constituted by images and text, above all in the developmental models of the history of humankind that were current at the time and were closely connected with the emerging sciences of man. For this I will refer to Johannes Fabian’s study, Time and the Other, which provides an analysis of the temporal systems and attributions that formed the basis of Western anthropological discourse.6 After describing the volume of engravings, I will focus on some exemplary plates and analyse aspects of their relationship to anthropological models. In doing this I do not aim to establish a one-to-one analogy between anthropological theories and travel images, but rather to compile a tableau of the different issues raised by the illustrations, which relate to the discursive field of anthropology and history but do not necessarily form one coherent whole.

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1. The volume, its composition and contexts Rich and elaborate travel accounts were common and popular in the eighteenth century, and they formed an important branch of the expanding market for printed media.7 The exploration of the Pacific, promoted by France and Great Britain, reached a broader public through the travel accounts of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1771), Wallis, Carteret and Cook (edited in three volumes by John Hawkesworth, 1773), and Georg Forster (1777), amongst others.8 The competitive desire to make the world accessible both geographically and economically was also pursued in the publication of the European discoveries during these voyages.9 By the time the third expedition to the Pacific led by James Cook departed in 1776, the discourse of discovery was already fully established. The information provided by travel accounts about distant parts of the world were highly valuable for natural historians as well as for anthropologists who were establishing a new discipline.10 Indeed, the latter proposed guidelines for the documentation of travels that would guarantee its scientific usability.11 As a result, when the travellers of the third Cook expedition returned to Plymouth in 1780, they brought with them a variety of collected objects, specimens, impressions, written and drawn records, journals, log-books, maps, and coastal profiles that were to be utilised and published. The British-Swiss artist John Webber was among these travellers. He had been assigned to sketch places, people, and remarkable incidents during the journey and returned to England with about 200 drawings.12 Four years later, in 1784, the Royal Admiralty published an offi­cial travel account in three volumes of text, and one separately bound volume comprising sixty-one engravings based on Webber’s drawings.13 A committee made up of members of the Royal Admiralty, scientists, the editors, Captain James King, and John Webber, were responsible for the selection of drawings for publication.14 The graphic material of this so-called Atlas was organised according to the chronology of the journey. A huge map of the world at the beginning of the volume established this spatio-temporal structure by presenting the routes of all three Pacific voyages that were undertaken by Cook (fig. 1). Their course and duration was indicated by small-inscribed dates and, because Cook died during the third expedition, this opening lent the volume the character of a memorial. The series of engravings that follow the map, details the third and last voyage with concrete visual information. Comprising all the images of the journey into one large, comprehensive volume and thereby establishing a coherent sequence of images, is unique to this account; former travel accounts had always included the plates in the text volumes. Thus, the Atlas of the third of Cook’s voyages can be seen as an atlas presenting the “varieties of man”15 on the basis of a geographic structure, and as a (partial) concretion of the famous idea of a “Great map of mankind” that Edmund Burke had expressed seven years before in a letter written to the historian William Robertson:

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Fig. 1: W. Palmer, General Chart of the Discoveries made by Captain James Cook with the Tracks of the Ships under his Command, engraving, London 1784, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. I have always thought with you, that we possess at this time very great advantages towards the knowledge of human Nature. We need no longer go to History to trace it in all its stages and periods. History from its comparative youth, is but a poor instructour. … But now the Great Map of Mankind is unrolled at once; and there is no state or Gradation of barbarism, and no mode of refinement which we have not at the same instant under our View. The very different civility of Europe and of China; The barbarism of Persia and Abyssinia. The erratick manners of Tartary, and of Arabia. The Savage State of North America, and of New Zealand.16

Burke’s metaphorical phrase became a concrete claim in the writings of Herder, especially in the above-mentioned paragraph of his Outlines: “Art could not easily be employed in a more philosophical pursuit: and an anthropologic map of the Earth, … in which nothing should be noticed except real varieties of man, but these in all their appearances and relations, would crown the philanthropic work.”17 That Herder refers to “Art” in such a direct manner sheds light on the precise scientific motivation for introducing artists to expeditions and on the desire to make an important and prestigious contribution to scientific progress by publishing the visual outcome in an elaborate volume. Herder, as well as Burke, developed his interest in the various peoples of the globe in accordance with an epistemic model of a universal history of mankind. This model was based on the terms ‘Man’ and ‘History’ that were shaped as unified concepts (“Kollektivsingular”) during the Enlightenment and were predicated on the

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premise of a secular and universal notion of time.18 The common notion of the existence of different stages in a universal history of humankind in different parts of the world informed the preconceptions of travel. Thus, travelling through space also meant travelling through time. In 1800 Joseph-Marie Dégerando wrote the following in his Considérations sur les methodes à suivre dans l’observation des peuples sauvages: “The philosophical traveller, sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact travelling in time; he is exploring the past; every step he makes is the passage of an age.”19 A double historical dimension becomes visible in relation to the route as an organising system of the material included in the Atlas: the period of travel, on the one hand and the model of different epochs of a universal history on the other are concepts underlying the exploration of the Pacific peoples. The question of whether and how the engravings reflect this two-fold spatio-temporal constellation is therefore a pertinent one.

2. Subsistence and the concept of civilisational stages One of the plates in the Atlas agrees with one of the central arguments in historiographical and anthropological models of the developmental stages of civilization that were circulating at the time––the argument of subsistence. This approach was central to anthropology and historiography in the eighteenth century, and it also informed travelling.20 The historian Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, amongst others, saw the means of gathering food as a determining criterion for civilisational development. He divided these into stages: “Families or small nations widely separated from one another, because each required a very large area to obtain its food: that was the state of hunters.”21 The French Captain Jean-Francois de Galaup, also known as La Pérouse, referred to the same criterion in his travelogue, stating that European travellers aimed at bringing the profits of civilisation to the peoples in distant regions: “and the light, seeking to spread, follows only one aim, to render the islanders it visits happier and to improve their means of subsistence.”22 In The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound (fig. 2, pl. IXa) information on the Nuu-chah-nulth [called Nootka by the British voyagers] who lived on the northwest-coast of North America, is arranged around the central motif of preparing food. The image affords an impression of the architecture and clothing of the Nuuchah-nulth, as well as of their social life and religion. Nutrition is also underlined in the text of the travel account, where the procedure of preparing food is explained and underscored as the theme of the engraving: They also prepare a sort of broth from this animal [the porpoise, A.K.], in its fresh state, in a singular manner, putting pieces of it in a square wooden vessel or bucket, with water, and then throwing heated stones into it. This operation they repeat till they think the contents are sufficiently stewed or seethed. They put in the fresh, and take out the other stones, with a clest stick, which serves as tongs; the vessel being always placed near the fire, for that purpose. ([note:] This operation is represented by Mr. Webber, in his drawing of the inside of a Nootka house.) 23

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Fig. 2: William Sharp after John Webber, The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound, engraving, London 1784, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

The pictorial staging of the engraving, which places nourishment at the centre of the image and surrounds it with different aspects of Nuu-chah-nulth life, corresponds to the notion that modes of subsistence form the constitutive factor in social life, technologies, religion, and even the human physiognomy. The engraving, together with a written commentary, directs the attention of its audience––especially those familiar with the theory of subsistence––to an anthropological categorization of the people from Nootka Sound. In the context of the sequence of engravings included in the Atlas, The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound forms a conclusion or climax of the material on the Nuu-chah-nulth.24 A similar position is taken by the detailed description of the diet of the people in Nootka Sound, comprising six pages of the travel account.25 Both the engraving and text clearly suggest that it consisted mainly of fish: “The chief employment of the men seems to be that of fishing, and killing land or sea animals, for the sustenance of their families.”26 Based on this the Nuu-chah-nulth would have been classified as hunter-fisher-gatherers, a stage that was generally considered to be the lowest grade of development. Further motifs in the engraving confirm this: the house and tools made of local raw materials as well as the partial nakedness of the figures are consistent with this category.27 The logic of this model is slightly challenged by one sequence of the text, which states that not all the techniques the Nuu-chah-nulth employed could be brought into line with concepts of civilisational development: “Their manufactures, and

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Fig. 3: John Webber, Interior of a House in Nootka Sound, pencil on paper, April 1778, Scottish National Gallery.

Fig. 4: John Webber, Interior of a Habitation at Nootka Sound, pencil and ink on paper, April 1778, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

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mechanic arts, are far more extensive and ingenious, whether we regard the design, or the execution, than could have been expected from the natural disposition of the people, and the little progress that civilization has made amongst them in other respects.”28 One such art was weaving technology, which was regarded as typical of the second level of civilization, characterized by animal husbandry, and was thus considered incongruous with the first stage of human history and development.29 Nevertheless, the observation was integrated into the description of the Nuu-chahnulth in a way that did not question the model but instead maintained it rhetorically. Indeed, the scenes of weaving that John Webber had sketched several times during his stay in Nootka Sound (figs. 3, 4, pls. IXb, Xa) were not actually included in the Atlas. Furthermore, the clothing displayed in The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound as well as in the type portraits, suggests the use of fur or leather rather than of woven textiles, which was in harmony with the designated stage model.30 This omission was probably due to a wish to avoid any ambiguity in representing the stages in a history of humankind that was based on the criterion of subsistence, especially since there was no text in the Atlas that could explain or compensate for such discrepancies. One can only suppose that the connection to these theoretical references was particularly relevant to Joseph Banks and to the other scholars who selected the images for the Atlas.31

3. Finding antiquity in the South-Pacific Another reference employed to integrate the inhabitants of the Pacific into a universal history of humankind was the comparison to European classical antiquity. Motifs evoking associations with antiquity were included in the engraving The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee (fig. 5, pl. Xb), which depicts a crowd assembled in a huge circle on the beach of the South Pacific group of islands called Ha’apai. To welcome the European travellers the inhabitants of the islands supplied food and staged a boxing match (fig. 6). The boxers in the middle of the circle are clearly modelled on the Borghese Gladiator, a famous Hellenistic sculpture that had been rediscovered in the early seventeenth century and made famous through a number of copies in the eighteenth century.32 Webber most probably based his picture on the depiction of this sculpture in Bernardino Gegna’s book Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno,33 which was available in the library of HMS Resolution.34 Amongst the copperplates in the book, which presented both human anatomy as well as famous Roman sculptures, there are two that bear a striking resemblance to Webber’s figuration of the boxers (fig. 7). 35 The fighters’ bodies are depicted at the same instant of the same movement, one from a front and the other from a back view, creating an impression of a single, three-dimensional body. The reference to the Borghese Gladiator was even more pointed given that copies of the sculpture were positioned in pairs facing each other in several places in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century.36 The relation between Ha’apai and classical Antiquity is further enhanced by another recognisable motif used in the same engraving: In the right middle ground

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Fig. 5: James Heath after John Webber, The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee, engraving, London 1784. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

some of the European travellers invite a group of seated women to go with them (fig. 8). The scene is reminiscent of the figures in Antoine Watteau’s Embarquement pour Cythère (1710–1719).37 Cythère, an Aegean island considered to be an ancient ritual site of Aphrodite, was a popular subject in the visual and performing arts at the beginning of the eighteenth century.38 Watteau’s painting was widely known through its reproduction in an engraving by Nicolas-Henri Tardieu (1733)39; thus, it can be assumed that the Atlas’ audience would have identified the allusion to Watteau’s couples departing for the island of love. This also establishes a relationship between the prevalent association of Tahiti with the mythological realm of Aphrodite, which was first made by the French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville and influenced subsequent European perceptions of this island in the South Pacific. In the account of his voyage to the Pacific (1771) he wrote “the island that we initially gave the name new Cythera, received from its inhabitants that of Tahiti.”40 By alluding to Watteau’s Embarquement pour Cythère, the plate entitled The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee created a visual association for a European public, in which the motif of Cythera as the island of Aphrodite was merged with idealised concepts of uncorrupted sexuality in the South Pacific islands.41 Because of the rich variety of small-scale figures and scenes presented in the engraving from a slightly elevated point of view, the Watteau-like couples and the Borghese Gladiator fighters are recognizable only upon closer inspection. Presumably, these references to models of art history were subtle enough not to undermine the veracity of the depiction. Nevertheless, they are present, and educated viewers

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Fig. 6: James Heath after John Webber, The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee, detail with boxing match.

would have taken considerable pleasure in recognising them. By suggesting a ‘hidden,’ but ‘discoverable’ relationship between the place shown in the engraving–– Ha’apai––with antiquity, the engraving follows a popular contemporary discourse. The exploration of the Pacific took place in the era of ‘rediscovery’ and renewed appreciation of antiquity, as was, for example, expressed in the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and in the famous collection of Sir William Hamilton. Antiquity also provided a basis for the European interpretation of newly encountered Polynesian cultures.42 Travel accounts were embellished with citations from Virgil and Homer,43 and Georg Forster’s description of Tahitian women clearly alludes to Winckelmann’s famous words on antique sculpture: “here innate freedom holds good for the costumes, and natural grace embellishes the sublime simplicity of their dress and habit.”44 The introduction to the account of Cook’s third journey also suggests parallels with the study of antiquity: It is a favourite study with the scholar to trace the remains of Grecian or Roman workmanship; he turns over his Montfaucon with learned satisfaction; and he gazes with rapture on the noble collection of Sir William Hamilton. The amusement is rational and instructive. But will not his curiosity be more awakened, will he not find even more real matter for important reflection, by passing an hour in surveying the numerous specimens of the ingenuity our newly discovered friends brought from the utmost recesses of the globe, to enrich the British Museum, and the valuable repository of Sir Ashton Lever? … the expence of his [Cook’s, A.K.] three voyages did not, perhaps, far exceed that of digging out the buried contents of Herculaneum. And we may add, that the novelties of the Society or Sandwich islands, seem better calculated to engage the attention of the studious in our times, than the antiquities, which exhibit proofs of Roman magnificence. [original emphasis]45

This passage suggests equality but also competition between the reception of antiquity and the reception of the Pacific cultures. Two differing historic aspects are attributed to both: antiquity was a historically defined, datable period of time as well as a timeless ideal––forming a parallel with South Pacific cultures, which were simultaneously seen as having been recently discovered and conceived of as ancient.

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Fig. 7: Borghese Gladiator, engravings, in Bernardino Genga, Anatomia, Rome 1691, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

Fig. 8: James Heath after John Webber, The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee, detail with Europeans and group of seated women.

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This was based on the notion of primitivism, antiquity as well as the Pacific people represented an undecayed state of humanity.46 This idea formed a motivation for both archaeological research and the interest in the objects and information the travellers brought with them from the Pacific. But by placing them in competition with one another, the above-cited text insists upon their literal historicity, claiming the advantage of the Novelties in contrast to the Antiquities. While the comparison to ideal antiquity was intended to enhance the value of the Pacific artefacts in the first instance, it did so by devaluing the antiquities in the second. Hence, the objects brought from the Pacific were also seen as a fresh reservoir for the renewal of an aged European art and science.

4. European self-positioning in historical frameworks These considerations lead us to question the perceptions that European travellers, as well as the producers and recipients of the travelogues, had of themselves in the context of a history of humankind. By analysing one further example from the Atlas, I will examine this aspect of the construction of a European identity within the nexus of travelling, collecting, and representing information and objects. Four plates in the volume present artefacts from different regions of the Pacific; one of them, Various Articles, at Nootka Sound, depicts four zoomorphic carvings (fig. 9).47 Numbers attached to the objects refer to a written explanation in the list of the plates, which can be found in volume 1 of the travel account: 1 A bird, made of wood; hollow, with stones in the inside, which the Natives shake when they dance. 2  A Seal’s head, made of wood, worn upon their heads. 3  A bird’s head, composed of wood and feathers, also worn upon their heads. 4  Another for the same purpose, and ornamented with green talc.48

This legend as well as the text simply enumerate the (arte)facts––their possible significance within a cultural context is not specified. This kind of decontextualisation is also implicit in their presentation against a white background without any overlapping or spatial relations, which makes the objects look as though they already were exhibits in a European collection.49 Isolated from their local uses, they are objectified and included in a new context of examination and classification.50 This manner of representation is based on the illustrations of natural historic treatises51; for example, Claude Perrault’s Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals, which was published in 1688 and included anatomical descriptions and delineations of animals comparable in style to the image of the objects from Nootka Sound.52 Perrault’s engravings are divided into two parts, one showing the animal in a landscape, and another depicting its internal organs, which are arranged on a white plane above (fig. 10). The white plane is pictured as a sheet of paper with its edges rolling in and a piece of the lower margin torn out in order to make the head of the huge flightless bird visible. The organs on the sheet form an image within the

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Fig. 9: John Record after John Webber, Various Articles, at Nootka Sound, engraving, London 1784. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

image, demonstrating their inclusion into the new, scientific context of display and classification.53 In particular, the plates of zoomorphic artefacts from Nootka Sound connote the anatomy of animals and suggest a similar classifying and regulatory approach. The engraving is part of an emerging production of knowledge that was arranged around the above-mentioned terms of ‘history’ and ‘man,’ and which gradually formed specified academic disciplines. As Friedrich Kittler has pointed out, during this process, which took place between about 1770 and 1800, everything ‘impure’––that is, stories, superstition, and yarn––were dissociated from thought and knowledge.54 This epistemic segregation is explicitly expressed in the travel account’s remarks on Various Articles, at Nootka Sound. Although the remarks are at first reminiscent of the sailor’s myth of the so-called monstrous races living at the edges of the world, it soon deliberately expresses its distance from such notions: But it may be concluded, that, if travellers or voyagers, in an ignorant and credulous age, when many unnatural or marvellous things were supposed to exist, had seen a number of people decorated in this manner, without being able to approach so near as to be undeceived, they would readily have believed, and, in their relations, would

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Fig. 10: Cassowary, engraving, in Claude Perrault, Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals, London 1688. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

have attempted to make others believe, that there existed a race of beings, partaking of the nature of man and beast; more especially, when besides the heads of animals on the human shoulders, they might have seen the whole bodies of their men-monsters covered with quadrupeds’ skins.55

This remark refers to the descriptions of Cynocephali, a notorious race of monstrous beings, often represented as hunters, clothed in fur, with human bodies and canine heads.56 The tradition of this mythologem can be traced back to the authors of Greek antiquity, to Pliny the Elder, and throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. 57 Until the eighteenth century these monstrous beings were part of common knowledge as well as a legitimate subject of scholarly discourse, but the scientific controversies around them came to a gradual end in the eighteenth century.58 By marking the stories of Cynocephali as the phenomenon of another “ignorant and credulous” age, the travel account excludes it from its own discourse, thereby claiming a contemporary, enlightened way of perceiving and describing the foreign. In this context, the visualisation of artefacts in the Atlas suggests a positive ascertainment of foreign places and times on the basis of scientific patterns of representation and interpretation, even though, as Nicholas Thomas has argued, the publication does not necessarily seem to follow a precise systematic approach.59 In a universal model of human history this serves the European claim to a superior position that is both legitimising and legitimised by collecting and classifying the productions of all times and regions of the world. It is a privileged position of

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Fig. 11: Wooden Masks and Feather Images, etching/engraving, in James Peller Malcolm, An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing, London 1813.

overview and insight, the apex of humankind and history, conceived as a precondition for the ability to recognise both. As Friedrich Schiller put it: Some wise hand seems to have conserved those raw peoples until the time we in our own culture were advanced enough to employ this discovery in a useful manner for ourselves and to reconstruct the lost origin of our kind from this mirror.60

How common this scholarly European construct of identity and difference in historic terms was and how rapidly it was included into the methods of early concepts of art history becomes evident in James Peller Malcolm’s An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing (1813).61 Malcolm compiled a universal history of caricature from what he saw as its archaic beginnings, to Greek-Roman antiquity, through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, all the way up to British caricature around 1800. A series of engravings at the end of the volume illustrates this construction of historical development. Malcolm employs the mode of display that I have already analysed in the plates titled Various Articles, at Nootka Sound, and he places an image of artefacts from the Pacific region in the first position of his chronological scheme (fig. 11). Wooden masks and feather images are used to represent a primordial state of caricature––although they were hardly older than fifty years in Malcolm’s time. Plates showing South Asian sculptures and artefacts from Euro-

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Fig. 12: John Record after John Webber, Various Articles at the Sandwich Islands, engraving, London 1784. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

pean antiquity follow. Malcolm’s broadening, even universalising of the term “caricature”62 leads to an astonishing convergence of British caricature and the Pacific works. He constructs a conceptual and aesthetic proximity and at the same time an immense historic distance between British and Pacific artefacts from the late eighteenth century. Referring to feather images from Hawai’i that had been brought to England on the third Cook expedition, which were partly known from the Atlas’s engravings (fig. 12) and partly through Ashton Lever’s famous collection,63 Malcolm’s book also provides an exemplary case study for their contemporary reception. He not only co-opts the foreign artefacts by including them into his historic construction, but also by remodelling them for his engraving: Malcolm depicts the feather images in a slightly distorted manner––as caricatures of Hawaiian feather images.

Conclusion Returning to the question of how this range of temporal attributions of ‘self ’ and ‘others’ are assembled in the travel account, I shall turn again to the huge world map at the beginning of the Atlas (see fig. 1). The map reveals the recent explora-

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tion of parts of the world, particularly the breadth of the Pacific, which had been unknown to Europeans before the travels undertaken at the end of the eighteenth century. The overall impression of the series of engravings assembled in the volume is that of a dense compilation of geographical and anthropological information, arranged and held together by the travel narrative. In this way, the Atlas contributed to global ‘mental mapping’64 in the late eighteenth century, making the world accessible through descriptions by heroic travellers and delivering information that was compatible with scholarly use by employing established conventions of scientific representation and relating to prevalent concepts. The travel route recorded in the world map is delicate and drawn with precision. It requires a careful and close inspection to distinguish and follow the routes of Cook’s three expeditions. The shaded contours of continents and islands, however, are more clearly visible, indicating their different degree of ‘presence.’ Geography appears as a permanent factor––being and staying forever; the route, by contrast, is a temporary factor, an event already past and precisely datable. The itinerary appears to be subsequent to the pre-existing geography. Because mapping the world was an essential motivation for travel and the world map in this shape was actually an outcome of the three expeditions led by Cook, this constitutes a paradoxical temporality for the map itself: The geography seen in the map does not pre-exist the itinerary, rather, the itinerary was a premise for visualizing geography in this way. This ambiguity is also significant for the travels and travelogues’ anthropological aims. These depended on the close connection drawn between time and space by universal history, which, as Turgot put it, “is based upon geography and chronology, which measure the distances between times and places.”65 The temporal discrepancy between the actual, present time of travel and the notion of the whole history that was supposed to be observable in the Pacific and around the globe, constitutes a double historicity for the traveller’s route. Assuming that human history as a whole is and has always been present in different parts of the world, European travellers and scholars had a strong notion of the present as a moment in which ‘humankind’ reached an awareness of itself in its geographical and historical range. This was expressed concisely by the twofold meaning of the following remark by captain La Pérouse who sailed to the Pacific in 1785: “The modern navigators only have one objective when they describe the customs of new peoples: to complete the history of man.”66

Notes   1 Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (London: J. Johnson, 1800), 162.   2 James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Undertaken, By The Command Of His Majesty, For Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere […] Performed Under The Direction Of Captains Cook, Clerke, and Gore[…], 3 vols. and one Atlas, published by Order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (London: Strahan and Cadell, 1784).

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  3 Barbara Maria Stafford, Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984); Philippe Despoix, Die Welt vermessen. Dispositive der Entdeckungsreise im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2009).   4 This is the case with Herder’s phrase in German: “die letzte Reise Cooks scheint nach dem Ruhm, den man ihren Gemälden gibt, eine neue, höhere Periode anzufangen, der ich in andern Weltteilen die Fortsetzung und eine gemeinnützigere Bekanntmachung wünsche.” Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1989), 250, note 66.   5 Cf. Bernard Smith, Imagining the Pacific. In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 193.   6 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other. How Anthropology makes its Object, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); see also J.G.A. Pocock, “Nature and History, Self and Other: European Perceptions of World History in the Age of Encounter” in Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840, ed. Jonathan Lamb, Alex Calder, and Bridget Orr (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 25–44.  7 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Europa im Jahrhundert der Aufklärung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000), 130–145; Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile and Winfried Siebers, Das 18. Jahrhundert. Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2008), 113–123.   8 Friedrich Wolfzettel, “Reisen im Intertext: Captain Cook, Bougainville und die Folgen” in Reiseberichte und mythische Struktur. Romanistische Aufsätze 1983-2003 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2003), 207–228; Glyndwr Williams, “Seamen and Philosophers in the South Seas in the Age of Captain Cook” in Science, empire and the European exploration of the Pacific, ed. Tony Ballantyne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 277–296, 277, 278.  9 Despoix, Die Welt vermessen (cf. note 3), 94, 95. 10 Sergio Moravia, Beobachtende Vernunft. Philosophie und Anthropologie in der Aufklärung, ed. Wolf Lepenies and Henning Ritter, trans. Elisabeth Piras (Frankfurt a. M.: Ullstein, 1977); Thomas Nutz, ‘Varietäten des Menschengeschlechts.’ Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in der Zeit der Aufklärung (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009). 11 Instructions for documentation on travels were already published in the first edition of the Philosophical Transactions. Lawrence Rooke, “Directions for Sea-Men, Bound for Far Voyages” Philosophical Transactions (1665–1678), vol. 1 (1665–1666), 140–143. URL: http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/1-22/140.full.pdf+html. (last accessed 03.02.2013). See also: Moravia, Beobachtende Vernunft (cf. note 10), 125–128. 12 Rüdiger Joppien, “John Webber’s South Sea Drawings for the Admiralty. A newly discovered catalogue among the papers of Sir Joseph Banks” British Library Journal 4, no. 4 (1978), 49–77, 51. 13 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2). 14 Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, vol. 3, 1, The Voyage of the Resolution and Discovery 1776–1780 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 161. 15 Herder, Outlines (cf. note 1), 162. 16 Edmund Burke to William Robertson, 9 June 1777, in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, vol. 3, July 1774–June 1778, ed. George H. Guttridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 350–352, 350, 351. 17 Herder, Outlines (cf. note 1), 162. 18 Fabian, Time and the Other (cf. note 6), 5–11; Friedrich Kittler, “Einleitung” in Austreibung des Geistes aus den Geisteswissenschaften. Programme des Poststrukturalismus, ed. Friedrich Kittler (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980), 7–14, 8–9. 19 Joseph-Marie Dégerando, The Observation of Savage Peoples, trans. F.C.T. Moore (Berkeley: University of Californa Press, 1969), 63. 20 Nutz, Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (cf. note 10), 143–185. 21 Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, “Plan of the Discourses on Universal History” (1751), in Turgot on Progress, Sociology and Economics, trans. and ed. Ronald L. Meek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 63–118, 65. 22 “Et les lumières qu’ils cherchent à répandre, ont pour unique but de rendre plus heureux les insulaires qu’ils visitent, et d’augmenter leurs moyens de subsistence.” Louis Marie Antoine Destouff Milet-Mureau, ed., Voyage de la Pérouse autour du monde (Paris: Plassan, 1798), vol. 4, 142.

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23 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 2:321. 24 The succession moves from simple to more complex images: First, two type portraits, followed by a sheet with different artefacts, a view from the shore of the outside of some houses, and finally the interior view of the house. Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas: plates 38–42. 25 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 2:318–324. 26 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 2:318. 27 Nutz, Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (cf. note 10), 143–185. 28 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 2:325. 29 See e.g. Turgot, On Universal History (cf. note 21), 66. See also Nutz, Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (cf. note 10), 152–159. 30 Nutz, Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (cf. note 10), 157, 162. The type portraits are plates 38 and 39 in the Atlas. 31 Joppien and Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages (cf. note 14), 161. 32 Smith, Imagining the Pacific (cf. note 5), 181–183; Joppien and Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages (cf. note 14), 30–32. On the Borghese Gladiator: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900, 7th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 221–224. 33 Bernardino Genga, Anatomia per Uso et Intelligenza del Disegno […] (Rome: Rossi, 1691). 34 Joppien and Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages (cf. note 14), 3, 1:30–32; Smith, Imagining the Pacific (cf. note 5), 181–183. 35 Genga, Anatomia (cf. note 33), plate xxx and xxxiv. 36 Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique (cf. note 32), 221–224. 37 On Watteau’s painting, its history and different versions, see Christoph Martin Vogtherr, Französische Gemälde I. Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoüe, Bestandskatalog Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten (Berlin: Adakdemie-Verlag, 2011), 176. 38 Jutta Held, Antoine Watteau, Einschiffung nach Kythera. Versöhnung von Leidenschaft und Vernunft (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1985). 39 Vogtherr, Französische Gemälde I (cf. note 37), 171, 176–177. 40 “L’Ile à laquelle on avait d’abord donné le nom de nouvelle Cythère, reçoit de ses habitants celui de Taiti [sic.].” Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage Autour du Monde, par la Frégate du Roi La Boudeuse et la Flûte L’Étoile, en 1766, 1767, 1768 & 1769 (Paris: Saillant & Nyon, 1771), 209. See also: Art. “Nouvelle Cythère” in Historical Dictionary of the Discovery and Exploration of the Pacific Islands, ed. Max Quanchi and John Robson (Lanham Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 127, 128. 41 On the topic of sexual contacts and their economy on the European voyages in the Pacific, see Margaret Jolly, “Gender und Sexualität auf Cooks Reisen im Pazifik” in James Cook und die Entdeckung der Südsee, exhibition catalogue Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna; Historisches Museum, Berne, ed. Jutta Frings (Munich: Hirmer, 2009), 98–102. On the popular discourse and imaginations around sex and the South Pacific see Wolfzettel, Reisen im Intertext (cf. note 8) 4–16. 42 Smith, Imagining the Pacific (cf. note 5), 213. 43 E.g. Bougainville, Voyage Autour du Monde (cf. note 40), 209; Georg Forster, Reise um die Welt (first ed. Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1784, Frankfurt: Insel 1983), 240, 241, 934. 44 “Angebohrne Freyheit gilt hier auch beym Anzuge und natürliche Grazie verschönert die edle Einfalt ihrer Tracht und Bildung.” Georg Forster, Geschichte der See-Reisen und Entdeckungen im Süd-Meer…, trans. Georg Forster (Berlin: Haude und Spener, 1778), vol. 4, 248; Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (first ed. Friedrichstadt: Hagenmüller, 1755, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1995), 20. 45 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 1:lxix. On the Collection of Sir Ashton Lever see Hermione Waterfield and J. C. H. King, Provenance. Twelve Collectors of Ethnographic Art in England, 1760–1990 (Paris: Somogy, 2006), 26-35; Adrienne Kaeppler, Holophusicon. The Leverian Museum, an Eighteenth-Century English Institution of Science, Curiosity, and Art (Altenstadt: ZFK Publishers, 2011). 46 Frances S. Conelly, “Primitivism” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. ed. Michael Kelly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), vol. 4, 88–92.

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47 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas: plates 40, 56, 67, and 71. 48 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 1:xciii. 49 On collecting artefacts during the Cook-Voyages see Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects. Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1991); “Artificial Curiosities”, being An exposition of native manufactures collected on the three Pacific voyages of Captain James Cook, R.N., exhibition catalogue Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, 18.01. – 31.08.1978, ed. Adrienne L. Kaeppler (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1978). 50 Alain-Marie Bassy, “Typographie, topographie, ‘outopographie’. L’illustration scientifique et technique au XVIIIe siècle” in Die Buchillustration im 18. Jahrhundert. Colloquium der Arbeitsstelle 18. Jahrhundert, Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, ed. Arbeitsstelle Achtzehntes Jahrhundert, Wuppertal (Heidelberg: Winter, 1980), 206–233. 51 Thomas, Entangled Objects (cf. note 49), 137. 52 Claude Perrault, Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals […] (London: Joseph Straeter, 1688). 53 The white plane with the organs, which are the result of dissections, brings to mind the “table” Foucault describes in the preface to The Order of Things, which is the basis for examination and classification: “I use that word ‘table’ in two superimposed senses: the nickel-plated, rubbery table swathed in white, glittering beneath a glass sun devouring all shadow––the table where, for an instant, perhaps forever, the umbrella encounters the sewing-machine; and also a table, a tabula, that enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their differences.” Michel Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), xvii. 54 Kittler, Einleitung (cf. note 18), 8–10. 55 Cook and King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), 2:307. 56 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 57 Friedman, Monstrous Races (cf. note 56), 15. 58 Bernd Roling, Drachen und Sirenen. Die Rationalisierung und Abwicklung der Mythologie an den europäischen Universitäten (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1–15. 59 Thomas, Entangled Objects (cf. note 49), 130–138. 60 “Eine weise Hand scheint uns diese rohen Völkerstämme bis auf den Zeitpunkt aufgespart zu haben, wo wir in unsrer eignen Kultur weit genug würden fortgeschritten seyn, um von dieser Entdeckung eine nützliche Anwendung auf uns selbst zu machen, und den verlohrnen Anfang unsers Geschlechts aus diesem Spiegel wieder herzustellen.” Friedrich Schiller, Was heißt und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte? (first ed. Jena: Akademische Buchhandlung, 1789, repr. Jena: Friedrich Schiller Univ., 1982), 9–10. 61 James Peller Malcolm, An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing (London: Longman, 1813). 62 Susanne Märtens, Art and Appetites. Studien zur Ästhetik des Grotesken bei John Hamilton Mortimer und Thomas Rowlandson (Freiburg: Rombach, 2007), 259–264. 63 Kaeppler, The Leverian Museum (cf. note 45), 112–115. Illustrations of the feather images depicted by Malcom, see Adrienne Kaeppler, Hawaiian Featherwork. Catalogue Raisonné of pre-1900 Feathered-God Images, Cloaks, Capes, Helmets, ed. Willem de Rooij and Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer (Berlin: Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2010), 91–92. 64 Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, “Mental Maps: Die kognitive Kartierung des Kontinents als Forschungsgegenstand der europäischen Geschichte” in Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO), ed. Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Mainz, (05.06.2013), URL: http://www.ieg-ego.eu/ schenkf-2013-de (last accessed 16.01.2014). 65 Turgot, On Universal History (cf. note 21), 64. On the link between universal history and geography see also Charles W. J. Withers, Placing the Enlightenment. Thinking geographically about the Age of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 136–163. 66 “Les navigateurs modernes n’ont pour objet, en décrivant les mœurs des peuples nouveaux, que de completer l’histoire de l’homme.” La Pérouse, Voyage autour du monde (cf. note 22), 2:141.

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Illustrations W. Palmer, A General Chart: Exhibiting the Discoveries made by Capt.n James Cook in this and his two Preceeding Voyages; with the Tracks of the Ships under his Command, engraving, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas, pl. 1 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Uz 1675-Taf ). Fig. 2: William Sharp after John Webber, The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound, engraving, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas, pl. 42 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Uz 1675-Taf ). John Webber, Interior of a House in Nootka Sound, pencil on paper, 363 × 511 mm, April Fig. 3: 1778, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. D. 1453. Fig. 4: John Webber, Interior of Habitations at Nootka sound, pen and ink, wash, 176 × 430 mm, April 1778, Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. PM #41-72-10/500 (digital file #60741399). Figs. 5, 6, 8: James Heath after John Webber, The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee, engraving, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas, pl. 14 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Uz 1675-Taf ). Fig. 7: Borghese Gladiator, engraving, in Bernardino Genga, Anatomia (cf. note 33), pl. XXX and XXXIV (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Nu 810). Fig. 9: John Record after John Webber, Various Articles, at Nootka Sound, engraving, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas, pl. 40 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Uz 1675-Taf ). Fig. 10: Cassowary, engraving, in Claude Perrault, Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals (cf. note 52) (London: Joseph Straeter, 1688), between p. 240 and 241 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ‒ Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, 4° Lm 6667). Wooden Masks and Feather Images, engraving in James Peller Malcolm, Art of CaricaturFig. 11: ing (cf. note 61), pl. 1, (photo: the autor). Fig. 12: John Record after John Webber, Various Articles, at the Sandwich Islands, engraving, in James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (cf. note 2), Atlas, pl. 67 (photo: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Abteilung Historische Drucke, gr. 2° Uz 1675-Taf ). Fig. 1:

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Itinerary and Painting Lineage Ten Thousand Miles along the Yangzi River in Seventeenth-Century China Rivers are natural itineraries par excellence: as waterways they transport people and goods, connect major cities, they form networks of transportation with other rivers, they cross natural and cultural boundaries, and they connect coastal areas with the hinterland. Much human effort has gone in to make rivers more efficient routes, by regulating their courses, building connecting canals and locks to facilitate the movement of boats, and by inventing powerful boats to travel against the stream. Rivers are not only agents of movement through space; they have also been used as metaphors for temporality, both in Europe and Asia, almost to the point of cliché. The classic aphorism of the panta rhei attributed to Heraclitus that “no man ever steps into the same river twice” evokes the constant change and temporal quality captured in the image of the river as flux.1 To mention one recent instance, Simon Schama begins his Landscape and Memory with personal reflections on the Thames, which formed the landscape of his childhood and first revealed the notion of historical perspective to him: “To go upstream was, I knew, to go backward: from metropolitan din to ancient silence, westward toward the source of the waters, the beginnings of Britain in the Celtic limestone.”2 In China it is the Yangzi River (Changjiang, i.e. “Long River” in Chinese) that has served not only as a major route of transport for centuries but has also inspired countless reflections on the passing of historical and personal time. The Yangzi is China’s longest and the planet’s third longest river. From its source on the Tibetan plateau it traverses more than 6,000 kilometres through the mountains of Qinghai down to Yunnan and Sichuan province, then eastward through Sichuan, Chongqing, and the famous Three Gorges after which it reaches the Hubei plain, further traversing Anhui and Jiangsu provinces until it flows into the sea at Shanghai. Numerous rivers join the Yangzi on its way, it passes famous mountains, lakes, and major cities; historical and religious sites line its banks. The river not only connects these places to each other, it demarcates both a boundary that served as a strategic, military line of defence or as a route for invaders at times3 and as a cultural border: The regional denomination of Jiangnan, literally “south of the (Yangzi) river,” refers to the refined lifestyle of the cultural elite in this economically prosperous region during late imperial times. The temporality of the river has been eloquently––and famously––evoked for the Yangzi by Su Shi (1037–1101), who used the eternally flowing river as a metaphor for the passing of historical time as well as the passage of time in his personal life. His poem Cherishing the Past at Red Cliff, which reflects on his visit to the an-

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cient battle site, opens with the often-quoted lines: “The great river flows east; Its waves scouring away, the dashing heroes of a thousand ages.”4 When visiting another site, Gold Mountain in the lower Yangzi River, Su Shi draws parallels between his journey along the river and his official career, which began in his hometown Meizhou, Sichuan province, close to the source of the Yangzi River, and led him all the way to the sea: “My home is at the source of the River’s water; In government service I have accompanied the River to the sea.”5 The poem ends with Su Shi’s wish to return home and the recognition that in failing to do so he is like the river itself, which can never return to its source, and which is, by implication, like time that cannot return to its past. Besides poetic renditions of the Yangzi––usually told from the perspective of a specific site at the river and sometimes reflecting on the river as a whole as in the examples by Su Shi––the river has been described and represented in literary and geographical texts as well as in painting and printed illustrations throughout the centuries. Textual accounts rarely offer a view of the river’s entire course; exceptions include the monumental prose poem Rhapsody on the Yangzi River (Jiangfu) by Guo Pu (276– 364),6 a description of the river in the fifth-century Commentary on the Waterway Classic by Li Daoyuan,7 which would serve as a model for subsequent geographic descriptions, or travelogues that describe journeys along the river in the form of river diaries.8 Painterly representations of the Yangzi River that either show the entire course of the river or attempt to evoke its vast scope had been produced since the thirteenth century at least. During the late Ming and throughout the Qing dynasty (seventeenth to nineteenth century) the painting theme known as Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River experienced a renaissance in monumental handscroll paintings, which are frequently based on models by ancient painting masters. This paper presents two case studies from the seventeenth century, in which I shall foreground the layering of spatial and temporal itineraries to demonstrate how an established painting theme was revived and transformed. The paintings under discussion are: 1) a handscroll attributed to Dong Qichang (1555–1636) titled Misty River, and 2) two handscrolls of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River by Wang Hui (1632–1717). They reveal unique ways of mapping topographical depictions of the river, personal experiences of travelling and visiting historical sites, and references to ancient models and art historical narratives of landscape painting onto each other. Such references allowed seventeenth-century painters to insert themselves into these narratives. In order to better understand the approaches taken by these painters, it is necessary to first introduce the history of Yangzi River handscrolls, because earlier models––two extant early scrolls in particular––served as the main points of reference.

Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River When painters of the Ming and Qing dynasties depicted the Yangzi River in the handscroll format they worked within an established tradition of paintings that were conventionally titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River (Changjiang wanli

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tu). Painters, collectors, and connoisseurs from the sixteenth century onwards had usually seen many versions of this painting theme, which were attributed to the great painting masters of the past. Circulating among private collectors, viewed together with like-minded connoisseurs, inscribed with colophons, and recorded in collectors’ catalogues, the large number of these paintings circulating during the Ming and Qing dynasties suggests that the Yangzi River had been a favourite subject for many centuries and that the most cherished painters had produced works depicting it. For instance, the catalogue of the prominent collector Wang Keyu (born 1587) lists four pre-Yuan dynasty paintings titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River: one by the Northern Song painter Fan Kuan (active ca. 990–1020), one by the Northern Song painter Zhou Qi, and two by the Southern Song court painter Xia Gui (active 1195–1224).9 Other prominent painters that appear in Ming and Qing records of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River paintings include the Tang dynasty painter Chen Shu (late eighth century), the late Five Dynasties painter Juran (active ca. 960–985), the Northern Song painters Jing Hao (late ninth to early tenth century), Guo Xi (ca. 1001–1090), Fan Kuan, Li Gonglin (1049–1106), the Northern and Southern Song court painter Li Tang (ca. 1050– 1130), the recluse Jiang Shen (ca. 1190–1138), and many others.10 This list of names forms a veritable “who’s who” in the history of Chinese painting and constructs a narrative for the Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River painting theme that not only claims its existence as a subject in the history of landscape painting but also reveals that it had occupied the minds and brushes of all the renowned painters before the seventeenth century. Most of these recorded paintings have not survived, however, and where they do survive their attributions to ancient masters are no longer accepted. Two extant examples from the collection of the Freer Gallery of Art illuminate the early, unknown history of Yangzi River handscrolls as well as their reception during the Ming and Qing period when they were seen as famous masterpieces. This reception appears to have been based on attributions that are today considered highly questionable or even incorrect. The first scroll, titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, depicts the entire course of the river from its source in the Min Mountains of Sichuan11 to the sea near present-day Shanghai (fig. 1). The monochrome ink painting on silk measures almost 16 metres in length and features over 200 place names––cities, villages, administrative centres, mountains, islands, rapids, rocks, temples, granaries, historical sites, and so on––inscribed in red ink. Throughout its documented history, from the sixteenth century up to the early twentieth century, this handscroll was believed to be the work of a Northern Song painting master, possibly Guo Xi; it also appeared under the name of Xia Gui in one catalogue, and in the nineteenth century was attributed to the tenth-century painter Juran.12 None of the dates or attributions under which this handscroll circulated between the sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries is accepted today; instead, it is now believed to date to the late twelfth century and its painterly qualities, as well as its significance for the history of Chinese painting, have been called into question.13 The second example of an extant Yangzi River painting has an even more illustrious

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Fig. 1: Anonymous, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, late 12th century, Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art.

history of reception, and––accordingly––a deeper descent into negligence. Titled Shu River (Shuchuan tu) and executed in ink monochrome on paper, this scroll follows the Yangzi River’s course through Sichuan only (fig. 2). Like the previous scroll, Shu River features inscribed place names in addition to some longer inscriptions. The longer inscriptions provide information about the administrative history and famous historical figures associated with a place as well as practical information about distances between places or the number of rapids in the river. Traditionally attributed to the Northern Song literati painter Li Gonglin, Shu River was highly sought after amongst collectors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as is documented in the colophons attached to it.14 However, the attribution to Li Gonglin has been questioned since the early twentieth century and is no longer accepted. Today the scroll is tentatively dated to the late Southern Song dynasty (mid-thirteenth century). The history of attribution, or rather misattribution, for these two early Yangzi River handscrolls indicates that they became, very likely together with other, similar paintings, part of a constructed genealogy of Yangzi River paintings by famous masters of the past. A different type of extant Yangzi River handscroll appears to have emerged at the Southern Song court, as is suggested by extant paintings attributed to the court painters Xia Gui and Zhao Pei, although these are likely later copies that were possibly based on original paintings.15 Unlike the Freer scrolls, these handscrolls do not contain continuous river scenery of identifiable sites. Instead, they evoke the totality of the Yangzi River by indicating regional differences such as the gorges, the Hubei plain, or the meeting of river and sea. Besides these extant examples, textual evidence––mostly in the form of recorded poetic colophons composed for non-extant paintings––suggests that the theme Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River emerged or became increasingly popular in the late thirteenth century. The authors of a majority of these records are not well known as collectors or connoisseurs of painting, and the painters they refer to mostly remain unnamed.16 These factors further establish that early Yangzi River

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Fig. 2: Anonymous, Shu River, section of a handscroll, 13th century, Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art.

paintings were likely created by ‘minor’ painters and for a general audience of scholar-officials who were interested in features other than a famous hand or artistic quality. This may also apply to the earliest known extant examples, the two Freer scrolls mentioned above. In the early reception of the recorded handscrolls, reconstructed through the poetic colophons, which were either composed as a farewell or to express a wish to return home, the river is usually connoted in terms of distance and separation. Often the authors also express an interest in local topography and historical sites, and references to historical events allude to the current political situation. While none of these textual records can be matched with an extant painting, as a group they indicate that in the thirteenth century long handscrolls depicting the Yangzi River––including examples titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River––existed and were appreciated by scholar-officials. The reception of these handscrolls, however, took place outside the discourses of painting connoisseurship, and reveals an interest in the Yangzi as a painting subject for its evocation of sentiments related to spatial distance or as a visualisation of historical-topographical knowledge rather than as a rarified example of masterly painting or brushwork. Early extant handscrolls, like the two Freer scrolls, could very well have belonged to this type. Painters during the Yuan and early Ming dynasty also took up the subject of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, as an extant example by Wu Wei (ca. 1459– 1508) and a recorded painting by Huang Gongwang (1269–1354), amongst others, demonstrate.17 However, these reveal that topographical accuracy across long stretches of the river was no longer of interest. When painters in the seventeenth century engaged with the subject they returned to topographical models, like the Freer scrolls, and believed that they were inserting themselves into a long tradition of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River paintings by famous masters of the past.18 However, narratives of this tradition had been enhanced through the misattribution––and possibly also the forgeries––of early works. When art historical narra-

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tives and the construction of stylistic lineages gained greater importance in the painting practices of the seventeenth century, painters of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River erroneously believed themselves to be continuing the tradition of a favourite subject of literati painting.

Misty River: topography, painting process, and painting history Misty River is a handscroll attributed to the late Ming scholar-official, calligrapher, painter, collector, connoisseur, and art historian Dong Qichang (1555–1636); it is currently in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei (fig. 3, pl. XIa). When unrolling this extremely long handscroll––measuring almost 20 metres and executed in monochrome ink on paper––from right to left, the viewer first encounters a calligraphic title inscription reading Ten Thousand Miles of Mists and Clouds (Yanyun wanli) and a lengthy frontispiece inscription––both signed by Dong Qichang––before the painting starts its journey along the river. Following the course of the Yangzi upstream, the painting begins from a dense area of trees, hills, and buildings, identified in an inscription as Ganlu Monastery at Beigu Mountain (near Zhenjiang, Zhejiang province, on the lower Yangzi River). Depicted from an elevated point of view, the scroll proceeds along the river, which is populated by boats and framed by hills, mountains, flat shorelines, villages, and cities in the foreand background. At various points mountains rise to fill the entire height of the scroll, and the handscroll’s overall composition develops a rhythmic movement that shifts between densely filled depiction and the interjecting expanse of the river; its focus moves between scenery in the fore-, middle-, and background, often mediated along diagonal stretches. This careful composition imposes an artificial construction onto the actual landscape setting. When viewed section-by-section, one can divide the scroll according to clear visual focal points that either show a city or a mountain. The scroll ends by bringing the viewer closer to the scenery in the dramatic depiction of mountain ranges that disappear amidst clouds and mist after the entrance to Qutang Gorge, one of the famous Three Gorges (fig. 4, pl. XIb). The end of the scroll thus contrasts with earlier extant and recorded scrolls, which either lead to or emphasise the region further upstream, such as Shu River introduced above. However, both the last section of Misty River and the last inscription imply continuation: The inscription refers to the source of the Yangzi River further upstream in the Min Mountains and the painting shows travellers––the only figures depicted in the entire scroll––who continue the journey towards the left side of the scroll into the misty mountain ranges. This sense of continuation points not only to knowledge of the river’s course but also demonstrates familiarity with Yangzi River handscrolls that depict the river’s course stretching further west into Sichuan. The decision to end Misty River at Qutang Gorge is probably an indication that the painter’s personal familiarity with the region also ended here. Altogether there are forty-four inscriptions on the painting; some provide a place name only, identifying a city, a mountain, a temple, or similar features. Eigh-

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Fig. 3: Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

teen of the inscriptions are longer and offer additional information about a place, for instance about a historical event or figure associated with the site, or they provide a personal response to a place. Insterestingly, some of the inscriptions are dated and allude to painting masters of the past. As I shall explore, the aspect of dating sections of the handscroll, together with the limited geographic area depicted, raises questions about a personalised vision of the river in the reformulation of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River during the seventeenth century. In addition, including these (dated) references to painting masters of the past introduces new art historical layers of temporality to the painting theme. Before proceeding, it should be noted that the attribution of this handscroll to Dong Qichang is highly questionable for reasons of style, brushwork, and documentation; furthermore, it has not been studied as an example of his works.19 The scroll may be a copy of an original work by Dong Qichang, a work produced by one of his ghost-painters, or possibly even an early forgery, since Dong Qichang’s use of ghost-painters is well-documented as is the circulation of forgeries during his lifetime.20 For the purposes of this paper, I will leave the issue of authenticity open and approach Misty River as an innovative and complex example of adopting and reformulating the painterly tradition of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River independent of its authorship or date.21 At the same time, a link to Dong Qichang or his circle could more firmly establish potential references to early extant examples, especially to the Freer Shu River, which shares similarities in the inscriptions and overall composition despite depicting a different stretch of the river. Dong Qichang had seen both early Yangzi River handscrolls, which are today preserved in the Freer Gallery and include his colophons.22 In addition, if the handscroll were by

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Fig. 4: Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

Dong or by a close follower, the discussion of Misty River as a personal itinerary attempted below could be given more weight. The frontispiece inscription of Misty River establishes the circumstances under which the scroll was conceived and executed: The author, signing as Dong Qichang, visited his friend Chen Jiru (1558–1639)23 in the spring of 1626 and together they examined a scroll titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River owned by Guo Dukun and containing an inscription by the Ming painter Shen Zhou (1427– 1509).24 The author then recounts the process of making his painting over several months––starting on the 22nd day of the fifth month and completing it in the ninth month––and closes with a long poem to complement the painting.25 The temporal framework of making the scroll (between spring and autumn 1626), which is established in the frontispiece inscription, also corresponds to the dates that appear in the inscriptions on the painting itself. As mentioned above, most of the inscriptions on Misty River identify the places depicted, but only a few include additional information about a place, a personal impression, a reference to an earlier painter, or are individually dated. For instance, the first inscription on the handscroll reads: “Ganlu Temple; (where) the rays of sun and moon first set; (where) mountain and river come with utmost force. The mountain name is Beigu; it is the place visited by Liang Wu.26 The name was changed to Beigu [spelled with a different character for gu]. It is the 22nd day of the fifth month. Qichang.” The last inscription on the scroll, without a specific place name, reads: “Mountains rise from the face of men; clouds are born next to horse heads (i.e. also: jetties). From here (the river) begins flowing (further) and goes up to the Min Mountains. That is the place where the Great River springs forth. The time of completing this picture is the fourteenth day of the ninth month. Dong Qichang from Huating.” Six more “dated places” appear along the handscroll, each of them relating to a mountain, and each of these mountains executed in a manner evoking a different ancient painting master: Mount Zhong in the manner of the Northern Song literati painter Mi Fu (1051–1107), dated the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month (fig. 5); Mount Tianmen imitating

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Fig. 5: Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

the Tang painter Jing Hao (late ninth–early tenth century) on the fifth day of the sixth month; Mount Jiuhua in the manner of the Southern Tang painter Dong Yuan (died 962) in the sixth month (fig. 6); Mount Kuanglu imitating the Yuan literati painter Huang Gongwang (1269–1354) dated to the ninth day of the seventh month (fig. 7, pl. XIIa); on the twenty-second day of the seventh month the Southern Marchmount (i.e. Mount Heng) in the style of the Yuan painter Gao Kegong (1248– 1310); and Mount Wu in the manner of the Yuan literati painter Wang Meng (ca. 1308–1385) two days after the full moon of the eighth month. Although it was not unusual to inscribe toponyms or additional information about a specific site onto a topographical painting, as seen in the Freer Shu River mentioned above, it was highly unusual to date these individual inscriptions. One way to read these dates is to understand them as linking the depicted landscape to a personal journey along the river with dated stations along the way;27 indeed, some of the inscriptions seem to confirm this. For instance, the inscription concerning Mount Kuanglu starts with a first-person account marked by the personal pronoun yu: “In the past I (yu) had already travelled to Kuanglu. (Now, I) again reside at Donglin.” However, I believe that the dated inscriptions mark the process of making the painting, which is first established in the frontispiece inscription as a framework, is confirmed by the first and last inscription on the painting, and punctured by the execution of individual sections depicting famous mountains in the manner of previous painting masters. To paint in the style of or to imitate a painting master of the past was not at all unusual for Dong Qichang, or for his

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Fig. 6: Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

contemporaries and followers. Examples of individual paintings “in the manner of…” abound, as do albums or sets of hanging scrolls that combine several paintings “in the manner of ” different models of the past.28 However, to combine them in a single handscroll painting, or in a topographical landscape handscroll, and to assign specific mountains to individual painters of the past, is unique.29 In this light, the dated inscriptions––each accompanied by a signature and seals––indicate the completion of a painting rather than a section of a painting, individually inscribed, dated, and signed. These paintings are at the same time integrated into the continuous depiction of river scenery or, to see it the other way around, the painting theme Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River––that is, the journey along the river––allows for a revisiting not only of sites of historical and cultural significance but also of points of reference in the history of landscape painting. The choice of painters associated with specific mountains in Misty River forms a list of references––or rather a lineage of literati painters––that is in accordance with Dong Qichang’s theory of the Northern and Southern Schools of painting, a theory that he developed and reformulated over time and in exchange with his contemporaries.30 This narrative would prove highly influential for subsequent generations of painters, connoisseurs, and historians and it still lingers beneath art historical accounts of Chinese painting today.

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Fig. 7: Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

Following Misty River from right to left, some of the most important protagonists in this late Ming history of literati painting appear in roughly chronological order. The one deviation from the chronology is the first reference on the scroll to Mi Fu (fig. 5): Mount Zhong is depicted as a series of conical mountain peaks with rounded tops in heavy clouds, executed in wet ink-wash technique and using layers of short horizontal strokes to define the mountain surface, the so-called Mi-dots. Mi Fu and his son Mi Youren (ca. 1072–1151) were the foremost literati painters and theorists of the late Northern Song dynasty, and were of particular importance in Dong Qichang’s narrative for their rediscovery of the so-called Jiangnan style of landscape painting in the tradition of Dong Yuan. With the second painting master imitated on Misty River, Jing Hao, the chronology treats one of the earliest known scholarofficial-painters, who specialised in monumental landscape painting during the Five Dynasties: Mount Tianmen is constructed of rounded boulders with articulated angular cliffs and little internal texturing. Next on Misty River is Mount Jiuhua, which is rendered in the manner of Dong Yuan, the most important model for Dong Qichang and an artist with whom he claimed family ties because of their shared family name.31 Thus, the inscription in this part of the scroll reads “Imitating the manner of Bei Yuan (i.e. Dong Yuan) from my family.” Mount Kuanglu with its whitish, deep spine and highlighted plateaus imitates Huang Gongwang, one of the major influences on Dong’s painting method from amongst the Four Yuan Masters.32 Gao Kegong’s appearance amongst the stylistic quotations in the scroll is surprising, but can probably be explained as recognition of his continuation of the Mi tradition into the early Yuan dynasty. Accordingly, the Southern Marchmount

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Fig. 8: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll now mounted as hanging scrolls, 1677, private collection.

(Mount Heng) is rendered using a similar brush-technique as was used for Mount Zhong in the manner of Mi Fu: staggered conical mountain forms in heavy ink-wash with Mi-dots and trees in wet inkblots at their feet. The last reference on Misty River is to Wang Meng: Mount Wu is distinguished by the use of so-called ox-hair texturing strokes.33 Why specific painters of the past are associated with specific mountains along the Yangzi River remains an open question; to my knowledge these associations are not consistently suggested either by a visit of the respective painters to the mountains nor by the fact that they had depicted it. What can be said about the insertion of mountains “in the manner of…” in the handscroll is that it renders the journey along the Yangzi a journey into the history of landscape painting itself. Misty River thus adds both spatial and temporal layers to the itinerary in the tradition of the Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River painting theme. The viewer’s journey when unrolling the scroll follows the painter’s real or imagined journey upstream, stopping at sites of scenic or historical interest, which are labelled throughout the scroll. This journey along the river is at the same time a journey into the process of the making of the scroll, which is marked by the dated inscriptions included in individual sections, and further leads the viewer into the history of landscape painting as explicated in the inscriptions and stylistic references. The narrative thus developed is in accordance with the art historical theories developed during the seventeenth century. In addition, implied references––by subject matter, composition, inscribed place names, and potentially further stylistic characteristics––to the painting theme Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River add yet another temporal dimension to Misty River, which places the handscroll within a

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group of paintings believed to represent distinguished painting masters of the past. Other late Ming and Qing dynasty painters joined this group, while further reformulating the ancient painting subject.

Wang Hui: site, history, and ancient models Wang Hui (1632–1717), one of the orthodox painters of the early Qing dynasty who followed the painting theories outlined by Dong Qichang and who worked as both a court painter and for private literati-patrons, produced at least two paintings titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River. Since Chang Chin-sung has studied these paintings in detail, their discussion here will be brief.34 Wang Hui first painted a handscroll with this theme in 1677, which is today mounted as a set of twelve successive hanging scrolls in a private collection (fig. 8). This version of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River differs in two important aspects from both Misty River and from the early extant examples in the Freer Gallery: it does not present a view onto a central river framed by distant scenery, and place names are not inscribed. Instead, Wang Hui leads the viewer through mountainous terrain and a valley towards a dominant cliff side that opens abruptly onto the large river populated by boats at the end of the scroll. According to Chang Ching-sung’s analysis, Wang Hui focuses on the depiction of one specific site, namely Swallow Cliff near Nanjing, where one could gain a good view onto the river and the surrounding scenery.35 Swallow Cliff became a painting subject after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 and was closely

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Fig. 9: Juran (attr.), Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, 10th century, present location unknown.

tied to the century-old poetic theme Meditation on the Past at Jinling. This theme, with its references to the Jinling (i.e. Nanjing) of the Six Dynasties (220–589) and to the rise and fall of dynasties, was now embedded in paintings of and poetry about Swallow Cliff as a vehicle to lament the more recent past.36 In his inscription on the painting, Wang Hui states that he painted the scroll in 1677 for Yingweng after a painting by the tenth-century painter Juran titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River.37 The recipient of the painting, Yingweng, has been identified as the painter and collector Zhou Shichen (jinshi 1640), and the painting by Juran after which Wang Hui modeled his version is believed to be lost.38 Yet, additional information about the Juran model in a colophon by Yun Shouping can be matched with early twentieth-century records of a Yangzi River scroll attributed to Juran and a scroll published by the Xu Bangda in the 1980s (fig. 9).39 Unfortunately, the poor quality of the published illustrations does not allow for an adequate stylistic comparison. In addition to this painting, Wang Hui had also seen or owned the Yangzi River handscroll attributed to Juran in the Freer Gallery (his seal is on it), although it cannot be ascertained when he saw this scroll and whether it could have also served as a model for his own version. Regardless of whether either of these handscrolls was a source for Wang Hui, what we can say with certainty is that he decided to depart from their basic composition and the convention of inscribing place names. Despite title, scope, and reference to a Yangzi River painting by Juran, Wang Hui chose to depict only a single site at the river, a site that he was both personally

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Fig. 10: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, 1699, collection of Wan-go H. C. Weng.

familiar with and that commemorated the fallen Ming dynasty. Choosing Juran as a model had aesthetic and art historical implications, because Mi Fu had made Juran a protagonist of Jiangnan painting together with Dong Yuan, and as a result Juran was grouped in the Southern School of literati painting. In addition, Wang Hui might have drawn a biographical and political parallel between himself and Juran, who was from Nanjing and painted at a temple there until the fall of the Southern Tang dynasty, then continued his career in the capital of the newly established Song dynasty, Kaifeng. Wang Hui was from Changshu near Suzhou in Jiangsu Province and would later be summoned to the Qing court in Beijing in 1691, but whether he already cherished this ambition when he first painted Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River in 1677 is open to debate. However, depicting Swallow Cliff, which alluded to the fall of the Ming dynasty, with reference to a Yangzi River painting by Juran could be understood as indicating the historical ties between the two painters who experienced the fall of the dynasty under which they were born. Wang Hui painted a second version of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River in 1699, this time conforming to the conventions of the theme by depicting a long, continuous stretch of the Yangzi River’s course between Taicang in the lower Yangzi River and the mountainous region of Sichuan using identifiable sites along the way, but without inscribed place names (fig. 10).40 Similar to Misty River in its scope, the scroll ends in a seemingly fantastic jumble of high peaks amongst mists and clouds. In his inscription, Wang Hui states that on his return from the capital, where he completed his monumental work on the Southern Inspection Tour paintings for the Kangxi Emperor (reigned 1661–1722), he was inspired to paint this after remembering a handscroll of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River by the Northern Song painter Yan Wengui that he had seen some thirty years earlier.41 According to the inscription, he started working on sketches during his journey home and finished the project seven months later in the ninth month of 1699. No extant or recorded Yangzi River painting by Yan Wengui can be connected to Wang Hui’s scroll. Painted in more cheerful colours (fig. 11, pl. XIIb) and providing a view onto a vast, open landscape, especially when compared with his

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Fig. 11: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, 1699, collection of Wan-go H. C. Weng.

first version, it has been suggested that this monumental painting makes a statement about the empire unified and at peace under the Qing dynasty and at the same time presents a synthesis of conflicting historical and regional styles.42 Both Juran and Yan Wengui, and the paintings circulating under their names during the early Qing dynasty, were important sources for Wang Hui’s renewal of the monumental landscape handscroll. In the case of his Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, however, the one aspect in which he deviates from tradition is the direction of the river.

Against the stream Wang Hui’s 1699 version and Misty River follow the Yangzi River from east to west, from sea to source, and thus depart from the convention established by the extant early Yangzi handscrolls and the early recorded examples, which follow the natural flow of the river from west to east, from source to sea. In addition, these early scrolls consistently locate the viewer north of the river, looking across the Yangzi to the south; this point of view is also reversed in the Ming and Qing examples. Beyond the connotation of a natural flow, the directionality of the early handscrolls is in accordance with geographical descriptions, and it points to the temporal connotation of the east-flowing river as the passing of both personal and historical time.43 I would like to suggest that early paintings of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River from the late Song dynasty were very much embedded in contemporary discourses of geographical knowledge and imperial geography, including the connotations of the river as manifestation of historical and universal time that could also be mapped onto personal

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geographies.44 When late Ming and Qing dynasty painters revived this painting subject within the framework of referencing ancient painting masters and by inserting themselves into art historical narratives, they reversed the itinerary and thus personalised the depicted topography both in terms of familiarity and art historical references. Both Wang Hui and Dong Qichang were familiar with the lower and middle reaches of the Yangzi, which is probably why they began their visual journeys there and ended them with allusions to the mountainous region of western Sichuan, which they only knew from paintings and from textual descriptions. The suggested political interpretation of Wang Hui’s later version of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River as a representation of the Qing Empire at peace is less plausible when one takes into account that the natural order of the east-flowing river was reversed in the direction of the scroll, leading the viewer against the stream.45 Instead, the rendition of the topographical Yangzi River theme as a personalised vision, reflecting familiarity with specific parts of and sites along the river, should be foregrounded, also for Misty River. In addition, the new temporal layer inscribed onto these seventeenth-century Yangzi River scrolls, i.e. the history of landscape painting according to narratives of literati painting––either as individual sites referencing specific styles in Misty River or as a synthesis of past styles in Wang Hui’s work––echoes their directionality: travelling upstream becomes a journey into the past.

Glossary of Chinese Characters Changjiang Changjiang wanli tu Chen Jiru Chen Shu Dong Qichang Dong Yuan Guo Xi Fan Kuan Gao Kegong Guo Pu Hengshan Huang Gongwang Jiangfu Jiangnan Jiang Shen Jing Hao Jiuhuashan Juran Kuanglushan

長江 長江萬里圖 陳繼儒 陳庶 董其昌 董源 郭熙 范寬 高克恭 郭璞 衡山 黃公望 江賦 江南 江參 荊浩 九華山 巨然 匡廬山

Li Daoyuan Li Gonglin Li Tang Mi Fu Mi Youren Shen Zhou Shuchuan tu Su Shi Tianmenshan Wang Hui Wang Meng Wushan Wu Wei Xia Gui Yanjiang tu yu Zhao Fu Zhongshan Zhou Qi

酈道元 李公麟 李唐 米芾 米友仁 沈周 蜀川圖 蘇軾 天門山 王翬 王蒙 巫山 吳偉 夏圭 煙江圖 余 趙黻 鍾山 周杞

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Notes   1 For a compilation of excerpts from Heraclitus in German translation as well as from later authors reflecting on the panta rhei, see Ute Seiderer, ed., Panta rhei. Der Fluß und seine Bilder (Leipzig: Reclam, 1999), ch. I. Der Fluß und die Zeit, 13–39.   2 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage Books, 1996; first edition: New York: Knopf, 1995), 5.   3 For the role of the Yangzi as an implicit border during the tenth century, see Johannes L. Kurz, “The Yangzi in the Negotiations between the Southern Tang and Its Northern Neighbours (MidTenth Century)” in China and Her Neighbours. Borders, Visions of the Other, Foreign Policy 10th to 19th Century, ed. Sabine Dabringhaus and Roderich Ptak (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 29–48. The Mongol conquest of Southern Song China in the thirteenth century also made its way along the Yangzi: After unsuccessful attempts to enter the river from Sichuan, Mongolian troops entered the middle Yangzi via the Han River and from there proceeded eastward to the Southern Song capital Hangzhou. See e.g. Frederick W. Mote, Imperial China 900–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 460–465.   4 Translation by Ronald C. Egan, Words, Image and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 226–227.   5 Translation by Michael Anthony Fuller, The Road to East Slope. The Development of Su Shi’s Poetic Voice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 139–140.   6 For an English translation with extensive comments see Xiao Tong (501–531, comp.), Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, translated and annotated by David R. Knechtges (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), vol. 2, 320–358. Knechtges calls the Rhapsody on the Yangzi River “one of the most learned poems of world literature” (ibid., 357) that “presents the Yangzi as the River par excellence” (ibid., 321).   7 Li Daoyuan 酈道元, Shuijing zhu 水經注, ed. Chen Qiaoyi 陳橋驛 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1992), juan 33–35, 626–666.   8 The earliest travelogues in this form are by the Southern Song scholar-officials and poets Fan Chengda 范成大 (1120–1193) and Lu You 陸游 (1125–1209) and describe their respective journeys along the Yangzi River. Both travelogues have been translated with extensive annotations: James M. Hargett, Riding the River Home. A Complete and Annotated Translation of Fan Chengda’s (1120–1193) ‘Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu (Wuchuan Lu)’ (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2008) and Chang Chun-shu and Joan Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century. A Translation of Lu Yu’s Travel Diaries, July 3–December 6, 1170 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1981).   9 For the paintings by Xia Gui see Wang Keyu 汪砢玉, Wang shi Shanhuwang gujin minghua tiba 汪氏珊瑚網古今名畫題跋, juan 6, in Zhongguo shuhua quanshu 中國書畫全書, ed. Lu Fusheng 廬輔聖 
e.a. (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 1992), vol. 5, 1037; for the scroll by Zhou Qi see ibid., 1213; and ibid., 1010 for the scroll by Fan Kuan. The records for the scrolls by Xia Gui are the only ones that can be related to an extant painting in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, although that is believed to be a later copy. 10 A record for a Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River handscroll by Guo Xi appears e.g. in Zhang Chou 張丑 (1577–1643), Qinghe shuhua fang 清河書畫舫, juan 7, in Zhongguo shuhua quanshu (cf. note 9), vol. 4, 265. A Fan Kuan painting of the same title is listed in the same author’s Zhenji rilu 真蹟日錄, juan 1, in ibid., vol. 4, 391. This record lists place names presumably inscribed on the painting and records a colophon by Dong Qichang. The Kangxi period (1662–1722) Yuding Catalogue of Painting and Calligraphy lists a handscroll painting by Li Tang titled Clearing Rain over the Yangzi River (Song Li Tang Changjiang yuji juan 宋李唐長江雨霽卷); see Yuding shuhua pu 御定書畫譜, juan 84, in Chizaotang siku quanshu huiyao 摛澡堂四庫全書薈要, vol. 11416, 13.a. The catalogue of the imperial painting collection under Qing Emperor Qianlong Shiqu baoji 石渠寶笈 contains entries for Jing Hao (juan 6), Zhao Fu (juan 32), and others; see Shiqu baoji 石渠寶笈, compiled by Zhang Zhao 張照 (1691–1745) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan and Hanfenlou, 1918), vol. 7, 74.a and vol. 36, 86.b–89.b. For further examples and references see Julia Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River in Southern Song China (1127–1279) (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2011), 20–21.

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11 The source of the Yangzi River was at the time believed to lie in the Min Mountains (Minshan 岷 山), and thus the Min River (Minjiang 岷江) was thought to be its headwater. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century when the official source of the Yangzi was determined to lie on the Tibetan plateau. 12 For a discussion of this scroll and its history of reception see Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River (cf. note 10), 72–116 and the documentation of the scroll on the website of the Freer Gallery, URL: http:// www.asia.si.edu/songyuan /F1911.168/F1911-168.Documentation.pdf (last accessed 30.12.2013). 13 See, for example, James Cahill’s evaluation of the Freer scrolls as purely functional, Cahill, “Huang Shan Paintings as Pilgrimage Pictures” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 254. Richard Barnhart notes the low quality of both Freer scrolls in an article on Dong Qichang’s misattributions, see Richard Barnhart, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Connoisseurship of Sung Painting and the Validity of His Historical Theories: A Preliminary Study” in Proceedings of the Tung Ch’i-ch’ang International Symposium, ed. Wai-ching Ho (Kansas City, Missouri: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 11–16. 14 Among its owners were Dong Qichang and the famous collector Gao Shiqi 高士奇 (1645–1703), who wrote several colophons for the scroll. Emperor Qianlong also owned the scroll and is responsible for the numerous seals and inscription on the painting itself, in addition to a number of colophons including a painted one, which attest his admiration for the scroll. He furthermore included the scroll together with three other highly appreciated handscrolls in the group of the Four Treasures (si mei 四 美). See Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River (cf. note 10), 116–131, and the documentation by the Freer Gallery, URL: http://www.asia.si.edu/songyuan/F1916.539/F1916-539 (last accessed 30.12.2013). 15 The extant Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River attributed to Xia Gui is housed in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, the scroll attributed to Zhao Fu in the Palace Museum, Beijing. 16 For a thorough discussion of these textual records, see Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River (cf. note 10), 30–65. There are some exceptions to the anonymous painters in early records of Yangzi River handscrolls, such as a colophon by the twelfth-century scholar-official Zhu Xiyan 朱睎顏 (1135– 1200) composed for a copy after an alleged Tang painting by Wang Zai 王宰 (active ca. 760–ca. 805) titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, which is, to my knowledge, the earliest textual source in which the painting title Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River is recorded. See Zhu Xiyan 朱睎顏, Piaoquan yingao 瓢泉吟稿, juan 1, in Yingyin Wenyuange siku quanshu 景印文淵 閣四庫全書 (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1983), vol. 1213. 17 The handscroll by Wu Wei is now in the Palace Museum, Beijing; another extant scroll attributed to Wang Meng 王蒙 (1308–1380) is in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, although its attribution is questionable. Textual sources include a poem by Wu Zhen 吳鎮 (1280– 1354) for a Yangzi River painting by Huang Gongwang 黃公望 (1269–1354) titled Zijiu’s ‘Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River’ (Zijiu wanli Changjiang tu子久萬里長江圖), which refers to an earlier painting of the theme by Xia Gui. The poem is recorded in Yuding lidai tihua shi lei, juan 6, in Siku Quanshu (cf. note 16), vol. 1435, 81–82. 18 In addition to paintings, printed examples of Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River can also be found, such as an illustration over several pages that is clearly modeled on paintings in Zhang Huang 章潢 (1527–1608), Tushu bian 圖書編, reprinted in Siku quanshu (cf. note 16), vol. 970, 514–524. This example is also illustrated by Cordell Yee in comparison with the Freer Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River. Cordell D.K. Yee, “Chinese Cartography among the Arts: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Representation” in The History of Cartography, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 2, pt. 2, 165–166. 19 The complete scroll is reproduced with a transcription of the inscriptions and colophons in Gugong shuhua tulu 故宮書畫圖錄 (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1989–1992), vol. 19, 437– 448. The only other mentioning of the scroll that I am aware of is in an article that appeared on the occasion of a special exhibition of Yangzi River paintings in the National Palace Museum without discussing the attribution to Dong Qichang, see Tan Yiling 譚怡令, “Dajiang dong qu lang tao jin qian gu fengliu renwu––Changjiang wanli tu tezhan gaishu 大江東去浪濤盡千古 風流人物––長江萬里圖特展概述” Gugong Wenwu Yuekan 故宮文物月刊 106 (1992), 108– 123. Misty River is not included in the chronology of Dong’s works and inscriptions compiled by She-yee Liu Fiedler in The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang 1555–1636, ed. Wai-kam Ho (Kansas: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the University of Washington Press, 1992), vol. 2, 487–575.

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20 The inscriptions on the painting as well as the frontispiece––all signed Dong Qichang and accompanied by his seals––display a calligraphic style that could be by Dong Qichang’s own hand, further suggesting the possibility of a ghost painter or an early copy by a close follower. For a discussion of Dong Qichang’s ghost-painters, some of which have been identified, as well as early copies and forgeries see Willibald Veit’s entry on a handscroll attributed to Dong Qichang in the collection of the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin in Orchideen und Felsen. Chinesische Bilder im Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Berlin, ed. Lothar Ledderose (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 1998), 410–417. Veit’s text includes aspects of the more extensive discussion of the issue of Dong Qichang copies and forgeries by Xu Bangda 徐邦達, Gu shuhua wei’e kaobian 古書畫偽訛考辨 (Hangzhou: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1984), vol. 2, pt. 1 (text), 147–158. An almost identical handscroll, attributed to Dong Qichang and titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River was auctioned in spring 2013. See the auction website, URL: http://auction.artron.net/paimai-art5031820943 (last accessed 30.12.2013). Lacking the title and frontispiece inscriptions as well as the last sections of the painting in comparison with the Taipei scroll, the painting itself and the inscriptions on it appear to be identical. The existence of this second scroll suggests that a number of copies and/or forgeries existed. 21 For an argument concerning the value of forgeries, in which “a ‘minor’ work may take the exploration of specific affective possibilities further than a masterpiece” see Jonathan Hay, “Editorial: The Value of Forgery” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 53/54 (Spring–Autumn, 2008), 5–19. 22 The handscroll traditionally attributed to Juran has one colophon by Dong, dated 1619, in which he refers to another Yangzi River painting by Li Gonglin that he had seen earlier, potentially the second Freer scroll. He dates the scroll to a Northern Song dynasty or earlier master and furthermore deems it to be of higher quality than Southern Song court painting as well as a treasure because of the quality of the painting itself and of the calligraphic qualities in the colophon of a previous owner. On the second Yangzi handscroll in the Freer Gallery, Shu River, Dong left two colophons, one dated 1602, the other earlier but undated. The earlier colophon confirms the attribution of the scroll to Li Gonglin but is less concerned with the painting itself, instead praising the calligraphic quality of the inscribed place names, which he also attributes to Li Gonglin instead of to Mi Fu as other connoisseurs had done. The colophon from 1602 gives information about the changing ownership of the scroll. For the transcription, translation, and discussion of these colophons, see the Freer Gallery documentation of the scrolls, URL: http://www.asia.si.edu/songyuan /F1911.168/F1911-168.Documentation.pdf and URL: http://www.asia.si.edu/songyuan/F1916.539/F1916-539.Documentation.pdf (last accessed 30.12.2013). See also Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River (cf. note 10), ch. 2 and Appendices A.I. and A.II. In addition, textual evidence suggests that Dong Qichang had seen other Yangzi River handscrolls attributed to ancient masters, for instance a recorded colophon by Dong for a painting attributed to Fan Kuan with inscribed place names. See Zhang Chou, Zhenji rilu, in Zhongguo shuhua quanshu (cf. note 9), vol. 4, 391. 23 Chen Jiru and Dong Qichang were both from Huating (near present-day Shanghai) and lifelong friends. Chen’s activities as painting collector and connoisseur had great influence on Dong Qichang’s early knowledge of original paintings. See Ren Daobin, “Ch’en Chi-ju as Critic and Coinnoisseur” in Proceedings of the T’ung Ch’i-ch’ang International Symposium, ed. Wai-ching Ho (Kansas City: The Nelson Atkins Museum and Lowell Press, 1991), 9–25. 24 This scroll is not extant but can possibly be related to a recorded poem by Shen Zhou titled “Inscribing Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River for Guo Zongrong.” The entry is contained in the collection of Shen Zhou’s poems: Shen Zhou 沈周, Shitian shixuan 石田詩選, juan 8. 25 For a complete transcription of the frontispiece inscription as well as the painting inscriptions and colophons that I refer to in the following pages, see Gugong shuhua tulu (cf. note 19), vol. 19, 448. See also the entry for Misty River in the digital painting database of the National Palace Museum, URL: http://painting.npm.gov.tw/npm_public/System/View.jsp?ObjectID=10398&type=1 (last accessed 30.12.2013). 26 Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty (reigned 502–549) is said to have praised the scenery at Mount Beigu as the “First scenery under heaven (Tianxia di yi jiangshan 天下第一江山).” 27 Pushing doubts about the Dong Qichang attribution aside for a moment, one is tempted to check whether Dong could have undertaken a journey along the Yangzi during the time frame provided in the frontispiece inscription. A visit to Chen Jiru in the spring of 1626 seems entirely possible: Dong Qichang was given permission to retire from his post as Minister of Rites in Nanjing in the

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twelfth month of 1625 and traveled home to Huating, where Chen Jiru also lived. A subsequent journey up the Yangzi River also lies in the realm of possibilities yet is not recorded, and if it ever took place then it is unlikely that it stretched all the way up to the Three Gorges as shown in the handscroll. Dong Qichang knew the region of the lower and middle Yangzi River––from his hometown Huating close to present-day Shanghai, his official post in Nanjing, and from previous posts in Anhui between 1598 and 1605, where he was well-connected to Huizhou literati and collectors and had undertaken trips to explore the scenery and to visit sites. For the biographical information and about the friendship between Dong and Chen Jiru see Celia Harrington Rielz, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Life” in The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (cf. note 19), vol. 2, 385–457. 28 One of many examples by Dong Qichang himself is his Poetic Ideas from the Tang and Song, an album of sixteen paintings in the manner of a variety of ancient models in the collection of the Shanghai Museum dated 1617. See The Century of Tung Chi-ch’ang (cf. note 19), vol. 1, pl. 30, 186–189. Wang Hui, whom I will discuss below, is also known for such sets. The most famous example by him is Large Emerging from Small, an album of twenty-one paintings dated 1672, also in the collection of the Shanghai Museum. See ibid., vol. 1, pl. 164, 437–448. 29 One other example I am aware of is the handscroll Rivers and Mountains without End in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Susan Bush has suggested that the scroll displays stylistic references to Jing Hao (late ninth–early tenth century), Guan Tong (early tenth century), Li Cheng (919–967), Yan Wengui (ca. 967–1044), and Fan Kuan (ca. 960–ca. 1030) in chronological order and thus presents a systematic study of early landscape painting potentially produced in the early twelfth century at the Northern Song court. See Susan Bush, “Yet Again ‘Streams and Mountains without End’” Artibus Asiae 48, no.3/4 (1987), 197–223. 30 For the Northern and Southern School theory, see Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting. Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636) (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 158–172. For a thorough discussion of the most important references for Dong Qichang’s stylistic range and many examples, see James Cahill, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Painting Style: Its Sources and Transformations” in The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (cf. note 19), 55–79. 31 Many art historians have emphasized the importance of Dong Yuan for Dong Qichang, who avidly collected works he believed to be by Dong Yuan, such as the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, today in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing. For a relatively recent account, see Christian Unverzagt, Der Wanglungsleib des Dong Yuan. Die Geschichte eines malerischen Oeuvres (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007), 109–128. 32 Dong Qichang extensively studied and copied Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, today preserved in the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, after having acquired it in 1596. See for example Cahill, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Painting Style” (cf. note 30), 57–58. 33 The best-studied example for Dong Qichang’s relation to Wang Meng is the hanging scroll Qingbian Mountains, see ibid., 68, and further references in note 44. For a more detailed description of stylistic reference in Misty River than provided here, see Tan, “Dajiang dong qu” (cf. note 19), 116–117. 34 Chin-sung Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid. Wang Hui (1632–1717) and the Making of Landscape Panoramas in Early Qing China (PhD diss, Yale University, 2004), especially Chapter Three on the Yangzi River handscrolls. Another recent publication on Wang Hui in English is Maxwell K. Hearn, ed., Landscapes Clear and Radiant. The Art of Wang Hui (1632– 1717) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 35 Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid (cf. note 34), 196. 36 Chang points to a number of representations of Swallow Cliff by early Qing painters and relates these to the poetic tradition, see ibid., 199–212. For a study of the poetic theme Meditations on the Past at Jinling, see Stephen Owen, “Place: Meditation on the Past at Chin-ling” Harvard Journal for Asiatic Studies 50, no. 2 (1990), 427–457. 37 Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid (cf. note 34), 164. 38 Ibid., 165 and 168. 39 According to Yun Shouping’s colophon the previous owner of the Juran-scroll was Zou Zhilin 鄒之 麟 (active mid-seventeenth century), and at the time when Wang Hui saw the painting it was in the possession of Yang Zhaolu 楊兆魯 (born 1623). In addition, Da Chongguang 笪重光 (1632– 1692) and Wang Hui had discussed its date and style. Yun Shouping further describes the Juran painting as starting from the Min and Emei Mountains of Sichuan and ending at the Jin and Jiao

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mountains in the lower Yangzi. The colophon is translated in Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid (cf. note 34), 169–170. A scroll titled Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River and attributed to Juran with the same history of ownership (colophons and/or seals by Zou Zhilin, Yang Zhaolu, and Da Chongguang) was in the collection of the late Qing dynasty official Duanfang 端 方 (1861–1911), who also owned the two Freer Yangzi scrolls, as recorded in the manuscript of his collection catalogue and in contemporary sources, see e.g.: Wanyan Jingxian 完顏景賢, Sanyutang shuhua mu 三虞堂書畫目, ed. Su Zongren 蘇宗仁 (Beijing, 1933). A handscroll of the same attribution and documented history of ownership is described and illustrated in Xu, Gu shuhua wei’e kaobian (cf. note 20), vol. 1, pt. 1 (text), 167 and 1, pt. 2 (illustrations), 31/1–31/5. Xu Bangda describes inscribed place names on the scroll that are hardly visible in the reproductions, identifies the depicted stretch of the river as reaching from Sichuan to Zhenzhou in Jiangsu province, which matches Yun Shouping’s description, and dates the scroll to the Yuan or Ming dynasty. 40 For a discussion of this scroll and the identification of individual sites, see Wan-go Weng, “Ten Thousand Li up the Yangzi: A 17th Century Chinese Masterpiece” Orientations 38, no. 3 (2007), 46–51. See also Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid (cf. note 34), 405–409. 41 The inscription is illustrated and paraphrased by Weng, “Ten Thousand Li up the Yangzi” (cf. note 40), 46. 42 Chang, Mountains and Rivers, Pure and Splendid (cf. note 34), 408–409. 43 It should be noted that a handscroll painting is not one-directional as the viewer would, after having unrolled the scroll from right to left, rewind it and in the process review the scenery from left to right. Weng Wan-go has used the directionality of Yangzi River paintings as a criterium to group them, cf. Weng, “Ten Thousand Li up the Yangzi” (cf. note 40), 47. 44 For a detailed analysis of this aspect and the differentiation between geographical discourses in the early Yangzi River handscrolls see Orell, Picturing the Yangzi River (cf. note 10), ch. 3. 45 For a discussion of how the directionality of east-flowing rivers can build a poetic imagery of political connotations in the work of Yuan Haowen during the decline and fall of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), see Stephen H. West, “Chilly Seas and East Flowing Rivers: Yüan Hao-wen’s Poems of Death and Disorder, 1233–1235” in China under Jurchen Rule: Essays on Chin Intellectual and Cultural History, ed. Hoyt Cleveland Tillman and Stephen H. West (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 281–304.

Illustrations Fig. 1:

Anonymous (previously attributed to Juran), Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, ink on silk, 43,7 × 1654 cm, late 12th century (Southern Song dynasty), Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, inv. F1911.168. Fig. 2: Anonymous (previously attributed to Li Gonglin), Shu River, section of a handscroll, ink on paper, 32,3 × 752,1 cm, 13th century (Southern Song dynasty), Washington D.C., Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, inv. F1916.539. Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7: Dong Qichang (attributed), Misty River, sections of a handscroll, ink on paper, 46 × 1909,1 cm, 1626, Taipei, The Collection of National Palace Museum. Fig. 8: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll now mounted as a set of twelve hanging scrolls, ink and colour on silk, each scroll 67,6 × 54,3 cm, 1677, private collection (reproduced from: The Chang Family Han Lu Studio: An Important Private Collection of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from 1940’s Shanghai, Christie’s Sales Catalog, New York: Christie’s, 1996, no. 47). Fig. 9: Juran (attributed), Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, ink and colour on silk, 38,8 × 1320 cm, present location unknown (reproduced from: Xu Bangda, Gu shuhua wei’e kaobian [Nanjing: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1984], vol. 1, part 2 [illustrations], 221). Figs. 10, 11: Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, ink and colour on paper, 41,2 × 1615,4 cm, 1699, Collection of Wan-go H.C. Weng.

Juliane Noth

Seen from a Boat Travel and Cultural History in Huang Binhong’s Landscape Paintings Chinese landscape painting of the Republican period (1911–1949) is marked by shifting visual paradigms that are related to recently adopted pictorial practices, such as outdoor sketching and photography. With the aim of relating painted landscapes more strongly than in imperial times to the forms and surfaces of observed mountainscapes, numerous artists embarked on sketching tours and sketched during their travels. Many of the paintings and sketches produced during these tours were given their final form in the established genres of travel painting, mostly in the album format, which allows for the combination of related views into a sequence. The couching of new representational techniques and viewing practices in the framework of traditional genres and painting methods led to different experimental approaches and to subsequent reformulations of these genres and methods. Yet these phenomena have only recently attracted scholarly attention.1 To fully assess the complexity of the pictorial and conceptual solutions found by modern Chinese artists, it is necessary to shift discussions of ink painting away from the preoccupation with a master narrative of tradition and from references to canonised painters of the imperial period. While traditionalist painters were concerned with their position in relation to the canon, they also actively and creatively used modern techniques and adopted modern concepts, often translated from Euro-American sources, and effectively reconfigured their “tradition.” This also holds true for Huang Binhong (1865–1955), who is generally seen as one of the last paragons of literati painting; studies of his paintings have mainly focused on his late work and his formal explorations of brush and ink techniques. Huang’s own theoretical writings on brush technique and ink method have been a major source for this interpretation. In comparison, his paintings predating the 1940s and the over 2,000 travel sketches he left behind have received considerably less scholarly attention.2 Instead, the relevance of an actual and distinctive place serving as a basis for the painted image has been downplayed, even by Huang himself. The paintings are often treated as if they were ideal landscapes in which specific topographies and histories do not matter. Jason Kuo has even declared that visual observation is irrelevant to understanding Huang’s sketches: [Huang] maintained that his sketches were never merely direct recordings of visual observation. Rather, they were responses to ancient masters’ styles in order to capture

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the spiritual resemblance (shensi) and not to be limited by an adherence to outer appearance (xingsi). In other words, Huang Binhong sketched not with an innocent eye but with the mind’s eye.3

Kuo’s interpretation is problematic in several respects. His notion of an “innocent eye” suggests the possibility of vision that is independent from cultural and social formations, and that “sketching with an innocent eye” implies an “adherence to outer appearance,” or formal likeness (xingsi). His equation of “innocent eye,” xingsi and the notation of visual observation oversimplifies Huang Binhong’s references to the binarism of formal and spiritual likeness (xingsi and shensi, respectively), an established trope of literati painting theory. Kuo also proposes that shensi, “spiritual resemblance,” corresponds to what is seen with the “mind’s eye” (xinmu), and equates both with the “responses to ancient master’s styles.” The fact that Huang Binhong continually made sketches of the many places he travelled through and that he worked on these sketches after his travels is rendered completely irrelevant by this form of argumentation. This situates Huang within a purely Chinese tradition of literati painting where only the styles of ancient painters are regarded as relevant.4 In this paper I will present another perspective on Huang’s paintings and sketches of the places he travelled to, through, or in. I will trace how his continuous engagement with observed landscape and sketching relates to his interpretation of ancient styles. He employed various pictorial formats and followed different objectives. Whether he had actually seen the places that he painted is of varying relevance for different pictures and has resulted in a highly complex oeuvre. My paper will examine how the experience of travel and seeing, the (cultural) histories of places, and the formats and styles of Chinese art interrelate in his works. The complex relationship between these three issues is best illustrated with three paintings that date from the late years of Huang’s life and are quite similar at first sight. The first, dated to 1955, is published under the title Mt. Tianmu (fig. 1, pl. XIIIa) and may be taken as proof of the claim that Huang painted specific sites through the filter of the ancient masters’ styles. The inscription forms a brief discourse on literati painting lineage: In painting Wang Meng [ca. 1308–1385] followed Zhao Mengfu [1254–1322], and the lineage can be traced back to Wang Wei [ca. 699–ca. 761]. He is one of the Four Masters of the Yuan period. His landscape paintings captured the famous views of the Eastern and Western Tianmu. (Text A)

Through the inscription the landscape can be identified as Mt. Tianmu, but the primary concern here is Wang Meng, whose painting style is associated with this mountain. Not only does the mountain landscape seem to embody the Yuan master’s style; Huang Binhong positions himself in the lineage of literati painting through his own stylistic reference to Wang. This reference to Wang Meng is played out in the curled texture strokes and the dynamic forces that seem to be at work in the mountainside, both features that are characteristic of Wang’s style. Below the

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Fig. 1: Huang Binhong, Mt. Tianmu, hanging scroll, 1955, collection unknown.

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Fig. 2: Huang Binhong, Fuqiu Stream, hanging scroll, late 1940s or 1950s, National Art Museum of China.

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Fig. 3: Huang Binhong, Seen from a Boat on Shujiang, hanging scroll, c. 1940s, Nanjing Museum.

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steeply rising mountain a building sits on the banks of a stream that emerges from a narrow valley. Two men engaged in a conversation occupy the upper floor, and a third person is on his way to join them. Similar motifs arranged in a comparable composition can be found in several paintings by Huang Binhong, for example in Fuqiu Stream (fig. 2, pl. XIIIb) and in Seen from a Boat on Shujiang (fig. 3, pl. XIV).5 Both paintings are undated but were probably created in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The inscriptions on these three paintings refer to specific places: the first inscription refers to Mt. Tianmu, the second states that the depicted landscape was observed in Sichuan during a journey by boat, and the third gives detailed geographical information about a stream springing from Mt. Huang: Fuqiu Stream winds down to the foot of Cloud Gate Peak where it joins with Cao Stream. Its source is on the eastern slopes of Mt. Huang. Here I wrote a view of a streamside pavilion. Binhong. (Text B)

Thus the same composition—stream emerging between steep mountains with a pavilion on its banks—is brought into three different discursive contexts: One inscription positions the composition within the discourse of art-historical genealogies through its reference to Wang Meng; one relates the image to a moment of individual perception at a certain point of time and at a certain place (on a boat in Sichuan); and the third painting, Fuqiu Stream, gains a documentary character through the geographical information given in the accompanying text. In each case it is only through the inscription that a specific place can be identified. The compositional elements in themselves do not portray recognisable sites; rather, they position the paintings in a stylistic tradition of idealised literati landscapes. The applicability of a generic compositional schema to different discursive contexts does not imply that all these contexts should be subsumed under one that is more dominant than the others (e.g. the discourse of literati painting lineage that is linked to specific styles), but rather that these issues were intrinsically linked for Huang Binhong. In the following I will therefore analyse how literati painting conventions, which were of great importance to Huang, and the specificity of distinct places play together on varying levels in different works.

Mapping Rivers Huang Binhong’s late work features several paintings that document the course of streams and rivers.6 In most cases, the watercourses under question have their source in Huang’s home region, Shexian (She County) in Anhui Province, and more precisely on Mt. Huang, or Huangshan. Mostly, they are part of the tributary system of the Xin’an River, like Fuzishui, Lianxi, Fengleshui, Yangzhishui, and Jianjiang. Yet, although the courses of these rivers are prominent in the painting inscriptions, in most cases water does not occupy a central place in the pictorial composition.

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Fig. 4: Huang Binhong, On Fuchun River, ink on paper, mid-1930s, collection unknown.

Equally common are paintings that claim that the depicted scenery was seen from a boat (zhou zhong suo jian) or that the composition was conceived whilst on a boat (zhou zhong de tu).7 Generally the river occupies the centre of the composition in these paintings and winds over the picture plane towards a high horizon line.8 Both groups of paintings––those describing the courses of waterways and those that were “seen from a boat”––can be traced to series of sketches that Huang Binhong made during his travels on rivers in the provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Sichuan. One group of sketches records views that Huang noted in the mid-1930s while travelling by boat on the Qiantang River, Fuchun River, Xin’an River, and Lian River (fig. 4).9 These sketches in horizontal format depict an expanse of water in the foreground, while the middle ground is filled with the shoreline or with the course of a river that stretches towards a deep-lying horizon. Many of the sketches contain detailed notes documenting the name of the site, the direction of the view, the distance between certain landmarks, and the course of the waterways. The sketches denote the outlines and forms of the mountains, the course of the rivers, and the position of landmark buildings or towns. Any further detail and any hint at modern technologies are deleted from the landscapes—the buildings and the occasional boats in the sketches are abbreviated notations taken from the idiom of literati painting. Huang’s sketches share certain features with photography compositions like the picture of the Fuchun River in the 1935 publication Dongnan lansheng (In Search of the Southeast) (fig. 5). These features include an elevated viewpoint, which serves

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Fig. 5: Liangyou, On Fuchun River, photograph, in Dongnan lansheng (In Search of the Southeast), Shanghai 1935.

to provide an encompassing view within the frame of the image, and reduced human activity, which is alluded to by a few boats on the river.10 The sketch adopts a photographic composition, with a wide but clearly framed vista from an elevated view, thereby emphasising its own visual veracity. On the other hand, the photograph follows the conventions of the Chinese painting tradition in what it depicts—mountains, a river, a settlement on the shore, and occasional boats—as well as in what it omits. As previously mentioned, Huang Binhong’s sketches can be linked to those paintings that describe river courses and also to those that claim to depict landscapes “seen from a boat.” The latter are based on vistas like those documented in the sketches where the river marks the centre of the composition. Unlike the sketches, it leads to a very high horizon line, which allows the painter to transfer the composition into the hanging scroll format and thereby into the pictorial conventions of traditional landscape painting. What is being documented here is the personal perception of a landscape. Both the painter and the viewer are located outside the picture frame, a compositional technique that differs from pre-modern travel painting where the figure of the traveller mediates the experience of travel and the seeing of the landscape. The subject of the artist thus disappears from within the painting; even when some of the paintings show human figures, they cannot be identified as “self-portraits.” On

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the other hand, the subject is re-inscribed into the landscape through the emphasis on individual perception. And it is not just perception that is the topic of both sketches and hanging scrolls “seen from a boat,” but also the experience of travel by boat and of the itinerary along the waterways. These itineraries are transcribed into the inscriptions on the courses of rivers. They seem to provide factual information, and yet at the same time they are brought into a specific cultural framework, namely the documentation of geography, including mountains and rivers, in local gazetteers. Huang Binhong’s notations adopt the writing style of these gazetteers and in some cases quote them almost literally. The inscription on the hanging scroll titled Xin’an River, from 1954, for example, reads like an abbreviated version of a passage on regional rivers in the Gazetteer of Huizhou Prefecture (Huizhoufu zhi) of 1699;11 likewise, the inscription on the Fuqiu Stream painting cited above—“Fuqiu Stream winds down to the foot of Cloud Gate Peak where it joins with Cao Stream. It emerges from the eastern slopes of Mt. Huang.” (Text B)—is an almost literal quotation from the Shexian Gazetteer (Shexian zhi) of 1771. The gazetteer’s chapter on “Mountains and Rivers” provides the following information on the Fuqiu: The sources of Fengle. One is named Fu Stream or Fuqiu Stream. It emerges from Fuqiu Peak and winds down to the foot of Cloud Gate Peak where it joins with Cao Stream. Another is Cao Stream. It emerges on the eastern spurs of Mt. Huang.12 (Text C)

The Shexian Gazetteer of 1937––Huang Binhong was involved in the editorial work––uses the same phrasing.13 Therefore, despite the fact that Huang writes that his painting depicts a pavilion on the bank of the stream, the Fuqiu Stream painting is not so much a visual documentation of a certain locality as it is a documentation of local history referenced by means of quotations from gazetteers. These layers of cultural and geographical meaning are closely linked to Huang Binhong’s personal experience, and to his relationships with the friends and peers who shared his intellectual interests and with whom he travelled to the places depicted in his paintings. This aspect is confirmed by an early album leaf, which contains the earliest account of waterways by Huang known to me (fig. 6): Yuliang in Shexian controls the waters flowing from the Fuzi, Bushe, Fengle and Yangzhi rivers. After a distance of some ten or so li they join with the Jian River and flow into the Zhe River, which is popularly referred to as the Xin’an River.14 (Text D)

The leaf is dedicated to Lude (Chen Chun) and commemorates a sojourn in Shexian, where the two travelled together in 1905. As Claire Roberts has observed, the depicted place, Yuliang levee, a prominent ancient landmark in Shexian, was “where Huang Binhong disembarked when he travelled by boat from Jinhua to Shexian or from Shexian to Hangzhou.”15 The memory of the place is interwoven with personal relationships, and at the same time the individual experience of the site is linked to its historical and geographical specificities. This is also evoked by the painting style. The scene is painted with sparse and dry brushstrokes that reference the style of painters of the regional Xin’an School, like Hongren. Yet the re-

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Fig. 6: Huang Binhong, The Yuliang Dam of Shexian, ink and colours on paper, c. 1910s, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Provincial Museum.

strained use of pictorial means also serves to create a melancholic and highly personalised atmosphere. Huang Binhong historicises his own position through the use of historical texts and traditionalist painting modes; one example that serves to illustrate this point is an unmounted double leaf from a collection of sketches showing landscapes of Sichuan Province, where he travelled in 1932 and 1933 (fig. 7). Judging from its relatively detailed and careful rendition, it probably was not sketched in situ but was deliberately painted in a sketch format, either as an intermediary or aide-de-mémoire, or as part of a series that reflects the moment of travel experience. This is suggested by the detailed reference to site and the numeration on the border, which is given as Sichuan, Hechuan, no. 1 (Shu Hechuan yi), and, added in lighter ink by a different hand, “leaf 16.” Today, Hechuan is a district in the administrative region of Chongqing; it was a county (xian) during the Republican period. In the inscription on the sketch, Huang Binhong refers to the place by the name that was in use only before 1913, Hezhou, and again provides some basic geographical information: Hezhou. To the east lies Mt. Diaoyu. Qu River comes down from Shunqing Prefecture and Guang’an and flows into the northeastern part of the county where it joins Jialing River. The towns of Bazicheng and Songwangcheng are both in the southern part of the county. (Text E)

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Fig. 7: Huang Binhong, Hechuan, ink on paper, 1930s, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Provincial Museum.

Like the sketches of the Xin’an River system discussed above, the landscape is depicted from an elevated viewpoint and shows the confluence of two rivers together with major landmarks in a panoramic scope. Since the sketch is based on a personal visit to and a personal perception of the place (and possibly on a sketch drawn on site), Huang Binhong inserts himself into the image as its constituting subject. But the rendition of the landscape, the loosely sketched buildings, the solitary fishing boat, and the modelling of the mountains all point to the techniques and the formal idiom of literati painting. In referencing pre-modern painting conventions and historical place names, Huang establishes a historical continuity between his own perception and pre-modern practices. He erases from his picture the changes that both painting practices and the land underwent since the beginning of the twentieth century. But since the format of the sketch is based on the modern practice of xiesheng, or drawing from nature, this practice is incorporated into the tradition of Chinese painting.16

Sketching mountains A similar junction of personal experience and engagement with local history can be observed in Huang Binhong’s travel paintings of mountains. In 1938 and 1940 he painted two albums entitled Huangshan and Sketches of Huangshan respectively, which appear to serve as visual guides through the mountain. Huangshan is located in Huang’s ancestral region, Shexian in Anhui Province; he climbed it several times and engaged with it throughout his career in his paintings and writings.17 When he painted the two albums under discussion, he resided in Beiping and was unable to travel due to the Japanese occupation. The albums recall previous travels, and some of the leaves can be linked to earlier sketches. Leaf 3 of the 1940 album, for example, which according to the inscription shows the “view from Guangming Peak towards the Gate of the (Cloudy) Sea” (fig. 8), seems to be based on a sketch containing Huang’s note identifying the subject as the Temple of the Universal Assembly (Haihuisi) beneath Wulao Peak. Both pictures depict a view across a wide valley

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Fig. 8: Huang Binhong, View from Guangming Peak, ink and colours on paper, leaf C from the album Sketches of Mt. Huang, 1940, Hong Kong, Yuanshantang Collection.

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filled with clouds and with buildings appearing below. The background is blocked by a mountain range, and a steep cliff cuts off the view on the right edge of both paintings. Although the sketch and the album leaf refer to different sites on the mountain, the latter borrows the former’s framing by means of the cliff to evoke a vista from a mountain peak over the expanse of a valley. It also cites the sketch’s loose and spontaneous brushwork along with the prosaic and abbreviated writing style of the inscription, thereby transposing the immediacy of a sketch drawn on site into the more formal album format. While both albums guide the viewer across Huangshan, naming sites, detailing views and viewing points, and describing routes, the two works differ quite markedly in style. As described above, the 1940 album is painted in a loose manner, with the ink outlines applied in light, scratchy strokes and rich variations of light colours added to enhance the atmospheric impression evoked by the cloud-filled vistas. In the 1938 album, by contrast, ink is the dominant element, with only subtle touches of colour added. The mountain forms are outlined with bold strokes and are heavily textured; on most leaves they are drawn into the picture frame in strong closeups. Huang further emphasises this effect by inscribing several leaves not in the upper part of the picture but on the mountainside, leaving a portion blank to form the background to his text. By virtually inscribing the mountain, Huang Binhong draws on the rich textual tradition that accrued around famous mountains like Huangshan, part of which has since become part of the actual landscape through naming practices and inscriptions carved into actual mountain cliffs.18 In the inscription to the second leaf of the album dated 1938 (fig. 9, pl. XV) the cultural resonances are particularly strong. Topographical information, a historical person, and the experience of the mountain landscape are closely interwoven: White Cloud Retreat is inside Lotus Gorge. When you climb the stairs to the top, the entrance of the cave is wide and majestic. Wang Haojing eulogised it as “a mansion in the void, built on the peak of the Heavenly Gate; its name is White Cloud Retreat. Far away from the earth and close to the sky, taking the stones as forest and the pines as friends, standing amidst mists and clouds, this is truly looking down on the adversities of the world (literally ‘wind and rain’).”19 (Text F)

The painting, with its tight frame reminiscent of photographic view-taking, suggests the immediacy of an on-site experience, possibly documented in a sketch, and the framing and the upward winding forms of the mountain underscore the soaring heights described in the inscription. Yet the text not only serves to match the image poetically, but also links the place to a certain historical person––Wang Haojing, a scholar from Shexian who lived during the Kangxi-Period and wrote on seals. Huang Binhong included Haojing’s text Methods of the Purple Paste from the Studio of the Red Arts (Hongshuxuan zinifa dingben) in the anthology Meishu congshu. He was also mentioned in the 1937 edition of the Shexian Gazetteer, which Huang Binhong assisted in editing. Text and image thereby appear to pull in different directions. The image, by means of its photographic framing, emphasises the moment of seeing that is trans-

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Fig. 9: Huang Binhong, White Cloud Retreat, ink and colours on paper, leaf B from the album Scenes of Mt. Huang, 1938, Hong Kong Museum of Art.

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lated into a painting; the inscription, on the other hand, opens up a historical dimension. The mentioning of Wang Haojing relates the album leaf to Huang Binhong’s multiple intellectual activities, many of which were dedicated to his home region—his editing of the Meishu congshu and his involvement in publications such as Anhui congshu (Collecteana on Anhui Province)20 and the Shexian Gazetteer of 1937.21 Huang’s deep interest in the history, culture, and geography of his ancestral region informs these publications as well as his descriptions of river courses in painting inscriptions. The documentation of geography and cultural history thus become intricately linked to his own biography—to his experiences of travel and to his activities as a scholar and author. Because of his socialisation and his self-positioning as a traditional Chinese scholar he interpreted his visual experience in terms of literati culture. He framed these experiences conceptually by adding texts that he drew from pre-modern sources and on the formal level by couching his landscapes in traditional representational modes. To this end he not only employed the formal idiom of literati painting with its emphasis on brush and ink, but also borrowed from woodblock prints, such as those used to illustrate local gazetteers or compendia like the late Ming dynasty publications Strange Views within the Four Seas (Hainei qiguan) (1609)22 and Images of Famous Mountains (Mingshan tu) (1633).23 This link between Huang Binhong’s sketches of specific places and topographical images in woodblock illustrations, and the ensuing dissolution of historical distance is particularly prominent in the album Twelve Strange Peaks, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts mountains in different regions of China in the same linear manner used in Huang’s travel sketches but without overt displays of spontaneity or heavy photographical framing. Instead, the geomantic formations are denoted in holistic compositions, as if the paintings were the outline drawings for a set of ideal literati landscapes. The deliberate employment of this linearity in an album that bears inscriptions and seals, and is therefore meant to be regarded as a complete work, is uncommon in Chinese painting practice and can be read as a direct reference to woodblock illustrations.24 This formal choice may be linked to the sources of the inscriptions, namely literary travel records. Some of the leaves show landscapes that are mentioned in the famous Ming dynasty Travel Diary of Xu Xiake (Xu Xiake youji), authored by Xu Hongzu (1587–1641). Leaf D of Huang’s album, for example, shows Tianzhu, or Heavenly Pillar, Peak in Jianchang, present-day Nancheng County in Jiangxi Province (fig. 10), a place Huang Binhong never actually visited in person. The inscription reads: There are many mountains in the southeast of Jianchang. Tianzhu Peak is the highest. There is a ravine called Flying Legendary Tortoise in the north, and there is a stone terrace which is sandwiched in the ravine. From the terrace, go up to the west and you will see a cleft where the sky looks like a string.25

This text is actually a heavily abbreviated version of Xu Hongzu’s description of the place in his Diary of Travels Right of the River (Jiangyou you riji).26 The linearity that is characteristic of pre-modern woodblock prints corresponds with the paraphras-

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Fig. 10: Huang Binhong, Tianzhu Peak, leaf D from the album Twelve Strange Peaks, ca. 1940s, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Fig. 11: Huang Binhong, Waterfall on Mt. Yandang, 1930s, Shexian Museum

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Fig. 12: Huang Binhong, Great Dragon Waterfall, from the Left, colour pencil on paper, 1931, Zhejiang Provincial Museum.

ing of the late-Ming travel record. The stylistic similarities between the leaves of this album and the sketches based on Huang’s own travels work to blend the historical and the personal experiences of landscape. His use of pre-modern travel records and topographical images in ways that resonate with sketches taken during his own journeys reveals the entanglement between the modern practice of xiesheng (sketching from nature) and the pre-modern practice of fanggu (painting in the manner of ancient masters). This is the case not only on a formal but also on an iconographical level. As can be seen in the paintings Huang made of Mt. Yandang, his work based on personal visual experience was informed by pre-existing pictorial models. Huang Binhong travelled to Mt. Yandang in 1931 and made a series of sketches there.27 In subsequent years he painted several hanging scrolls using this motif. An undated but probably rather early example depicts the Great Dragon Waterfall (Da Longqiu) (fig. 11). The waterfall’s geographical features and significance are underscored in a semi-documentary language based on the pre-modern topographical writings that Huang Binhong employed in many of his inscriptions. The painting shows a steep mountainside, with the water falling almost vertically; a simple bridge spans the water, and a small building serves as a viewing platform. Two paintings from the 1950s share a similar composition; both of these can be traced back to a sketch that Huang Binhong made in situ (fig. 12). Here a broad mountainside stretches vertically across the leaf, sketched only with a few cursory lines; the waterfall is placed slightly to the left of the centre of the picture. The name of the site, “Great Dragon

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Fig. 13: Dragon Waterfall, woodblock print, in Mingshan tu, 1633.

Waterfall, from the left,” is noted on the edge of the sketch. No information concerning vegetation, bridges, buildings, or visitors is given. This visual information can be culled from the double-page illustration of the Great Dragon Waterfall in the aforementioned pictorial compendium Images of Famous Mountains (Mingshan tu) published in 1633 (fig. 13). Moreover, the view illustrated in this woodblock print reveals strong similarities to that documented in Huang’s sketch. Both images depict a mountainside filling a large part of the picture plane, the waterfall emerging in a curve from a slightly indentured part in the contour line and rushing down vertically, and a foothill to the right. In this case, the translation of the visual impression of a landscape into a sketch is not accomplished through the filter of “ancient masters,” as suggested by Jason Kuo in the passage quoted above, but through the model of pre-modern woodblock print. The formal and iconographical references to Ming-period topographical prints are even more evident in the one instance where Huang transposed his own travel paintings into the woodblock print format. On the occasion of his seventieth birthday his friends and students produced Album of Travel Paintings by Binhong (Binhong jiyou huace)28 consisting of forty images in woodblock print based on Huang’s travels. The album is bound in the traditional Chinese book format with thread binding and reproduces the layout of pre-modern illustrated books. Each image is framed by an outline, and the caption is given outside the frame on the outer edge of the page.

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Fig. 14: Huang Binhong, Yandang No.1: The Lingfeng Peak of Yandang, leaf 13 from Album of Travel Paintings by Binhong, woodblock print, 1934, Shanghai Library.

In accordance with the print medium, Huang also references woodblock illustrations on the pictorial level. This is evident in the pages dedicated to Mt. Yandang, which reference illustrations from Strange Views within the Four Seas (Hainei qiguan), an illustrated compendium of travel accounts and poems on famous sites first published in 1609. In his picture representing the Luohan Temple, Huang borrows the form of the towering peak that leans over the monk-shaped rocks in the Ming-period publication,29 and in the leaf showing Lingfeng, or Spirit Peak (fig. 14), the motif of the temple building behind a cave entrance with a stream running in front of it is modelled on the respective illustration in Strange Views (fig. 15).30 The reference to the woodblock medium is complicated by the overt display of Huang Binhong’s distinctive hand. The brushstrokes pull away from mimetic representation and require a reading in terms of brush-method. The depicted places can be identified as sites of Mt. Yandang (or other places shown in the album), by virtue of the interpictorial references and the names given in the inscriptions; beyond these signifying elements, the generic buildings, mountain formations, and the individual brushwork all place the images firmly in the literati painting tradition. Thereby, the Album of Travel Paintings by Binhong draws on two distinct tra-

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Fig. 15: Yang Erzeng, The Lingfeng Temple of Mt. Yandang, woodblock print, in Hainei qiguan, 1609.

ditions in Chinese scholar culture: one is the documentation of local topography and cultural history through travel diaries and local gazetteers; the other is the cultivation and expression of self in painting and calligraphy.

Conclusion During his travels Huang Binhong not only sketched the landscapes he saw, but also added notes on historical events and persons associated with the place. His painting practice was thus intimately linked to his deep interest in local histories and his various intellectual activities, including the compilation of historical texts and data for publications like Collecteana on Anhui Province (Anhui congshu) and the Shexian Gazetteer. In linking his personal experience with persons and events from the past, he positioned himself in a historical continuum with them and bridged the political and cultural ruptures of the early twentieth century in his art as well as his life. By doing so, he not only combined distinct scholarly traditions, but also drew on different media and artistic practices to reconcile these discursive strands on the pictorial level. The relation between visual observation on site and its transposition into a sketch and subsequently into a variety of pictorial formats cannot be reduced to binary categories such as “formal resemblance” (xingsi) and “spiritual resemblance” (shensi), or even “innocent eye” or “mind’s eye,” as has been

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proposed by Jason Kuo.31 Rather, they result from complex processes by which different artistic, visual, and intellectual paradigms are translated into each other in a modern reinvention of traditional scholars’ culture.

Chinese Texts Text A: 王山樵畫師松雪，上追王摩詰。為元季四家。所作山水得東西天目之勝。 Text B: 浮邱溪折至雲門峰下會曹溪。源出黃山東腋。此寫其溪樓一角。賓虹 Text C: 豐樂之源。 曰浮溪，一名浮邱溪， 出浮邱峰，折至雲們峰下會曹溪。 曰曹溪， 出黃山東 掖，… Text D: 歙之漁梁，束富資、布射、豐樂、揚之水諸流，迤十餘里，合漸水而歸之浙江，通稱新 安江。魯得仁兄先生曾游歙中，與余同寓於問政山麓，昕夕過從，至今忽忽數年，重 逢海上，寫此志感。 Text E: 合州。東有釣魚山。渠江自順慶府廣安流至州東北匯嘉陵江。 巴子城宋王城並在州 南。 Text F: 白雲菴在蓮花溝。拾級而上，洞門軒敞，汪鎬京賛為嵌空置屋天門之巔，菴曰白雲。 逖地親天，以石為林，以松為侶，立煙雲中，頫看風雨是也。 Text G: 建昌東南境多山，天柱峰為最高，北有飛鱉间石臺夾其中，岩滯雲臺，西上中縫為一 線天。

Glossary of Chinese Characters Chen Chun Da Longqiu Dongnan lansheng Fengleshui Fuchunjiang Fuqiuxi Fuzishui Hainei qiguan Hechuan Hezhou Hongren

陳純 大龍湫 東南攬勝 豐樂水 富春江 浮邱溪 富資水 海內奇觀 合川 合州 弘仁

Huangshan Huizhoufu zhi Jianchang Jiangyou you riji Jianjiang Jinhua Lianxi Lianjiang Lingfeng Lude Luohan Temple

黃山 徽州府志 建昌 江右遊日記 漸江 金華 練溪 練江 靈峰 魯德 羅漢寺

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Mingshan tu Nancheng County Qiantangjiang “Seen from a Boat on Shujiang” shensi Shexian Shexian zhi Shu Tianmushan Tianzhu-Gipfel

名山圖 南城縣 錢塘江 蜀江舟中所見 神似 歙縣 歙縣志 蜀 天目山 天柱峰

xian Xin’anjiang xingsi xinmu Xu Hongzu Xu Xiake youji Yandangshan Yangzhishui zhou zhong de tu zhou zhong suo jian

縣 新安江 形似 心目 徐弘祖 徐霞客遊記 雁蕩山 揚之水 舟中得圖 舟中所見

Notes   1 This article is a revised version of an article published in Chinese under the title “Zhouzhong suo jian––Huang Binhong shanshuihua zhong de dili, wenhuashi yu geren ganshou 舟中所見 – 黃 賓虹山水畫中的地理、文化史與個人感受” in Huang Binhong yu xiandai yishu sixiangshi guoji xueshu yantaohui wenji, 2012 Hangzhou 黃賓虹與現代藝術思想史國際學術研討會文 集，2012杭州. Huang Binhong and the Evolution of Modern Ideas in Art: An International Forum Hangzhou, China, ed. Kong Lingwei 孔令偉 and Juliane Noth (Hangzhou: Zhongguo Meishu Xueyuan Chubanshe, 2014), 217–238.   Yi Gu, Scientizing Vision in China. Photography, Outdoor Sketching, and the Reinvention of Landscape Perception, 1912–1949 (PhD dissertation. Brown University, Providence, RI, 2009); Shih Shouchien 石守謙, “Mingshan qisheng zhi lü yu ershi shiji qianqi Zhongguo shanshuihua de xiandai zhuanhua 名山奇勝之旅與二十世紀前期中國山水畫的現代轉化” in Travelling with Gaze: The Tourist Culture in Modern China and Taiwan 旅行之視線：近代中國與臺灣的觀光文化, ed. Su Shuobin 蘇碩斌 (Taipei: Guoli Yangming Daxue Renwen Shehui Kexueyuan, 2012), 13–67.   2 To this day the only in-depth study of Huang Binhong that discusses a significant number of his paintings is by Claire Roberts, The Dark Side of the Mountain: Huang Binhong (1865–1955) and Artistic Continuity in Twentieth Century China (PhD dissertation. Australian National University, 2005). See, also by the same author, A Friendship in Art: Fou Lei and Huang Binhong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).   3 Jason C. Kuo, Transforming Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting. Huang Pin-hung’s Late Work (New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 79. The romanisation has been modified to Hanyu Pinyin.   4 A similar problem is addressed by Fu Shen in his discussion of Dong Qichang’s paintings of landscapes that he had seen during his travels. He claims that it is too narrow a view to regard Dong as primarily engaged with copying the ancients (Fu Shen 傅申, “Dong Qichang shuhuachuan – Shuishang xinglü yu jianshang, chuangzuo guanxi yanjiu 董其昌書畫船——水上行旅與鑑 賞、創作關係研究” Meishushi Yanjiu Jikan 美術史研究集刊15 (2003), 247). I wish to thank Wang Ching-Ling for bringing this article to my attention.   5 Shujiang refers to the stretch of the Yangzi (Changjiang) passing through the ancient kingdom of Shu, i.e. modern Sichuan province (cf. the article by Julia Orell in this volume).   6 Examples are Foothills of Mt. Ziyang (1954), Xin’an River (1954) and the undated Landscape of Xinxi, all in the collection of the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.  7 E.g. Painted in a boat on Xin’an River, Nanjing Municipal Museum, Landscape of Quhe, National Art Museum of China, and Hengcha River (1949), National Art Museum of China.   8 On the use of compositions with a high horizon in order to reconcile views that were sketched from nature and employing a fixed viewpoint with the compositional schema of traditional Chinese landscape painting, cf. Gu, Scientizing Vision in China (cf. note 1), 120–121.

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 9 Huang Binhong shanshui xiesheng 黃賓虹山水寫生 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, 1981), Preface. 10 Liangyou 良友, “On Fuchun River 富春江上” in Dongnan Lansheng 東南攬勝, ed. Southeast China Transportation Committee 東南交通委員會宣傳組 (Shanghai 1935), Chapter “Along the Hangzhou-Yushan part of the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railroad, the Hangzhou-Guangfeng Highway and the Fuchun River” (浙贛鐵路杭玉段與杭廣公路沿綫及富春江之部), 26. 11 Huizhou fuzhi 徽州府志, ed. Ding Yanjian 丁延楗 and Zhao Jishi 趙吉士, facsimile of the 1699 edition, in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu, Huazhong difang 中國方志叢書, 華中地方, no. 237 (Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1975), vol. 2, 310. 12 Zhang Peifang 張佩芳, Anhui sheng Shexian zhi 安徽省歙縣志, ed. Liu Dakui 劉大櫆, facsimile of the 1771 edition, in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu, Huazhong difang 中國方志叢書, 華中地方, no. 232 (Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1975), vol. 1, 104. 13 Shi Guozhu 石國柱, Shexian zhi. Anhui sheng Shexian zhi 歙縣志. 安徽省歙縣志, ed. Xu Chengyao 許承堯, in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu, Huazhong difang 中國方志叢書, 華中地方, no. 246 (Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1975), vol. 1, 130. 14 Translation by Claire Roberts, cited from: The Dark Side of the Mountain (cf. note 2), 83. 15 Ibid. 16 On the discussions during the Republican period about outdoor sketching and historical Chinese painting practices cf. Gu, Scientizing Vision in China (cf. note 1), 83–101. 17 Claire Roberts, “Metal and Stone, Brush and Ink: Word as Source in the Art of Huang Binhong” PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 9, no. 3 (November 2012), Politics and Aesthetics in China Special Issue, guest edited by Maurizio Marinelli (http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ ojs/index.php/portal), esp. 4–11. 18 For an introduction on these moya inscriptions, cf. Robert E. Harrist, Jr., The Landscape of Words: Stone Inscriptions from Early and Medieval China (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2008), 17–28. 19 Urban Council Hong Kong, Homage to Tradition. Huang Binhong, 1865–1955 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1995), 184. I have not been able to locate the source for the Wang Haojing citation, the quotation marks are therefore tentative. 20 Anhui congshu bianshenhui 安徽叢書編審會, ed., Anhui congshu 安徽叢書, 1932–1936; Anhui congshu is a compilation of pre-modern books by authors hailing from this province; Huang Binhong contributed books from his personal collection for reproduction in the series. Cf. Wang Zhongxiu 王中秀, Huang Binhong nianpu 黃賓虹年譜 (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 2005), 264–265. 21 Shi, “Shexian zhi” (cf. note 13); Wang, Huang Binhong nianpu (cf. note 20), 326–327. 22 Yang Erzeng 楊爾曾, Hainei qiguan 海内奇觀 (1609) in Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan er bian 中國古代版畫叢刊二編 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1994), vol. 8. 23 Mohuizhai 墨繪齋 (publ.), Mingshan tu 名山圖 (1633) in Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan er bian 中國古代版畫叢刊二編 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1994), vol. 8. 24 Cf. Wen C. Fong, Between Two Cultures: Late Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 168. 25 Translation after Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, Later Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 1800–1950 (New York: Random House, 1986–1987), vol. 1, 152. Romanisation has been adapted to Hanyu Pinyin. 26 Xu Hongzu 徐弘祖, Xu Xiake youji 徐霞客遊記, facsimile repr. of the 1933 edition (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou Guji Chubanshe, 1992), 78. 27 On Huang Binhong’s journey to Mt. Yandang, cf. Wang, Huang Binhong nianpu (cf. note 20), 266–267, and Huang’s travel diary: Huang Binhong, “You Yandang riji 游雁蕩日記” in Huang Binhong wenji. Zazhu bian 黃賓虹文集·雑著編 (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 1999), 596–597. 28 Binhong jiyou huace 濱虹紀游畫冊, 1934, Shanghai Library. 29 Yang, Hainei qiguan (cf. note 22), 433. 30 The same formation of this peak is also depicted on the hand scroll Scenery of Mt. Yandang (unknown artist, formerly attrib. to Xu Ben, fifteenth century) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Li Zixiao’s Picture of Mt. Yandang (1316) in the Shanghai Museum and in a woodblock illustra-

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tion to the Gazetteer of Mt. Yandang; however, Huang Binhong’s composition bears closer resemblance to the Hainei qiguan illustration. For illustrations of the aforementioned pictures cf. Li-tsui Flora Fu, Framing Famous Mountains. Grand Tour and Mingshan Paintings in Sixteenth-Century China (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2009), fig. 13, 14 and 18; on the topography of Mt. Yandang and its representation in Ming period painting cf. ibid., 97–106. 31 Cf. note 3.

Illustrations Fig. 1: Huang Binhong, Mt. Tianmu, hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper, 67× 34 cm, 1955 (reproduced from: Huang Binhong huaji [Beijing: Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, 2003], vol. 1, 100). Fig. 2: Huang Binhong, Fuqiu Stream, hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper, 97 × 32,5 cm, late 1940s or 1950s, National Art Museum of China (reproduced from: Huang Binhong huaji [cf. fig. 1], vol. 1, 3). Fig. 3: Huang Binhong, Seen from a Boat on Shujiang, hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper, 76 × 48 cm, c. 1940s, Nanjing Museum (reproduced from: Huang Binhong huaji [cf. fig. 1], vol. 2, 314). Fig. 4: Huang Binhong, On Fuchun River, ink on paper, mid-1930s, collection unknown (reproduced from: Huang Binhong shanshui xiesheng [Hangzhou 1981], unpaginated). Fig. 5: Liangyou, On Fuchun River, photograph, in Dongnan lansheng (In Search of the Southeast), Shanghai 1935, Chapter “Along the Hangzhou-Yushan part of the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Railroad, the Hangzhou-Guangfeng Highway and the Fuchun River”, 26. Fig. 6: Huang Binhong, The Yuliang Dam of Shexian, ink and colours on paper, 15,8 × 21,8 cm, c. 1910s, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Provincial Museum (courtesy of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum). Fig. 7: Huang Binhong, Hechuan, ink on paper, 30 × 90 cm, 1930s, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Provincial Museum (photo: Zhejiang Provincial Museum). Fig. 8: Huang Binhong, View from Guangming Peak, leaf C from the album Sketches of Mt. Huang, ink and colours on paper, 37,8 × 26,6 cm, 1940, Hong Kong, Yuanshantang Collection (reproduced from: Homage to Tradition – Huang Binhong, 1865–1955 [Hong Kong Museum of Art, 1995], no. 20). Fig. 9: Huang Binhong, White Cloud Retreat, leaf B from the album Scenes of Mt. Huang, ink and colours on paper, 31,9 × 19,6 cm, 1938, Hong Kong Museum of Art, FA1992.0001 (photo supplied by the Hong Kong Museum of Art). Fig. 10: Huang Binhong, Tianzhu Peak, leaf D from the album Twelve Strange Peaks, 55,9 × 41,2 cm, c. 1940s, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (photo: bpk/The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Fig. 11: Huang Binhong, Waterfall on Mt. Yandang, 119,5 × 40 cm, 1930s, Shexian Museum (reproduced from: Huang Binhong huaji [cf. fig. 1], vol. 1, 20). Fig. 12: Huang Binhong, Great Dragon Waterfall, from the Left, colour pencil on paper, 12,7 × 20,6 cm, 1931, Zhejiang Provincial Museum (courtesy of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum). Fig. 13: Dragon Waterfall, woodblock print, in Mingshan tu, Mohuizhai, 20v.–21r., 1633 (reproduced from: Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan er bian [cf. note 22], vol. 8, 40–41). Fig. 14: Huang Binhong, Yandang No.1: The Lingfeng Peak of Yandang, leaf 13 from Album of Travel Paintings by Binhong, woodblock print, 1934, Shanghai Library (photo: Shanghai Library). Fig. 15: Yang Erzeng, The Lingfeng Temple of Mt. Yandang, woodblock print, in Hainei qiguan, j. 6, 22 r., 1609 (reproduced from: Zhongguo gudai banhua congkan er bian [cf. note 23], vol. 8, 443).

III. CROSSROADS AS CONTACT ZONES: ARTEFACTS OF INTERACTION

Joachim Rees / Nora Usanov-Geissler

Harbouring Expectations The Littoral as Contact Zone in the Visual Arts of Japan and the Netherlands around 1600 Stating that coastal environments have been, for better or for worse, outstanding sites of human encounter seems to be a historical truism. Put in these general terms, shores remain passive receptacles that enter into historiography either as launching pads for audacious endeavours or as arenas of arrival. However, historians with a keen interest in the various layers of time, from a primordial age to the beginnings of chronicled history, have often pondered the double nature of the water’s edge as a seemingly timeless morphological fact and a culturally construed site of events in the collective memory. In the context of Western historiography one cannot avoid noticing the tangible delay that occurred between the post-war emergence of studies on the interlocked relation of terrestrial and maritime environments, such as Fernand Braudel’s seminal work La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II (1949)1, and research that focuses on the cultural production and perception of ‘place-images’ and their transformation over time. This approach did not gather momentum until the 1990s, and the land-water-border became one of its privileged objects of research. For instance, in Places on the Margin, an important contribution to the emerging field of alternative cultural geographies, Rob Shields pleaded that “a clear distinction must be made between research into people’s existential participation in their environment and research into the culturally mediated reception of representations of environments, places, or regions which are ‘afloat in society’ as ‘ideas in currency.’”2 Restricting the scope of his research to processes of social spatialisation in the context of Western modernity, the author focusses on the interaction between seemingly peripheral environments, such as the seaside, the transformation of corresponding ‘place-images,’ and the changing patterns of social behaviour that occurred in these ‘places on the margin.’ With regard to the formative potential of place-images, both mental and material, Shields lays particular emphasis on their “predictive ability,” arguing that place-images should not be mistaken as representational protocols of given environments and social behaviour, but conceived of as being imbued in varying degrees and manners by “fancy, fantasy and wishful thinking.”3 In this respect, place-images have a double-edged projective capacity, shaping the perception of environments according to individual or collective expectations and helping to align “new experiences of new places … with past experiences and old, known verities.”4 Alain Corbin’s Le territoire du vide,5 which would arguably become the most influential account of the changing perception of the seaside in Western culture,

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appeared only when Shield’s study was largely finished. Curiously enough, the approach adopted by the French cultural historian inadvertently underlined the conceptual validity of Shield’s claim to distinguish in historical research between people’s physical engagement with environments and the production and reception of related place-images, which may evolve in an altogether different socio-cultural register. The narrative structure as well as the periodisation of Corbin’s account rests on the premise that the perception of the seaside in pre-modern Western culture was invariably driven by a “schème répulsif,” in which the erratic coast figured as humankind’s constant reminder that the primordial symmetry between land and world-ocean was irretrievably lost and the all-engulfing waters were only held back by the grace of God.6 It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that this repellent aspect of the seaside gradually gave way to an increasing social and cultural drift towards climatically favoured coasts, enhanced by place-images that promulgated the seaside as a rewarding destination in the emerging capitalist economy of desire. What is most problematic in this argument is the notion of ‘empty space’ that informs Corbin’s account and is epitomised in the study’s title “territory of the void.”7 By adopting this trope of spatial emptiness, Corbin aligns himself with a discourse that reaches back to the early stages of European expansion and colonialism, which conceived space primarily in terms of proprietary claims or its apparent absence.8 Thus, the ‘lure of the shore’ whose emergence as a collective attitude Corbin sees as conascent with the onset of Western modernity, needs to be analysed within a wider historical context of re-mapping, appropriating, and ultimately colonising environments through the creation of alluring place-images. According to Shields again, the ideological function of these newly forged images often adhered to the logic of tabula rasa, envisaging a certain environment as ‘void’ because pre-existing forms of people’s engagement with that environment and local modes of social spatialisation were at odds with changing perceptions and attitudes. In fact, this partial clearance of pre-existing cultural patterns seems to have been an important prerequisite for investing place-images with a new register of expectations. Again, the seashore serves as a case in point: The collective construction of accessible sections of the land-water-border as ‘places apart’ that allow for pleasure-oriented sensations if not a temporary recasting of behavioural patterns, belongs to an altogether different socio-cultural sphere than adapting the seaside as common ground around which collective labour, distribution of resources, and shared duties of vigilance are organised. An even more profound critique of the enduring legacy of a landlocked cultural geography informed Amino Yoshihiko’s studies, which appeared in the early 1990s and elaborated his ongoing scholarly interest in places and people on the margin in medieval and pre-modern Japan.9 Independent of Braudel’s concept of géohistoire but converging with some of its methodological assumptions, Amino focussed on people’s alternating engagement with terrestrial and maritime environments, for which the Japanese archipelago with its almost 3,700 islands and islets, some of them in relative proximity to the Asian mainland, seemed to offer a highly suited geographical background. The scarcity of historical evidence on sea-oriented forms

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of subsistence, particularly in written sources, led Amino to conclude that the existence of kaimin (coastal people, people of the sea) has been largely obliterated by an agricultural doctrine that prevailed among the ruling classes of medieval Japan. In his view modern scholarship has done little to correct the notion of pre-modern Japanese polities as quintessentially agrarian societies that were organised around rice-cultivation. In a marked contrast to the scholarly mainstream, his ‘maritime view of the Japanese archipelago’ highlights the existence of sea-born polities that connected various coastal regions and underlines the co-existence of autonomous political realms within the geographical range of the archipelago and beyond. Read in light of Shield’s distinction between persistent modes of physical engagement with environments and the emergence of alluring place-images, Amino’s account provides a striking example of the cultural appropriation of places on the margin (such as the seaside) by colonising them with a different register of imaginations. These may have not only helped to mitigate diffused anxieties about the land-water-fringe, but also actively contributed to the social and cultural marginalisation of coast-dwellers by relegating them and their aspirations to a minor role in the creation of a new place-image. Despite Amino’s hopes that acknowledging the value of visual sources would shed new light on the kaimin, the impressive rise of pictorial images of inhabited coasts in the decades around 1600, which constitutes a characteristic trait in the visual history of pre-modern Japan and which will be discussed at some length in this paper, does little to compensate for the lack of documentary evidence.10 Because these pictures envisage the seaside as a place free from the hardship of manual labour, they make hardly any reference to humble coast-dwellers and fishing folk.11 Given the intensification of maritime trade and the proliferation of sea-routes in the second half of the sixteenth century, it is astonishing that pictorial imaginations of the seaside and their impact on the formation and diffusion of related place-images are rarely the subject of comparative art-historical research.12 This is even more remarkable in view of the fact that a cognate field of research––that is, the development of port cities in the early modern period––has evolved into a productive branch of comparative history over the last decades.13 Despite the interdependencies between pictorial imaginations of the seaside and the economic rise of port cities, it would be insufficient to address the former simply as an artistic corollary of the latter. As will be substantiated in due course, the artistic evocations of the seaside discussed in this paper will draw on a variety of iconographic traditions and visual practices in a deliberate attempt to transcend local agendas. By connecting different pictorial genres, topographical references, and markers of social distinction, these images reached out to audiences from various ranks of pre-modern society, cultural traditions, and aesthetic preferences. We will argue that coastal settings, the visual excitement of which is played out in these images, is best understood as a pictorial stage where collective expectations and aspirations turn into verisimilar action. Limiting the scope of our argument to the decades around 1600 seems to retrace once again the chronological framework of Braudel’s pioneering study, which tried

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to combine in analytical terms the longue durée of a maritime area (the Mediterranean) with the histoire événementielle of a political era (the age of Philip II of Spain). For the purposes of art-historical research a qualified notion of ‘event,’ which takes new modes of interaction between artists, patrons, artefacts and iconographic traditions into account, is necessary. It is this very notion of artistic event that requires an extended view of the range of geographical and cultural circulation of artefacts. Thus, the arrival and ostentatious display of Japanese folding-screens in the courts of southern Europe in 1583/85, which were visually recorded by an itinerant Flemish artist14, may be regarded as an art-related event highlighting the fact that an increasing number of artworks in this period had truly global itineraries and that artists figured prominently amongst those who noticed this phenomenon. It is from this perspective that the term ‘contact zone’, evoked in the title of this study, assumes a twofold significance: it refers, firstly, to pictorial inventions that envisage littoral environments––demonstratively detached from the urban fabric of port cities––as visually alluring sites where people of various origins and walks of life meet, and where the riches of the sea and distant countries are conspicuously put on display. Secondly, it applies to the artworks proper since the pictorial treatment of the littoral can itself be conceptualised as a visual contact zone where various modes of representation and pictorial genres interact.15 Drawing on the preliminary results of an ongoing research project that examines the impact of long-distance maritime trade on the visual cultures of Japan and the Netherlands16, we argue that the decades around 1600 can be identified as a formative phase in which ambitious artistic endeavours, which occurred almost simultaneously in culturally different and geographically distant polities, helped to install a powerful place-image of the coast as a contact zone where beneficial encounter and exchange prevailed. Using a parallel reading of artworks that are usually dealt with in separate art-historical narratives, we will show that this propagation of an auspicious image of the littoral not only responded to a wider geopolitical context marked by an increasing aim to occupy and territorialise the coast, but also had a specific artistic agenda that sought to present painters as being actively involved in the accumulation of knowledge about distant places and people.

I. Recent methodological considerations of cross-cultural interchange in the arts have argued that comparative approaches are best applied when the spatio-temporal framework in which the compared entities are situated is specified as precisely as possible, thereby guarding against conceptual asymmetries and forced analogies.17 Our two-pronged approach concentrates on artworks from the Kyoto-based Kano house of painters and on the Antwerp School, thus concentrating on competitive professional communities in which the littoral as a pictorial concept rose to prominence and whose leading members enjoyed high-ranking patronage from various factions even during times of political turmoil and military conflict. Taking our

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parallel reading one step further, we will explore the range of artistic agency within a highly volatile historic context by focussing on two painters from each community who in chronological terms qualify as contemporaries: Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1628) and Kano Naizen (1570–1616). Their respective careers and artistic output were shaped to a considerable degree by family traditions and corporate working processes that nevertheless left room for striking pictorial inventions when exploring the artistic potential of the littoral environment. Naizen entered the Kano house in a period when the workshop was able to strengthen its position by attracting influential patrons beyond the imperial household. This proved vital for establishing itself as one of the leading entities of professional painters within the Japanese archipelago.18 From the mid-1580s onwards Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) and his vassals counted amongst the most important of its patrons. By then, Hideyoshi had emerged as an imposing figure in the fierce power struggle that had plagued the Japanese states for decades.19 When, in 1587, the warlord and his allies launched an attack on Kyushu, the largest island in the southwestern part of the archipelago, it proved to be a decisive step in his effort to secure overall political and military rule by destroying the regional power-bases of rivalling Daimyo. Taking the subjugation of opposing clans one bold step further, in September 1591 Hideyoshi established his headquarters for an invasion of the Korean peninsula at the port of Nagoya on Kyushu’s northeastern shore, with the heartland of Ming China as its ultimate target. Trying to divert military energy into outward aggression seemed a feasible option for the hegemon, as efforts were made to stabilise the internal framework of the realm by tightening the existing boundaries of Daimyo dominions through a general land register and cartographic surveys.20 Contemporary sources indicate that the bulk of Nagoya castle was erected in a record-breaking five-month period.21 The hegemon entrusted the painterly decoration of his coastal residence to Kyoto-based artists, among them the workshop of Kano Mitsunobu (1561/65–1608), then leader of the house.22 Most probably, Kano Naizen, who was in his early twenties at the time, accompanied the master on this journey. By ordering an artistic ‘task force’ from the capital, Hideyoshi was following a pattern of patronage that had been established by his predecessor Oda Nobunaga, whose illustrious Azuchi Castle on the shore of the Inland Sea had been decorated by leading artists of the Kano school. However, with the building of Hizen Nagoya Castle, Hideyoshi was taking a bold step not only in terms of military strategy, but also in his effort to expand the cultural topography. Almost 700 km away from the centres of political power in the Kansai-region, the remote coastal area of northern Kyushu became a focus of interest for the ruling elite and for artists alike. In April 1592, Hideyoshi took possession of the residence to prepare for the imminent invasion. An important piece of pictorial evidence bears witness to this military move towards the coast and its artistic corollaries. A six-fold screen, discovered in 1968, and now kept in the Saga Prefecture Museum, offers a sweeping vista of Hizen Nagoya castle, the adjacent settlement, and its commanding position over the estuary (fig. 1). The panels are made up of elaborate drawings, which most probably

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Fig. 1: Kano Mitsunobu (attr.), Hizen Nagoya Castle, drawings mounted on a six-panel folding screen, ca. 1593, Saga Prefectural Museum.

served as a preparatory sketch for a now lost folding screen by Kano Mitsunobu and his workshop, completed in 1593. According to Naitō Akira, the depiction of architectural features is matched to a very high degree by external evidence, including contemporary cartographic surveys of Hizen Nagoya and excavations on the site, which make it possible to identify particular parts of the castle or estates of feudal lords.23 In addition to these documentary underpinnings of the screen’s design, Naitō was able to detect an important element of its visual construction. It seems that vistas were taken from at least four different vantage points to depict the castle and its surrounding in an innovative, panorama-like bird’s-eye view. This suggests that Kano Mitsunobu embraced a pictorial concept that has no known parallel in Momoyama screen painting.24 The depiction differs considerably from representations of Kyoto in the so-called rakuchū rakugai zu byōbu (screens depicting scenes in and around the capital) in which the rendition of the densely populated townscape covers the entire picture-plane. Hizen Castle and its jōka machi or castle town are shown in their entirety and with great attention paid to architectural and topographical detail. Although less obvious, narrative aspects were also included in the painting. Compared to the hustle and bustle of rakuchū rakugai zu byōbu, only a few figures can be discerned in the Hizen screen. However, their presence further underscores the overarching desire to establish this new residence as a meaningful place in the wider political-diplomatic landscape of the archipelago and beyond. For instance, a procession of Chinese officials making their way from the harbour to the castle (fig. 2) can be connected to the documented arrival of emissaries from Ming China in May 1593, marking Hideyoshi’s first diplomatic success after his assault on the mainland. The two figures in foreign attire shown in the fourth panel seem to recall a visit from Spanish as well as Portuguese dignitaries to Hizen in the same year and hint at Hideyoshi’s attempts to enter into direct

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Fig. 2: Kano Mitsunobu (attr.), Hizen Nagoya Castle, detail with foreign emissaries.

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negotiations with Portugal’s Estado da India and the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines.25 However, the regent himself seems to be conspicuous in his absence; only the impressive atakemaru battleships in the bay, with their gunwale drapes containing his paulownia crest, make reference to the ruler of the place.26 In a recent attempt to place the singular composition of the Hizen Nagoya screen into the wider context of cross-cultural visual history, Matthew McKelway has suggested that the screen’s impressive pictorial staging of the coastal residence might be read as a deliberate allusion to contemporary European modes of topographical representation.27 More specifically he pointed to print collections of cityscapes, such as the Civitates orbis terrarum by Georg Braun und Franz Hogenberg, which were among the illustrated books brought back to Japan by the so-called Tenshō mission in 1590. Taking for granted that such visual sources would have been accessible to artists in Hideyoshi’s entourage, the connection between a littoral vista of Lisbon, contained in the first volume of the Civitates, and the Hizen Nagoya screen, as suggested by McKelway, deserves consideration. Although a direct link can hardly be established and indeed can not be expected to exist between a small-scale engraving and a large folding screen, we are reminded that Mitsunobu’s ambitious capture of the sea-fortress was designed to be viewed by dignitaries from various cultural backgrounds, including emissaries from the Asian mainland and Europe. It is in view of these political and diplomatic repercussions that the innovative rendition of Hizen Nagoya develops its anticipatory outlook: Combining decorative and informational aspects, the painting is highly suggestive of the outcome of Hideyoshi’s hegemony. It would have been common knowledge that everything man-made that was depicted in the screen had been created in less than six months’ time. As a result, its awe-stricken viewers may have been less inclined to harbour any doubts about Hideyoshi’s ability to succeed in his hazardous campaign on the mainland. Embraced by the sea, the fortified residence assumes a double-edged character, being at once a stronghold at the entrance to the Japanese archipelago and an ominous battleship reaching out for the Asian mainland. As a site of conquest, the littoral is envisaged here as a moveable frontier pushed to the opposite coast, and at the same time as an impregnable natural boundary, defended by unrivalled military power. The coast as a site of military conquest, albeit in a predominantly historical guise, was introduced to the pictorial repertoire of the Antwerp School with Jan Brueghel’s highly ambitious View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio (fig. 3, pl. XVIa).28 Recent examination of the signature has dispelled long-standing doubts about the painting’s date. Brueghel completed the painting in 1600 and inscribed it with an unusual written reference to Antwerp, where he and his family were granted citizenship in the following year. The signature underscores what the painting itself demonstrates by its size and painterly texture: Leaving behind the small format of his early works on copper, the artist now contends with full-fledged easel paintings on panel or canvas and displays the entire range of chromatic radiance that precious pigments exhibit on smooth metal surfaces. The work may truly be called a signature piece in every sense of the term, but how does the subject

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Fig. 3: Jan Brueghel the Elder, View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio, oil on copper, 1600, Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

matter relate to Brueghel’s assertion of himself as a painter and citizen of Antwerp? It is pertinent to our argument that attempts to categorise the work have never been easy. Recent literature is dominated by compound titles like Coastal Landscape with the Continence of Scipio or View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio. It seems as if the littoral and the historical aspects of the painting are competing for the viewer’s attention. In this work Brueghel approached a secular historical subject for the first time in his career. His artistic engagement with coastal and maritime topics, however, saw an early culmination during his sojourn in Italy from 1590 to 1595 where fellow-artists from Antwerp like Paul Bril were already finding success with small seascapes that were often enhanced with biblical scenes.29 With the subject of the Continence of Scipio Brueghel adopted a well-known episode of ancient history that, according to Livy, took place when Publicus Cornelius Scipio, commander-in-chief of the Roman army, conquered the Iberian city of New Carthage (modern-day Cartagena), his opponent Hannibal’s most important base on the European mainland. After a surprise attack with joint land- and sea-forces, the Roman army was able to occupy the populous port city within days. Looting troops captured a beautiful woman and offered her to Scipio as a war trophy, but the commander, discovering that the maiden was betrothed to a Celtic-Iberian chieftain, sent her back to her family along with the delivered ransom.30 In fact, this type of

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Fig. 4: Jan Brueghel the Elder, View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio, detail with subjugated population.

close-distance rendition of the main protagonists had emerged as a template for the subject of the Continence of Scipio, allowing painters to exploit the contrast between exemplary female beauty and male magnanimity. In light of this predominant iconographic pattern, Brueghel’s decision to embed the virtuous action into the wide-open space of a coastal area results in a significant modification of the topic’s moral message. It is this very fusion of the historical scene with a sweeping vista over the bay, town, and citadel that reveals––quite literally––the relative insignificance of Scipio’s gesture of restraint. Whereas the princess and those affiliated with her are treated with respect, the lesser ranks of the city’s population are exposed to rough treatment by common soldiers: Prominently placed in the foreground, a group of ordinary inhabitants is virtually driven out of the picture (fig. 4). Their fate of displacement, if not outright slavery, is made explicit by the inclusion of an African, shackled with an iron collar, who epitomises the thriving transatlantic slave trade of the time. The further one advances into the pictorial space, the more it becomes doubtful whether Scipio’s continence is of any consequence to his occupation army. Fire in distant quarters indicates that the pillage of the port city is in full swing. Its position on the water’s edge, the source of its original grandeur, has now turned into a liability of the first order. The carefully construed blending of the ancient and the modern, along with scattered topographical references that hint at Naples as well as at Antwerp, make it clear that Brueghel’s interest in the subject matter was neither purely antiquarian nor restricted to the Mediterranean locale. Having lived in Antwerp since the age of ten, the artist knew from personal experience what it meant to live in a port city

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whose welfare was dependent on free communication with both the sea and the hinterland. Antwerp had suffered considerably in the last half of the sixteenth century from expulsion, looting, and conquest and had rarely witnessed Scipionian acts of continence.31 By the time Brueghel commenced work on his large copperplate, he, like many others in the war-torn provinces of the Spanish Netherlands, may have harboured fresh hopes for peace. After the death of Philip II of Spain in 1598, his daughter Isabella Clara Eugenia and her consort Archduke Albert established themselves in Brussels as the new sovereigns of the dominion. In Flanders and Brabant, expectations were high that the couple might steer the state on a more independent political course that would eventually allow negotiations with the opposite side.32 Brueghel, who had not yet entered into the ambits of the Brussels court, may have tackled this ambitious historical subject in order to attract the patronage of Isabella and Albert. But the painting was also a loosely veiled reminder of who was most affected by ongoing warfare. In this respect, the depiction of a beleaguered city on the seashore could not have come at a more expedient moment. Since the early days of 1600, Archduke Albert had been preparing for a military campaign against the port city and citadel of Ostend, the last Protestant stronghold in Flanders, which was being protected by Dutch and English battleships. When the siege eventually began in July 1601, it marked one of the bloodiest military actions of the entire war and was untempered by any civic call for continence.33

II. Born in 1570, Kano Naizen was only two years younger than Jan Brueghel and like his Flemish counterpart had to cope with political turmoil and warfare throughout his artistic career. His commitment to the process of introducing an elaborate iconography of coastal encounter into screen-painting was made tangible in a pair of folding-screens bearing the artist’s seal and signature, thus making them one of the few screens of the period that can be ascribed to an individual painter with certainty (fig. 5, pl. XVII).34 The impressive scale and the wide range of pictorial detail suggest that Naizen already enjoyed the patronage of the Toyotomi family when he began this ambitious work, which was presumably connected to the decoration of Nagoya Castle by Kano artists. Hideyoshi’s scheme of realigning allegiances on Kyushu had once again brought commerce with the Portuguese Estado da India and the activities of Jesuit missionaries to the hegemon’s attention. Whether this close political monitoring came along with a heightened visual interest in the actual places of contact on the western coast of Kyushu is still a matter of debate, since recent scholarship has questioned the traditional notion that personal observation was decisive for Naizen’s pictorial rendition.35 Consistent with a type of screen commonly referred to as nanban byōbu, which depicts similar scenes of encounter, we see on the left screen a so-called imaginary foreign land (sōzōjō no ikoku), from which a black ship is departing in full sail, and on the right a landing scene on the

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Fig. 5: Kano Naizen, Nanban byōbu, left screen of a pair of six-panel folding screens, late 16th century, Kobe City Museum.

Japanese coast. On the left, a building close to the coast alludes to Chinese architecture with its balustrades and tiled floor, but certain fanciful elements like cloudshaped roof tiles, as well as the addition of Christian symbols, merge to create a rather eclectic building style. It has been suggested that the artist also depicted his patron, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in both youth and old age in this picture.36 According to this reading, the man and child gazing out from inside the building may represent Hideyoshi and his son Hideyori. Furthermore, the aged nobleman in a palanquin is said to depict Hideyoshi in his favorite conveyance, a gift he received from an Indo-Iberian embassy. The depiction of an elephant is another reference to Hideyoshi’s foreign relations, since he was presented with the animal in the year 1597 by a Spanish legation and it is known to have been a source of much interest and wonder in his household. Together, these details add up to a more or less overt homage to the artist’s patron. This image of a coastal setting is contemporaneous with the Hizen screen, but it offers an altogether different pictorial approach to the land-water boundary. The sea and the shore are shifted into the centre while the buildings have been moved to the edges of the composition. Instead of representations of military power, displays of material culture and persons from various ethnic backgrounds dominate the scene. In the left screen, the littoral is used as a stage for the representation of Hideyoshi’s power and influence. Shown in a position of honour amongst nonAsian foreigners—who lift their hats to pay their compliments—he appears as a privileged spectator indulging in the display of his own wealth and naval achievement on this miraculous coast.37 The right screen depicts foreigners landing on the Japanese coast. In sharp contrast to the Hizen screen, where the littoral is depicted with the precision of a nautical chart, the highly stylized coastline in this arrival scene looks like a low-level threshold granting easy access to solid land (fig. 6, pl. XVII). The procession does

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Fig. 6: Kano Naizen, Nanban byōbu, right screen of a pair of six-panel folding screens, late 16th century, Kobe City Museum.

not ascend the ramparts of the fortified palace, but heads instead toward a residence that is usually described as a ‘Christian temple’ because of the depicted icons. Hence, the ultimate destination of the displayed goods, which may be precious gifts as well as goods for trade, is left undefined. Nevertheless, the procession provides the scene with the ceremonial atmosphere of a festival, marking the arrival as a joyful occurrence. Seen as a set, the screens are linked by the idea of two accessible coasts connected by ocean-going vessels. The maritime space between departure and arrival lies beyond the scope of this imagery. The two sections of the screen are on a par, like a well-balanced scale, suggesting an equilibrium of wealth, variety, and excitement. In a marked contrast to the dramatic sequence of events that had left its mark on the Japanese archipelago and the wider East-Asian environment since Hideyoshi’s invasion of Kyushu, Naizen’s work presents an image of thriving coastal life in which all allusions to military control and conquest of the littoral are conspicuously absent. This depiction of undisturbed détente is hard to reconcile with the assumption that Hideyoshi’s patronage and that of his retinue was pivotal for the introduction of this kind of imagery in byōbu painting. However, one must remember that as a social climber of humble origins, the hegemon would have had to invent a cultural identity for himself and his kin that drew on various traditions and values. Thus, even at the height of his political and military power Hideyoshi’s self-perception did not have to rely exclusively on ‘indigenous’ martial virtues.38 In a bold anticipation of the campaign’s outcome, Hideyoshi apparently planned to take up permanent residence in the port city of Ningbo on the southwestern coast of China once a new regime had been established in Beijing.39 This choice, though at odds with the time honoured topography of governmental power and prestige in East Asia, seems to be consistent with Hideyoshi’s keen interest in the commercial underpinnings of political predominance. Recent scholarship has cogently argued

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that his seemingly megalomaniac assault on the mainland was most likely driven by the hegemon’s intention to “create a new East Asian trade order with himself supplanting China.”40 Placing the control of maritime trade high on the political agenda, Ningbo would have been a suitable and symbolically charged vantage point for the retired regent of the realm: It was the last port on the Chinese coast that severe trade restrictions by the Ming government had left open for Japanese merchants, and by choosing this port city as his permanent residence Hideyoshi would have made it abundantly clear who had gained effective control over the trading routes in the China Seas.41 Thus, Naizen’s screen may have served as visual anticipation of a displacement in persona that Hideyoshi kept announcing throughout the invasion but that was never attained. The hegemon never actually set foot on an ocean-going vessel, let alone the mainland whose political and commercial order he was determined to realign at such immense human costs. For the painter, the close affiliation with the Toyotomi clan that helped to establish his artistic reputation in the 1590s, had a similar outcome: during the aftermath of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s final assault on the Toyotomi in 1615, Naizen lost his life along with many others who had remained loyal to the defeated clan.42

III. Three years after the View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio, Brueghel finished a slightly smaller coastscape on panel entitled Fish Market at a Sea Harbour with Family-Portrait (fig. 7, pl. XVIb). For this work, he reshaped the littoral locale of his earlier painting by contracting the city’s waterfront and the adjacent coastal strip into a compressed elliptical shape. The landmark of the Neapolitan Castello dell’Ovo figures prominently in the middle ground while the architectural references to Antwerp are reinforced. The compositional scheme makes it clear that the artist wants to draw our attention to that intermediary space between land and sea located at the outskirts of the city, where solid architecture gives way to makeshift stalls and is interspersed with odd bits of disused sailing equipment. But this modest part of the harbour is a no-man’s land only in topographical terms; Brueghel depicts it as densely populated. The apparently wealthy family at the centre of the foreground is generally accepted to be a group portrait of the artist and his wife Isabella, née de Jode, along with their children Paschasia and Jan (fig. 8).43 As Elizabeth Honig has aptly remarked, the artist’s family appears amidst the swarming of the market as an “isolated island of privilege,” as visitors rather than customers.44 In this respect, they resemble, oddly enough, the two merchants from the Levant who approach from the left and seem eager to explore foreign ground but who are at the same time slightly anxious about engaging physically with the piscatorial environment. In fact, this motif located on the very threshold of the picture serves as a metonymic device for the entire work: Just as people of all creeds, colours, and stations of life gather around well-stocked kegs of fish and seafood, so too the riches of the orbis terrarum et marium show themselves in full splendour on the fringes of

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Fig. 7: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Fish Market at a Sea Harbour with Family-Portrait, oil on panel, 1603, Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

the sea to be captured there by the eye and hand of the able painter. To carry out this visual argument, Brueghel took some artistic liberties, most of them easy for contemporary spectators to recognise: Fish markets in Flanders and Brabant were usually held under strict municipal supervision within the precincts of the city walls, as Elizabeth Honig has pointed out.45 However, Brueghel presents the commercial gathering as an almost autonomous interchange of supply and demand that occurs at the seashore as naturally as the tide turns. Hardly any goods other than seafood can be discerned on the wharves. This is clearly at odds with the well-documented array of commodities that were trans-shipped in the Antwerp port. By representing the littoral as a kind of threshing floor at the water’s edge, where the harvest of the seas is processed, the painting vaguely alludes to an evangelical reading of the shore that was spelled out in Brueghel’s coastal landscapes of the 1590s; however, now it is the mercantile dealings that prevail. Spectators are made to believe that an ideologically unclaimed space that allows the people of the world to move to and fro with uncommon ease spreads between land and sea. The iconography of contact, which gained ground in the screen production of the 1590s, is taken further in a byōbu now housed in the Museum of the Imperial Collections (Kunaichō Sannomaru Shōzōkan) in Tokyo that was created around 1600 (fig. 9).46 It shows the arrival of a ship on the Japanese coast and the unloading and transportation of goods in the left screen. The right screen concentrates on the ship’s crew parading through a Japanese settlement towards a residence, where

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Fig. 8: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Fish Market at a Sea Harbour with Family-Portrait, detail with the artist’s family.

they are awaited at the gate. A group of Japanese and foreigners are depicted together on the deck of the ship on the left screen. They are surrounded by open boxes containing bundles of raw silk, which is being checked by some of the men for quality. In the middle of the scene, a Japanese and a foreigner sit face to face with a large scale between them. One scale pan holds raw silk, while the other holds gold weights. Although the scale is balanced, the almost identical gestures of the two men suggest that their negotiations are hard-fought: each grips the edge of a full box with one hand and points at the scale with the other, while their open mouths and eye contact indicate that they are in mid-discussion. This circumstantial depiction of negotiations on board can be linked to trading practices in Hirado, which a recent study by Adam Clulow has shed new light on.47 Clulow traced the remarkable development of Hirado from a small port city in northwestern Kyushu to a flourishing centre of East Asian overseas trade between 1550, when Indo-Portuguese merchants arrived, and 1641. This development arose as a result of policies put in place by the local rulers, the Matsu’ura Daimyo family. They ensured their income mainly through two sources: first, by means of obligatory gifts, which they demanded from the captain of every arriving ship; and second, by claiming first option on purchasing the incoming goods. Given this historical background, the depictions can be read hypothetically as a visualisation

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Fig. 9: Nanban byōbu, pair of six-panel folding screens, ca. 1600, Tokyo, Museum of the Imperial Collections.

of trading practices in Hirado, beginning with the detailed depiction of offshore negotiations between the captain of the ship and the Daimyo’s emissaries on deck, continuing with the landing of goods and their transport to a storage house close to the shore, and ending with the reference to inland haulage by hatched boats, which are depicted in the lower part of the picture. Furthermore, the tsuitate (one panel-screen set in a stand) behind the foreign negotiator underscores the important position occupied by the Portuguese in Japan’s foreign trade.48 At the same time, the screen imbues the mercantile transaction with an aura of ceremonial importance (fig. 10). The pictorial elaboration of the margin between sea and land is taken to an even higher degree, with the littoral occupying five panels of this sixfold screen. Focussing on the yet unsettled act of negotiation, the parties meet offshore on the deck of the anchoring ship, leaving it undecided whether permission to disembark will be granted or not. Clearly, the excitement of encounter has given way to the protocols of business. Straddling ship and shore, the contact zone is set against an unsteady background, no longer subject to the dangers of the open sea but not yet on safe ground. A parallel reading of the Flemish painting and the Japanese folding screen discloses an indicative tendency to transform topographical references into a generic image of the seaside that defies geographical positioning. This intentional indeterminacy about locality governs even Brueghel’s pictorial imagination of the littoral, which is otherwise interspersed with landmarks of significant places such as Naples, Rome, and Antwerp. Likewise, art historical research has offered incongruent results as to the specific localities that might have inspired the coastscapes in nanban byōbu.49 As suggested by the Sannomaru screen, a sense of locality is evoked more by displaying certain commercial practices than through topographical detail. This reminds us once again that the artworks from either cultural context had to re-

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Fig. 10: Nanban byōbu, detail with bartering scene.

spond to highly volatile socio-economical environments in which all means of foresight and prediction were bound to prosper.50 Contemporary viewers of Brueghel’s fanciful image of Antwerp as a sea port were most likely susceptible to the auspicious overtones of such pictorial displacements, for by then the city had learned by bitter experience that its fluvial connection with the open sea was highly vulnerable to naval blockade, and competing ports further down the Scheldt estuary were all too eager to attract commerce at the expense of the Antwerp emporium.51 As to the littoral settings of nanban byōbu, it is only hindsight that identifies repeated references to the port of Nagasaki when, in fact, around 1600 various places on the Kyushu coast, such as Hirado or Bungo, backed by merchant guilds and Daimyo politics, tried to secure their share in overseas trading, as prospects and imponderabilia further increased with the arrival of Dutch and English merchants. The very fact that this type of littoral imagery remained elusive about actual localities, thus purporting a sense of floating, auspicious potentiality, seems to have been vital to its artistic proliferation, which went well beyond the circles of the Kano house and made such screens popular with merchants and ship-owners, particularly along the coast of the Inland Sea.52

IV. Representing the littoral as a site where encounter turns into intercourse served an artistic agenda in more ways than one. Brueghel’s coastscapes are peppered with clues that suggest that he and the artistic community he worked in were widely travelled and well-connected. The screens by Naizen and other members of the Kano house likewise demonstrate a wide-ranging pictorial knowledge about all things foreign, from shipbuilding to devotional imagery.

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Fig. 11: Workshops of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer, Christ in Limbo, oil on copper, ca. 1598, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, painted on a disused printing plate of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574.

Less obvious are the material markers of maritime exchange. Recent research on the wood of Brueghel’s panels, for instance, shows that he relied almost exclusively on Baltic oak,53 that is to say a timber of the highest quality that was brought to western Europe in substantial quantities and was regarded as the most sustainable material for building ocean-going vessels. As perfectly crafted picture carriers, Brueghel’s panels left Antwerp in all directions just as the stout galleons in his pictures set off for far away shores. Being part and parcel of the commerce they represent, the paintings may well be regarded as displays of geographical pragmatics. In Brueghel’s case, his close ties to the thriving mapmaking business of his day assumed a tangible quality once he married into the De Jode family, Antwerp’s leading mapmakers next to Abraham Ortelius.54 We know of at least one instance when a copperplate from the Ortelius press was actually reused for painting in Brueghel’s workshop. It was made available to the artist by his brother-in-law, Cornelis de Jode, who had acquired large parts of the Ortelius printing stock after the latter’s death in 1598. For a small-scale painting of Christ in Limbo, jointly produced by the workshops of Jan Brueghel and Hans Rottenhammer, a disused printing plate for Ortelius’s atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum was employed whose verso still shows

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Fig. 12: Franz Hogenberg, Mediterranean coast of France between Narbonne and Marseille, colored engraving from Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, Antwerp 1574.

traces of an incised map of Mediterranean France (figs. 11, 12).55 In a rare intersection of material, technical, and iconographic aspects, two branches of image-production are neatly dovetailed in this otherwise unobtrusive work that sustained the lustre of the Antwerp emporium even in times of economic stalemate: finely printed geographical compendia and affordable devotional imagery to cater for the markets in Europe and beyond.56 At least one copy of Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum, presented to the Tenshō mission in Padua in 1585, reached Japan when the emissaries returned in 1590. Printed cartographic compendia of this kind, supplemented by illuminated largescale maps, were crucial to the rise of the so-called world-map screens. These screens attest to the innovative cooperation between scholars, cartographic draughtsmen, and screen painters that gathered momentum in the artistic centres of the Japanese archipelago during the last decade of the sixteenth century.57 In a repeated attempt to capitalise on the increasing demand for comprehensive, up-to-date publications on the geography of countries and continents, in 1593 Cornelis de Jode issued a revised version of his father’s atlas, the Speculum orbis terrae. The twin-image of the northern and southern hemispheres serves as an impressive initial to the map-collection (fig. 13, pl. XVIII).58 Circular representations of the hemispheres stretching from the polar circles to the equator were hallmarks of Antwerp mapmaking, which was driven by a wide-spread interest in the nautical exploration of hitherto undiscovered passages between the world-oceans.59 What makes De Jode’s representation of the northern hemispherium remarkable is the special relationship it establishes

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Fig. 13: Cornelis de Jode after Gerard de Jode, The Hemisphere from the Equator to the Artic Polar Circle, colored engraving from Speculum orbis terrae, Antwerp 1593.

between Flanders and the Japanese archipelago by visual and textual means. Japan is conspicuous as the gatekeeper to the ominous Strait of Anián, the much-discussed northern passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.60 Both inserted commentaries refer exclusively to the archipelago, stating that the “most ample island of Japan” was discovered in 1549 under the reign of Emperor Charles V and

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Fig. 14: Nanban byōbu, right screen of a pair of six-panel folding screens, last quarter of the 17th century, Nara, Tōshōdaiji.

mentioning the arrival of the first-ever mission of Japanese dignitaries to Pope Gregory XIII in 1585. The text continues to articulate what the cartographic arrangement is clearly meant to corroborate, namely that Flanders, the emperor’s homeland, and the Japanese heartland inhabit diametrically opposing positions on the globe that nonetheless obey the same meridian.61 Relying on this piece of creative geography, spectators are led to believe that Antwerp, set at the fringes of the Mare Germanicum, is linked to Kyoto/Miyako, which is correspondingly situated at the seashore, by interconnected waterways with a kind of polar roundabout located midway between them. The design thus offers a striking example of how the popular cartographic formula of world maps could be used to promulgate regional interests: Retrospectively, by recalling the era when Flanders and Brabant were at the heart of the Habsburg Empire, and prospectively, by suggesting that the region––with Antwerp as its principal port––due to its advantageous position on the globe was destined to attract much of the maritime trade with the East once the northern passage into the Pacific Ocean was discovered and charted. It is in this auspicious outlook that De Jode’s cartographic design and Breughel’s pictorial imaginations seem to converge. The appealing place-image of the Antwerp emporium rests, quite literally, on its seaward orientation that captured the estuaries, seas, and straits of the northern hemisphere as one continuous littoral space. Whether a copy of De Jode’s Speculum orbis terrae ever found its way to Japan cannot be ascertained. It is, however, safe to say that amongst the cartographic material from Europe circular representations of the hemispheres were met with a sustained interest that had lasting repercussions for Japanese screen-making. This artistic transformation of the hemispherium from cartographic design into pictorial emblem is corroborated by an outstanding byōbu in the possession of the Tōshōdaiji (fig. 14).62 Dedicated to the eminent temple of Nara between 1673 and 1681 by one of its high-ranking monks, the screen attests to a still unsatisfactorily ex-

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Fig. 15: Nanban byōbu, detail with pictorial adaptation of the northern hemisphere.

plained phenomenon: depictions of encounters with Indo-Portuguese merchants and missionary orders continued to play an important role in screen-making patronage long after all trading connections with the Estado da India were officially abandoned and Christian communities suppressed.63 Obviously, the artists of the

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Tōshōdaiji screen had access to pictorial material that ultimately reached back to designs by Kano Naizen and his workshop, since the ‘arrival scene’ that forms the subject of the right-hand screen follows that earlier model to a large extent. However, notable alterations should not be overlooked: conspicuous allusions to Christian rites and devotional imagery have been avoided, a few unobtrusive rosaries in the hands of the Jesuit brethren notwithstanding. Another deviation from the earlier design commands attention in the upper part of the fourth panel where a pictorial adaption of the northern hemispherium has been inserted into the picture plane (fig. 15, pl. XIX). While certain graphic elements such as the projection grid and the graduated equator betray the use of printed maps, the evocation of continents and islands as a loosely connected patchwork of green, beige, and whitish hues follows a more painterly approach that is undisturbed by geographic nomenclature and cartographic distinctness. Set in the pictorial space between golden clouds and the deep-blue sea, the circular emblem of foreign origin seems to hover between the anchoring ship and the coast like some imaginary celestial body that guides vessels and people to all the shores depicted. Given the zigzag-pattern in which this folding-screen would have been presented on rare occasions of ceremonial importance, this epitome of a world at the water’s edge is bound to have caught the discerning eye somewhat by surprise, inviting reflection on its relation to the vivid depiction of coastal encounter that covers the lower part of the panel. Since by then all Portuguese ships were banned from their formers ports of call on the Kyushu coast, the screen inevitably gave contemporary spectators a view on events past, thus playing out painting’s ability to visualise distant places and bygone deeds at the same time.

V. The sample of visual imaginations of the land-water-boundary examined in this paper originated from culturally different and geographically distant environments. Hence, our parallel reading has advanced tentatively and with an awareness that the artworks under discussion cannot be isolated from specific pictorial traditions, representational functions, and modes of perception. While guarding against possibly misleading analogies, it seems safe to state that in the decades around 1600 the visual cultures of the Netherlands and the Japanese archipelago saw a significant increase in ambitious endeavours to chart the coast as a meaningful pictorial space in its own right. These visual framings of the water’s edge bear witness to a decisive stage in the historical process of appropriating and colonising the coast in both psychological and cultural terms, which was clearly to be distinguished from the social world of coast-dwellers and their physical engagement with the littoral environment. Artists had a significant share in this cultural re-mapping of the coast, as elaborated iconographies of exchange and encounter could easily be forged into distinguishing ‘trade-marks’ for individual painters, workshops, or schools. The accomplished coastscapes by artists like Kano Naizen or Jan Brueghel the Elder

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carry many allusions to their status as members of well-connected and widely travelled professional communities. Their coastal sceneries, materialised in mobile pictorial genres like easel paintings and folding-screens, appealed to audiences that were coping with ongoing warfare and religious controversy as well as with highpitched profit expectations in long-distance trade. Hence, images of littoral places, rich in material detail and full of visual excitement, were bound to be imbued with different, even conflicting sets of emotions and attitudes: visual interest in the exotic, spatial fantasies about political hegemony, commercial prospects, and, last but not least, the aspiration that shores shall remain untroubled by raids and military invasion. Put in a wider historical context, we can see how images, their dependency on specific cultural contexts notwithstanding, were vital to process the collective experiences and anxieties that emerged contemporaneously in societies far apart. Around 1600, almost three generations after the first circumnavigation of the globe, polities in various parts of the earth were still trying to figure out what it meant that almost any section of the inhabited world could be reached by sea. Even oceans had already ceased to be useful as spatial metaphors for the immensity of the outer world; reifying the land-water-border as natural precincts to which polities and people should confine themselves became increasingly difficult. The artworks examined here, provide ample visual evidence for this far-reaching shift in the political and cultural semantics of the coast. Equally significant, they betray a certain determination to keep the to and fro of exchange separated from the urban fabric and its communal order. Evidently, the vagaries and contingencies of intercultural encounter still needed to be ‘exterritorialised,’ even in terms of pictorial space. Once again we are reminded that the littoral, that stretch between land and sea that defies the notion of strictly drawn borders, served as a crucial testing ground for a globalised world in the making.

Notes   1 Large parts of Braudel’s study were drafted under the adverse conditions of war and internment and served as the author’s habilitation thesis in 1947. The first edition of La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949) underwent several revisions, the second edition (1966) formed the basis for the English translation: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 3 vols. (London: Collins, 1972–73).   2 Rob Shields, Places on the Margin. Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 14.   3 Ibid., 14.   4 Ibid., 15.  5 Alain Corbin, Le territoire du vide. L’occident et le désir du rivage 1750–1840 (Paris: Aubier, 1988).   6 Ibid., 20.   7 It is in this respect indicative that neither the English nor the German edition of Corbin’s work adopted the original title: Meereslust: das Abendland und die Entdeckung der Küste 1750‒1840, trans. Grete Osterwald (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1990); The Lure of the Sea. The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750‒1840, trans. Jocelyn Phelps (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994).

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  8 See Tricia Cusack, “Introduction. Exploring the Water’s Edge” in Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge, ed. Tricia Cusack (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), 4. Philipp Steinberg has argued that the idea of territoriality and the notion of “empty,” or more precisely, “emptiable” space (as opposed to tangible places) evolved congruently in modern societies, see Philipp E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32–33.   9 Amino Yoshihiko expounded his maritime view on the Japanese archipelago mainly in the first two chapters of Zoku Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu [Rethinking Japanese History Again] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1996), a collection of essays that followed his ground-breaking Nihon no rekishi o yominaosu [Rethinking Japanese History] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1991); an integral version of both publications is now available in English: Rethinking Japanese History, trans. and with an introduction by Alan S. Christy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 2012); Amino’s article “Les Japonais et la mer” in Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 50, no. 2 (1995), 235–258, offers an accessible outline of his argument. 10 In order to overcome the biased agro-centric image of polities of medieval Japan established by the feudal system and modern historiography, Amino repeatedly pleaded for a multidisciplinary approach with due attention given to different types of sources, such as archeological remnants or pictorial records, see Amino, “Les Japonais et la mer” (cf. note 9), 245. 11 Such selective ‘social framing’ of the littoral holds equally true for earlier traditions in Japanese painting: As “famous places” (meisho-e) coastal scenes had appeared in handscrolls since the fourteenth century. Doris Croissant has pointed out a screen by Tosa Mitsushige (1496–ca.1559) with the subject of the Four Seasons as one of the earliest depiction of a coastal scene on byōbu, see Doris Croissant, Sōtatsu und der Sōtatsu-Stil. Untersuchungen zu Repertoire, Ikonographie und Ästhetik der Malerei des Tawaraya Sōtatsu (um 1600–1640), Münchener Ostasiatische Studien, special series vol. 3 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1978), 60. 12 For a notable exception in recent scholarship see Cusack, Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge (cf. note 8), with case-studies focussed on European modernity. 13 For recent studies using a diachronic and comparative approach see Patrick O’Flanagan, Port Cities of Atlantic Iberia c. 1500‒1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); François Gipouloux, La Méditerranée asiatique: villes portuaires et réseaux marchands en Chine, au Japon et en Asie du Sud-Est, XVIe–XXIe siècle (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2009); Haneda Masashi, ed., Asian Port Cities 1600– 1800. Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009); Douglas Catterall, Jodi Campbell, and Gayle K. Brunelle, eds., Women in Port. Gendering Communities, Economies and Social Networks in Atlantic Port Cities, 1500–1800 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). 14 The Flemish draughtsman and medalist Philips van Vinghe (1560–1592) made drawings of the sumptuous folding-screens that were presented to Pope Gregory XIII by the so-called Tenshō Mission in March 1585. The voyage of four disciples of the Jesuit seminary at Arima/Kyushu, all of them descendants of Daimyo families, was masterminded by the visitor to the Jesuit Missions in Asia, Alessandro Valignano, and commenced in February 1582, leading the emissaries to Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Most likely, folding-screens were also presented at the court of Madrid, but apparently left no trace there. Those presented to the pope showed views of Azuchi castle, a newly erected fortified residence of the hegemon Oda Nobunaga. The commission for these prestigious gifts, summoned only a few months before the mission left Japan, probably went to the prolific workshop of Kano Eitoku (1543–1590). Van Vinghe obviously had an opportunity to view the byōbu during their presentation in the newly opened Galleria delle carte geografiche in the Vatican. Neither the screens nor Van Vinghe’s original drawings seem to have survived, some of the latter, however, were used to prepare the woodcuts with details of the Azuchi-screens that appeared in Lorenzo Pignoria’s supplement to Vincenzo Cartari’s Le vere e nove imagini degli dei degli antichi in 1615, see Donald Frederick Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2 A Century of Wonder (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 88–90, with plates 50, 51. 15 See Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone” in Profession. Modern Language Association of America (1991), 33–40. We use Pratt’s concept, developed in her studies on literature and colonisation, in a modified notion by exploring artworks with specific iconographic and pictorial properties as contact zones of different modes of representation. 16 For an outline of the ongoing research project “PORTUS. Mediality and Visual Topoi of Maritime Trade in Japan and the Netherlands 1550–1650” as part of the DFG-research unit “Trans-

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cultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art”, Department of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin, see URL http://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/en/e/transkulturell/teilprojekte/b2/index.html (last accessed 10.05.2014) and Joachim Rees, “Auf schwankendem Grund. Visuelle Konstruktionen des Litorals in den Bildkünsten der Niederlande und Japans um 1600” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 56, 1 (2014), 95–111. 17 Cf. Wilfried van Damme, “Interculturalization in Art: Conceptualizing Processes and Products” in World Art Studies. Exploring Concepts and Approaches, ed. Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008), 375–384, 376; Joachim Rees, “Vergleichende Verfahren, verfahrene Vergleiche. Kunstgeschichte als komparative Kunstwissenschaft – eine Problemskizze” Kritische Berichte 40, no. 2 (2012), 32–47, here 42. 18 Cf. Yukio Lippit, Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th-Century Japan (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2012), 3–33. 19 For a succinct summary of the densely researched historical context see Asao Naohiro, “The Sixteenth-Century Unification” in John Whitney Hall, ed., Early Modern Japan, vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 40–95. 20 On Hideyoshi’s land surveys see Wakita Osamu, “The Social and Economic Consequences of Unification” in Early Modern Japan, ed. Hall (cf. note 19), 96–127, especially 102–110. Regarding maps made during Hideyoshi’s reign, the abbot of the Kōfukuji in Nara wrote in the Tamon’in nikki in 1591, “[I hear that] orders haven been given to all the districts in the country to map [sashizue ni kaki] paddy fields as well as seas, mountains, rivers, villages, temples and shrines [and] render [them] to the court in due haste.” Quoted in Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan. Space, Place and Culture in the Tokugawa Period 1603–1868 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 9 with note 6; Hizen was among the first provinces to deliver a detailed map to the emperor’s court, see Unno Kazutaka, “Government Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Japan” Imago Mundi 43 (1991), 86–91, 90. 21 For details about the construction process see Naitō Akira, “‘Hizen Nagoyajō zu byōbu’ no kenchikuteki kōsatsu” [Architectural Studies of ‘A Folding Screen picture of The Hizen Nagoya-jō Castle’] Kokka 915 (1968), 9–30, here 10–13. 22 For detailed analyses of style see Narazaki Muneshige, “Hizen Nagoyajō zu to Kanō Mitsunobu” [‘A Folding-Screen Picture of The Hizen Nagogya-jō Castle’ and Mitsunobu Kanō] ibid., 51–60. 23 Naitō, “Hizen Nagoyajō zu byōbu” (cf. note 21) 9–30, here 13–21. 24 For a discussion of the exceptional status of the Hizen Nagoya screen in the context of Momoyama screen-making, see Matthew Philip McKelway, Capitalscapes. Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), 174–177. 25 For an analyses of the connection between the narration on the screen and documented foreign emissaries in Nagoya see Okamoto Ryōichi, “Nagoyajō zu no nanbanjin” [The Westerners Seen in ‘A Folding-Screen Picture of The Hizen Nagoya-jō Castle’] Kokka 915 (1968), 40–44. The simultaneous arrival of two groups of emissaries from different countries and ceremonial rank as depicted in the screen is at odds with diplomatic demeanor of the time and is probably meant to enhance Hideyoshi’s position, see Danielle Elisseeff, Hideyoshi. Bâtisseur du Japon moderne (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 203. 26 Ishii Kenji, “Nagoyajō zu no atakebune ni tsuite” [Atakemaru Battleships in ‘A Folding-Screen Picture of The Hizen Nagoya-jō Castle’] Kokka 915 (1968), 31–39, here 36. 27 McKelway, Capitalscapes (cf. note 24), 176–177. 28 For recent discussions of this work see Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, “Hafenstadt mit der Enthaltsamkeit des Scipio” in Blumen, Allegorien, Genre, Historie, Gemäldeskizzen, vol. 3 of Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde (Lingen: Luca, 2010), 1184– 1185; Mirjam Neumeister, “Ansicht einer Hafenstadt mit der Enthaltsamkeit des Scipio, 1600” in Brueghel: Gemälde von Jan Brueghel d. Ä., ed. Mirjam Neumeister, exhibition catalogue Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek (München: Hirmer, 2012), 214–218. 29 See Louisa Wood Ruby, “Jan Brueghel d. Ä. als Zeichner: Die frühen Jahre in Italien” in exhibition catalogue Brueghel (cf. note 28), 35–45, here 36. The chronological sequence of Brueghel’s coastscapes is difficult to trace as the authoritative catalogue raisonné of his paintings is based on pictorial genres (landscape, sacred and profane history, allegory), whereas coastal settings appear in either of these categories, see Klaus Ertz and Christa Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel der Ältere (1568–

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1625). Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde, 4 vols. (Lingen: Luca, 2008–2010). The synopsis of signed and dated works in vol. 4, 1716–1717 is particularly helpful. Early modern European history painting repeatedly treated subjects from the accounts of Roman historians on the Second Punic War (218–201 B.C.), foremost Livy’s Ab urbe condita, XXVI, 49–50, but focussed almost exclusively and in an overtly panegyric way on Scipio’s benevolent attitude towards his high-ranking adversaries, with hardly any reference to the hardships inflicted on the broader population. For a useful survey of the entangled history of Antwerp in the confessional age see Herman van der Wee and Jan Materné, “Antwerp as a World Market in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” in Antwerp. Story of a Metropolis, 16th–17th Century, ed. Jan van der Stock, exhibition catalogue Hessenhuis Antwerp (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1993), 19–31. On the vicissitudes of the Antwerp art-market between Calvinist predominance in the 1560s and Spanish seizure in 1585, see Filip Vermeylen, Painting for the Market. Commercialization of Art in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 100–118. See Werner Thomas, “Andromeda Unbound: The Reign of Albert and Isabella in the Southern Netherlands, 1598−1621” in Albert and Isabella 1598–1621: Essays, ed. Werner Thomas and Luc Duerloo (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), 1−14. On the siege of Ostend and its reflection in contemporary textual and visual sources see De val van het nieuwe Troje: het beleg van Oostende 1601–1604, ed. Werner Thomas, exhibition catalogue Venetiaanse Gaanderijen in Oostende (Leuven: Davidfonds, 2004). Naruzawa Katsushi, “Kobe Shiritsukan hon A” in Nanban byōbu shūsei [Catalogue raisonné of nanban byōbu], ed. Sakamoto Mitsuru (Tokyo: Kōron, 2008), 327. The screen was traced back to the collection of the high-ranking Kishu Tokugawa family. Yukio Lippit, “Japan’s Southern Barbarian Screens” in Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Essays, ed. Jay Alan Levenson, exhibition catalogue Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington D. C.: Smithonian Institution, 2007), 244–253, here 249, with reservations about the often proposed notion that direct observation gathered in the trading ports of Kyushu was vital for the production of the early nanban byōbu. Naruzawa, “Kobe Shiritsukan hon A” (cf. note 34), 327, cat. 3. Opinions about the origins of the screen differ. It might have been completed by Kano Naizen between 1593 and 1594 while he was still in Nagoya, in which case it surely was intended to represent Hideyoshi’s imminent fortune and was produced for the lord’s own personal pleasure. Other studies suggest that the screens were completed after Hideyoshi’s death and attributed to his memorial shrine the Toyokuni Jinja in Kyoto in 1599, see Mari Takamatsu, “Kinsei shoki fūzokuga no poritikusu: Kano Naizen ‘nanban byōbu’ (Kōbe shiritsu hakubutsukan) no kaishaku wo chūshin ni” [Policy in Genre Paintings of the Early Modern Period: An Interpretation of Kanō Naizen’s ‘nanban byōbu’ (Kobe City Museum)] Kajima Bijutsu Zaidan Nenpō [The Kajima Foundation for the Arts annual report] 27 (2009), 515–527, here 515. This, of course, is the prevailing image in historical literature; see for instance, Asao, “The Sixteenth-Century Unification” (cf. note 19), 76. This can be deduced from the so-called Kumiya Document, a letter signed by Hideyoshi’s private secretary Yamanaka Kichinai, dated 18 May 1592, which contains circumstantial information about the warlord’s plans to install Japanese rule on the mainland. After swift military progress on the Korean peninsula made him more convinced than ever that the fall of the Ming dynasty was only a matter of weeks, Hideyoshi let his family know where he, in his capacity as retired regent of the realm, intended to spent his twilight years: “As for our Lord [Toyotomi Hideyoshi], he will at first reside in Beijing, whence he will control the national affairs of China, Japan, and Korea. After the founding of the new empire is completed, he will appoint some man of worth as his deputy at Beijing, and will establish his own permanent residence at Ningbo.” Quoted in Kuno Yoshi, Japanese Expansion on the Asiatic Continent. A Study in the History of Japan with Special Reference to Her International Relations with China, Korea, and Russia (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1967), 1: 320. Cf. Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail. Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592‒1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 63, 67. Swope assumes that “trade was possibly the most important goal of his [Hideyoshi’s] enterprise, though publicly he perhaps could not admit this.”

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41 Ibid., 67. 42 Lippit, Painting of the Realm (cf. note 18), 172. 43 For a recent discussion of this work see Ertz and Nitze-Ertz, Jan Brueghel (cf. note 28), vol. I, 100, and exhibition catalogue Brueghel (cf. note 28), 244–249. 44 Elizabeth Alice Honig, Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 123. 45 See Honig, Painting and the Market (cf. note 44), 83, 123. 46 Izumi Mari “Kunaichō Sannomaru Chōzōkan Hon” in Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei (cf. note 34), 330–331, cat. 7. 47 Adam Clulow, “From global Entrepôt to Early Modern Domain: Hirado, 1609–1641” Monumenta Nipponica 65, 1 (2010), 1–35. 48 Severe restrictions imposed by the Ming emperor on direct trade with the Japanese archipelago in 1547 were modified after an agreement in 1554 that laid the traffic of goods between Japan and China mainly in the hands of Portuguese merchants. For a still indispensable account on the role of the Portuguese in trading between China and Japan in the sixteenth century see Charles Ralph Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951). 49 For a succinct discussion of this aspect see Lippit, “Japan’s Southern Barbarian Screens” (cf. note 35), 247–250. 50 An important group of sources which illustrates the general interest in trade centres about foretelling the near future has only recently come to the attention of historical research: For Antwerp, printed pronouncements or Pronosticaten are of particular importance. Published annually from the 1490s onwards, they contain forecasts about the city’s welfare that were based upon the observation of stellar constellations in relation to the Antwerp meridian, see Herman Pleij, “Antwerp Described” in Antwerp. Story of a Metropolis, ed. Jan van der Stock (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju, 1993), 79–86; An Kint, “The Ideology of Commerce. Antwerp in the Sixteenth-Century” in International Trade in the Low Countries (14th–16th Centuries): Merchants, Organisation, Infrastructure, Proceedings of the International Conference Ghent-Antwerp, 12th–13th January 1997, ed. Peter Stabel, Bruno Blondé, and Anke Greve (Leuven and Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), 213–222. 51 According to Victor Enthoven the closure inflicted on the Scheldt estuary by forces of the northern provinces severed Antwerp’s connection with the open sea only in the immediate aftermath of the seizure by Spanish troops in 1585. After 1587 a tight blockade gave way to a system of custom tax, which reestablished nautical communication. However, the sea ports of Zeeland, above all Middleburg and Arnemuiden, were less affected by the tide and were thus able to strengthen their position at the expense of Antwerp, see Victor Enthoven, “The Closure of the Scheldt: Closure, What Closure? Trade and Shipping in the Scheldt Estuary, 1559–1609” in North Sea Ports and Harbours. Adaptations to Change, ed. Poul Holm and John Edwards (Esbjerg: Fiskeri- og Søfartsmuseets Forlag, 1992), 11–37. 52 On the geographical distribution of early provenances of nanban byōbu see Okamoto Yoshitomo and Takamizawa Tadao, Nanban byōbu (Tokyo: Kajima Kenkyujo Shuppankai, 1970), 193; Lippit, “Japan’s Southern Barbarian Screens” (cf. note 35), 252. 53 Cf. Peter Klein, “Dendrochronologische Untersuchungen” in exhibition catalogue Brueghel (cf. note 28), 410–415. According to these examinations based on works in the Alte Pinakothek, Baltic oak was used for eighteen out of thirty-four paintings on wood from the Antwerp School, mostly from the workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder. 54 Brueghel married Gerard’s daughter, Isabella de Jode, in 1599. Because the De Jode family dissolved the printmaking business after Cornelis died in 1600, no cooperation could flourish in this field as it did between Brueghel’s father Pieter and Abraham Ortelius. Jan’s painterly work, however, makes it abundantly clear that he took a keen interest in the increase of geographical knowledge and its impact on the visual representation of space. Furthermore, Brueghel maintained a working relationship with his brother-in-law, the engraver Pieter de Jode, which outlasted his short-lived marriage with Isabella whose untimely demise occurred in 1603, shortly after the painter had finished his above-mentioned work Fish Market at a Sea Harbour with Family-Portrait. For a general outline of the visual interaction between mapmaking and painting in the Netherlands around 1600 see Tanja Michalsky, Projektion und Imagination. Die niederländische Land-

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schaft der Frühen Neuzeit im Diskurs von Geographie und Malerei (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), 65–130. For full detail see cat. 21 and 22 in exhibition catalogue Brueghel (cf. note 28), 184–189. On the increasing economic importance of printing and painting for the Antwerp emporium in the second half of the sixteenth century see Herman van der Wee and Jan Materné, “Antwerp as a World Market” (cf. note 31), 29–30; Vermeylen, Painting for the Market (cf. note 31), 35–108. For the demand of large quantities of devotional pictures for the Jesuit mission in the Japanese archipelago, at the time only to be met by the highly specialized Flemish workshops, see Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia, and Latin America, 1543‒1773 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 66, citing a report by Luis Fróis from 1584 in which the Jesuit stated that more than 50,000 devotional images alone were needed for the Japanese Mission, as converts complained of having no pictures to replace their household deities. See Miyoshi Tadayoshi, “Japanische und europäische Kartographie vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert” in Japan und Europa: 1543–1929, ed. Doris Croissant et al., exhibition catalogue Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin: Berliner Festspiele/Argon, 1993), 37–45. Mia M. Mochizuki, “The Movable Center: The Netherlandish Map in Japan” in Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections, ed. Michael North (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010), 109–134. “Hemispherium ab aequinoctiali linea, ad circulum poli arctici / Hemispherium ab aequinoctiali linea, ad circulum poli antarctici” in Speculum Orbis Terrae, Antverpiae: Sumptibus Viduae et Heredu Gerardi de Iuadaeis (Antwerp: Arnold Coninx, [1593]), fol. 2. See Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World. Early Printed World Maps 1472–1700 (Riverside: Early World Press, 2001), 165. See James Delgado, Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage (New York: Douglas and McIntyre, 2009), 19–34. The upper caption reads: “Amplissima Iapan insula primum inuenta / et detecta temporibus Romanorum / Imperatoris Caroli V. 1549. Ceterum / notandum est quando in Flandria, dicti Imperatoris patria, nec non / circum illam est meridies tum in insulis Japanicis este noctis medium.” The lower caption: “Reges insularum Iapanicarum / miserunt die vigesimo septimo / Ianuarij legatos suos 1582. ad / Gregorium XIII. pontificem maximum / et venerunt Romam die vigesimo tertio Martij Ao 1584.” The latter date is erroneous; the emissaries from Japan were received in the Vatican on 23 March 1585, only a few weeks before the pontiff’s death. For a recent discussion of this work see Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei (cf. note 34), 343–344, cat. 24. That commissions of nanban byōbu were less affected by political moves in trade and foreign relations than previously thought is borne out by Sakamoto’s recent catalogue raisonné in which three screens are dated to the second half of the seventeenth century, see Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei (cf. note 34), cat. 23, 29, 48. Of equal importance is a set of fifteen screens introduced by Sakamoto under the heading “Examples depicting Trading with foreign Merchants,” dating from the early seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries (ibid., cat. 76–90). In these works we find elements of the nanban iconography combined with scenes of arrival of Chinese as well as Korean merchants. Here, the pictorial references to maritime trade are counterbalanced with motifs of rural life, showing farmers and craftsmen at work. The scarcely addressed survival and partial recasting of nanban iconography in screen-making of the Edo-period are further examined in our ongoing research project.

Illustrations Figs. 1, 2: Figs. 3, 4:

Kano Mitsunobu (attr.), Hizen Nagoya Castle, preparatory drawings mounted on a sixpanel folding screen, ink and light colours on paper, 157.5 × 350.5 cm, Saga Prefectural Museum (reproduced from: Kokka 1968 [cf. note 21], s.p.). Jan Brueghel the Elder, View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio, oil on copper, 72.2 × 106.3 cm, inscribed: BRVEGHEL · 1600 FEC · ANVERSA, Munich, Bayerische

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Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek (photo: bpk–Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin). Figs. 5, 6: Kano Naizen, Nanban byōbu, pair of six-panel folding screens, colours and gold leaf on paper, 154 × 363 cm each, sealed and signed: Kano Naizen, late 16th century, Kobe City Museum (reproduced from: Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei, [cf. note 34], 12–13). Figs. 7, 8: Jan Brueghel the Elder, Fish Market at a Sea Harbour with Family-Portrait, oil on panel, 59.3 × 91.7 cm, signed lower left: BRVEGHEL 1603, Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek (photo: bpk–Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin). Figs. 9, 10: Nanban byōbu, right screen of a pair of six-panel folding screens, colours and gold leaf on paper, 156 × 334 cm, early 17th century, Tokyo, Kunaichō Sannomaru Shōzōkan (Museum of the Imperial Collections) (reproduced from: Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei, [cf. note 34], 37–38). Fig. 11: Workshops of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hans Rottenhammer, Christ in Limbo, oil on copper, 21.5 × 27.7 cm, ca. 1598, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, painted on a disused printing plate of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum, 1574. Fig. 12: Franz Hogenberg, Galliae Narbonensis ora Maritittima Recenter descripta, coloured engraving, 205 × 290 mm, 1574, in Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum, Antwerp: Aegidius Coppenius Diesth (reproduced from: exh. cat. Brueghel [cf. note 28], cat. 22). Cornelis de Jode after Gerard de Jode, Hemispherium ab aequinoctiali linea, ad circulum Fig. 13: poli arctici, coloured engraving, 330 × 520 mm, 1593, in Speculum orbis terrae, Antwerp: Arnold Conix (reproduced from: Wikimedia Commons s. v. Cornelis de Jode, after a copy of the Speculum orbis terrae in the Library of the Society of Jesus, Prague). Figs. 14, 15: Nanban byōbu, right screen from a pair of six-panel folding screens, colours and gold leaf on paper, 158 × 367 cm, late 17th century, Nara, Tōshōdaiji (reproduced from: Sakamoto, Nanban byōbu shūsei, [cf. note 34], 98–99, courtesy TSB).

Evelyn Reitz

Transcultural Ballast Netherlandish Tiles as Vehicles of Exchange The emperor’s sink in Malbork In 1894 when the last German emperor William II visited the massive brick fortress in Malbork—a town then situated in West Prussia and now in Northern Poland—an additional architectural element had been recently incorporated into the second floor of the cloister (fig. 1, pl. XX).1 A sink located in front of the entrance to the refectory of the order, which up to that time had been rather modest in appearance, had been embellished with so-called Delft tiles the year before. A closer look at the images reveals no coherence of subject matter. For instance, pastoral scenes of a middle-aged couple next to a waterfront or heading on an outing in a carriage are juxtaposed with images of a sailing ship or—predominating in this case—with biblical scenes. A closer look at a detail in the ensemble sheds light on the provenance and composition of the tiles (fig. 2). The subject matter of the bible stories can be easily discerned. In the upper row from left to right we find depictions of David’s seduction of Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11: 1–27), the Flight into Egypt (Matt. 2: 13–18), Jonah and the whale (Jon. 2: 1–11), in the lower row Moses Parting the Red Sea (Exod. 14: 15–31) and Balaam and the angel (Num. 22: 20–35). On the lower left corner a sailing ship is depicted. The embellishment of the sink was one of the last steps in a comprehensive restoration and reconstruction of Malbork Castle in a historicist style that took place around 1900.2 The fortress itself was erected at the end of the thirteenth century and originally served both as a monastery and as the political centre of the so-called Teutonic Order at the height of its influence from the early fourteenth to the late fifteenth century. The Teutonic Order was a religious order of knights founded by merchants from the northern German cities of Bremen and Lübeck during the crusades. Its objective was—amongst others—the christianisation and colonisation of the Baltic’s southeast, which was at that time inhabited by the old Prussians. In the late Middle Ages the order dominated the whole coastal strip stretching from Pomerelia (in the west) to Narwa (in the east). The gradual fall of the crusader state followed, and Malbork castle was handed over to the Polish crown in 1466, when it was mostly abandoned to decay and inappropriate usage (for example, as a market place) for more than two centuries. A new chapter was added to the history of the building when it came under the control of Prussia in 1772. Henceforth, considerable effort was undertaken to restore and to reestablish the monument as a national symbol and as a landmark. In

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Fig. 1: Malbork Castle, cloister, second floor, sink coated with ‘Delft’ tiles, 1893.

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Fig. 2: Malbork Castle, ‘Delft’ tiles from the cloister’s sink.

an early attempt at restoration the dilapidated group of buildings was reconstructed fairly freely employing plans by the German classicist architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Friedrich August Stüler. The poet and novelist Joseph von Eichendorff described the intervention at length, using as his point of departure the establishment of the fortress and convent by the crusading German military order, the Teutonic Knights: “… this Order’s main building, Malbork, has been the centre of that world-historical occurrence [the conquest of Prussia], for centuries.”3 Due to the manifest archaeological and architectural liberties taken, as well as the incongruities and incompleteness of this first attempt at reconstruction a second phase was soon deemed necessary and was undertaken after 1879. The “unworthily dramatic gothic” (unwürdige Theatergotik),4 as the new architectural intendant Conrad Steinbrecht put it, was converted back into an ‘authentic’ testimony of the monument’s earlier condition. Steinbrecht declared that he wanted to reestablish the former state of the Teutonic castle so that “its Germanness” could “remain conscious of its prior right of home and its higher cultural tasks on the contentious soil at the Vistula (Wisła).”5 The blue and white tiles were incorporated into the sink on the second floor of the cloister during the last phase of construction in Malbork Castle, which sought to recapture the building’s authentic appearance during the time of the Teutonic Order.6 The embellishment was undertaken shortly before Emperor William II conducted one of his frequent visits to the site, some of which are recorded as hav-

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Fig. 3: Solemn Entry of Emperor Wilhelm II in Marienburg/Malbork Castle, photograph, 1902.

ing used the ‘historic’ scenery as a backdrop for historicist role-play. For instance, photographs reveal that at the ceremony inaugurating the castle’s reconstruction participants appeared in medieval costume (fig. 3). Imitating the putative traditions of the old monastery, the emperor’s attire at this event resembled that of members of the Order of Saint John, while the soldiers flanking him were costumed as Teutonic knights. In this context, the facing of the sink in blue and white tiles became an extension of an alleged German identity. However, there was a significant gap in temporal and geographical belonging between the facing of the sink and most of the other elements of the renewed decoration of the castle. While the blue and white design of the tiles and their imagery can be traced back to the early modern and modern Netherlands, most of the changes undertaken in the restoration of the castle’s architecture recreated the appearance of the building at the height of the Teutonic Order––that is, during medieval Prussia. How are these two aspects of its present-day appearance connected?

The trading network of the Hansa From the perspective of nineteenth-century historicism the connection between Dutch tiles and the history of Pomerelia, when the major towns in this area belonged to the heartland of Prussia, was an obvious one. At that time the commercial relations of the German community more or less mirrored the trade routes that had been established in the Middle Ages. The main seat of the Teutonic Order in Malbork marked the crossroads of two major land routes, connecting it with major

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commercial cities in central Europe and with the maritime trade in the Baltic.7 The ceramic market in the region developed in conjunction with the foundation and establishment of the Hanseatic League—the Hansa—the predominant trading network in the area, which connected the major settlements at the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.8 Low German merchants established this federation in the twelfth century with the aim of protecting transits and of fostering shared economic concerns. Hence, it was rooted in the same geographic and social environment as the Teutonic Order. Over time an increasing number of communities became part of the Hansa trading network, which soon extended far beyond the coastline stretching inland to central Europe. While the Hansa expanded, so too did the Teutonic Order; in taking possession of the southern littoral of the Baltic Sea in the late Middle Ages it finally reached beyond the northern regions of the then Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. As a result, both tracts of land, located in modern-day Germany and Poland, were later associated with a German past and thus with a German identity. Recent research has emphasised that because of the close ties that were established by trade in the region, the Hansa became a shared cultural sphere.9 With this in mind, David Gaimster suggested that “a cosmopolitan Hanseatic ‘signature’”10 existed in the ceramic market of the Baltic. At first glance there is a good basis for this assumption. Going back to the introductory example, for instance, the tile patterns used in Malbork Castle were very similar to other decorative schemes in buildings located along the trading routes. There are great similarities between the layout of the scenes of David’s seduction of Bathsheba and Balaam and the angel in Malbork and those displayed in a patrician house in Wrocław, located about about 450 km to the south.11 Wrocław was situated at the crossroads of the land routes running along the ancient Amber road and the more recent Via Regia connecting north and south as well as east and west. It was a thriving commercial hub when Adrian Bögel, a textile trader from the Hanseatic city of Hamburg, settled there and integrated a set of blue and white tiles into his parlour around 1700. In terms of subject matter, the single pieces seem to have been picked at random, attached in a rather decorative manner, and drawn from multiple sources—just like those used for the embellishment of the sink in Malbork. The tiles in Bögel’s parlour in Wrocław are believed to have come from various workshops in the Netherlands, probably in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Harlingen, Makkum, or Utrecht.12 However, in Malbork we are better informed about the source of the tiles. The supervising architects bought their ‘Delft’ tiles from the Gdańsk antiquarian Louis Berghold who supposedly took them from Mennonite houses in the area.13 They reveal a large variety of designs going back to the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries. Commerce in both Wrocław and Malbork largely drew upon the exchange of goods in Gdańsk, a commercial centre that had served as the main hub for maritime trade in the region for centuries. It was through this marketplace that large quantities of tiles were brought to Pomerelia from the Netherlands.14 The first set of tiles used for the embellishment of the “emperor’s sink” in the castle of the Teutonic Order was part of an artistic programme that supported Ger-

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man claims of cultural sovereignty over the region of Pomerelia. The tiles were embedded in an imagery that presented itself as Prussian—hence, German—and thereby extended the symbolism through an aspect of maritime trade that, as a matter of fact, had shaped the region. A similar blurring of Hanseatic identities seems to have taken place in Wrocław. While it is clear that the use of blue and white tiles alluded to the mercantile activity of the patron who grew up in Hamburg, a city shaped by maritime trade, the older literature blurs the lines between Netherlandish and German in way that is similar to the approach taken by the architects of the ‘reconstructed’ castle in Malbork. An overview of the cultural heritage in Wrocław from 1935 captures the common belief about the origin of blue and white tiles, stating that they came from Delft (even if they did not), and were hence Netherlandish.15 By contrast, in 1901 the museum’s journal Schlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift classified the pieces as “Low German” (niederdeutsch).16 In fact, until the nineteenth century the term “niederdeutsch” (nederduits) was often used as a synonym for Netherlandish. From a linguistic, historic, and cultural perspective the shores of northern Germany and the Netherlands were closely related and known collectively as the region of Frisia. Only the former domains and the later foundation of nation states separated them by a clear dividing line. Employing Jan Pluis’ catalogue of biblical tiles (which is the only comprehensive work of reference available on this topic to date), it becomes clear that the detail from the Malbork sink, which was examined more closely at the beginning of this article, contains pieces apparently drawn from workshops in Rotterdam and Harlingen that date to the second half of the seventeenth century (fig. 2).17 At that time, blue and white tiles were mainly produced in the northern Netherlands with the town of Delft advancing as the major centre of production. The result was that Delft eventually lent its name to an entire genre of tiles whose preeminent feature was their blue and white color. The pieces were covered with a tin-glazing, which made them robust and relatively impervious to damage. The images usually depicted bible stories, landscapes, and genre (the latter two often being characterised by scenes of maritime life), in other words, their subject matter reflected and modelled the three categories that dominated early modern Dutch art in general. Thus, the label “Delft tile” equally reflects the origin of the artefacts in the Netherlands as it denotes a very specific form of ceramic. Via the extensive maritime trade practiced along the routes of the former Hansa, the blue and white tile soon spread throughout the whole region connected to the Dutch shores, including the Baltic coast in northern Poland. It was at this juncture that mercantile activity began shaping a unifying identity along the routes of trade taken, which was in turn attributed to the goods themselves. This identity went beyond the notion of origin and is now called “Hanseatic.” Thus when ‘Delft’ tiles were shipped to central European destinations such as Wrocław and Malbork, they adopted new levels of meaning that were related to the Hanseatic network of maritime trade and, in this case, to the cosmopolitanism of a merchant who was active within this network. Eventually, their destinations imparted new cultural identities to them and the shaping of identities became an

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ongoing process of mobility, exchange, and incorporation. To a certain extent, meaning was already bestowed on the tiles the moment they were shipped from Dutch shores. This meaning was not merely symbolic but also functional. Adding to their artistic value was the fact that ‘Delft’ tiles had specific material qualities that made them apt for other uses. The pieces were small in size, heavy, and applicable in various architectural settings. Within the emerging network of the Hansa and advancing significantly with the rise of the Low Countries to the status of Europe’s leading trading nation during the Golden Age they fulfilled at least a triple function. First, they were used as ballast on the outbound trip to the Baltic: by adding weight to ships that were to be filled with goods on the way back they helped to maintain the needed depth of flotation. Second, the tiles served as a medium of exchange: at the point of destination they were traded for other goods such as wood or grain. Third, the tiles became components of the local architecture wherever they were transported, usually serving as some kind of wall covering. The genre of ‘Delft’ tiles was the outcome of long-distance trade, and their preeminent feature was shaped by transcultural exchange. Indeed, some pieces refer explicitly to this long and complex development. As regards the blue and white design, it has often been noted and has always been obvious to artisans that the distinctive colours of the design imitate Chinese porcelain. A sugar dish from around 1700, for instance, hints at its Chinese origin with the punning inscription “this is from China” (dese is úÿt Cina) (fig. 4).18 The inscription refers equally to the style of the ceramic and to the subject matter, which depicts a woman drinking tea—a fact that is further underscored by the intended use of the dish for rock sugar (the Dutch kandij), which was usually served with tea. Both tea and porcelain were brought to northern Europe in large amounts only after the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602.19 During these years trade from the Far East shifted from land to sea routes and thereby facilitated the introduction of Chinese porcelain to Europe. The transport of ceramics on land routes was strenuous, and in certain periods also precarious, and thus it was also rather rare. The scant extant documentation hints at the overland transport of some high quality blue and white pieces to the Near East, mainly to Syria, Egypt, and Turkey during the Yuan and early Ming period.20 The goods were transported along a path that would later be called the “Silk Road.”21 Research has long since revealed that the Silk Road never had a clear beginning or end or even a route, but was made up of multiple, constantly changing trails, largely traversed by horse and camel caravans. The consignment of prestigious ceramics required safe passage, which was ensured under Mongol control; however, overland transportation also entailed enormous effort. From a Chinese source it is known that in order to protect it from damage the porcelain was embedded in a mixture of sand, earth, soya beans, wheat, and water which was then dried to harden. On arrival at the place of destination this mixture was dissolved in water.22 The mode of transportation also seemed to have been a crucial factor in the spread of porcelain and other ceramics via maritime routes once they were established by Europe’s emerging trading companies.

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Fig. 4: Blue and white footed sugar dish, Delftware, ca. 1690‒1710, private collection.

The imitation of the blue and white design from China marked the last step in the development of a Dutch genre of pictorial tile, the future ‘Delft’ tile. The specific technique that made its surface particularly resistant to damage was brought to the Netherlands from yet another centre of ceramic production. Before the outbreak of the Eighty Years’ War the thriving hub for the fabrication of tiles was located in the southern part of the Low Countries, particularly in Antwerp. In the sixteenth century a growing number of Italian craftsmen, especially potters, settled in the area and introduced the technique of tin-glazing that had been hitherto unknown to the Dutch.23 At that time ceramics were multicoloured—like the famous pavement of the Abbey of Herkenrode, which is now on display in the Royal History and Art Museums in Brussels (fig. 5, pl. XXI).24 The mosaic of the former convent’s floor is made up of different sets of majolica and depicts animals, plants, rosettes, and, perhaps most remarkable, protagonists of Flemish literature such as Richard the Lionheart. The pavement was ordered from Petrus Frans in Venice and created in the workshop of Guido Andries, originally named Guido di Savino, who had moved from the area around Urbino to Antwerp where he was active by 1508 at the latest. As a result of the activity of foreign artisans in Antwerp and the import of ceramics from the south, the major characteristics of contemporary Italian majolica workshops were adopted. In addition to the polychrome style and resistant tin-glaz-

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Fig. 5: Guido Andries and workshop, Majolica pavement of the Abbey of Herkenrode, 1532‒1533, Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire.

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Fig. 6: Holy Family with Joachim and Anne under a tree, majolica plate from Venice or Urbino, ca. 1550, Schloss Güstrow (Mecklenburg).

ing the practice of using prints as models became more widespread. Owing to the mobility of the media, artistic exchange was stimulated even before the method was exported from cis- to transalpine regions. The process of using models can be seen in a multicoloured plate manufactured in northern Italy using a pattern that was clearly taken from a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, which depicted the Holy Family with Joachim and Anne under a tree (figs. 6 and 7). The artisan used a stencil to transfer the model and then reworked the design onto the ceramic.25 After the introduction of tin-glazing in Antwerp this method also became common in the Netherlands where it was preeminent until the blue and white design emerged. Today, the cultural exchange involved in shaping this stadium for the ‘Delft’ genre is still present in the terms “majolica” and “fayence.” “Majolica” is usually applied to multicoloured, tin-glazed ceramic that was produced in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Until then, large quantities of faience manufactured by the ‘Moors’ were imported from Spain along trade routes that ran from Valencia through Mallorca. Indeed, “Majolica” is the ancient Italian name for the island that lent its name to this type of ceramic. Similarly, the word faience alludes to the origins of tin-glazed ceramics, which originated in the workshops of the Italian city of Faenza; thus, the etymology of both terms was shaped by hubs of production and trade. Without immersing ourselves any further in the history of blue and white ceramics, it is clear from the above that the ‘Delft’ tile was shaped by a constant cultural exchange that resulted from the migration of artists (such as Guido Andries) and from the mobility of the artefacts (such as the prints that served as patterns or the ceramics that were traded along the prevailing trading routes). The main factor contributing to the spread of this particular genre appears to have been the extent of commerce along Europeans sea routes. Within this process of exchange the product developed diverging functions that ranged from use as ballast and as a

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Fig. 7: Albrecht Dürer, Holy Family with Joachim and Anne under a tree, woodcut, 1511.

medium of exchange, to use as an artistic and prestigious wall covering. Furthermore, regional or national connotations were attached to the tiles at each stage along the way, and were applied either to the place of production, to the final destination, or to the common ground in between. Thus, origin and identity were constantly shifting between “roots and routes,” to borrow a distinction made by James Clifford.26

Hanseatic identities The appropriation of blue and white tiles along the trading routes of the Hansa eventually led to a diversification in multiple Hanseatic identities. Within the constant process of transcultural exchange the tiles revealed new, locally rooted notions. Once the Low Countries rose to form Europe’s leading trading nation in the Golden Age, the shipping of ‘Delft’ tiles increased considerably. The locally manufactured products were brought to other regions in the former Hanseatic League and the Baltic in return for traded wood and grain. After reaching their destination the tiles were attached to various architectural settings in the many places they were brought to. At this point, the specific involvement of the builder within the network of the routes determined both their context and function, as becomes evident when one examines the various stages and sites of commerce. A first variant of this

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Fig. 8: Hanswarft, Hallig Hooge (Schleswig-Holstein), parlour with marine motives on Harlingen tiles, after 1766.

shaping of new identity was the sailor’s perspective. Seafaring men along the coasts of west, east, and north Frisia drew largely on ‘Delft’ tiles for the interior decoration of their houses. For instance, at the end of the eighteenth century, Captain Tade Hans Bandik used pieces he had collected during his numerous trips to the Low Countries on the shores of the North Sea to decorate his parlour on the Hallig Hooge (a small island without a protective dike) in North Frisia (fig. 8). The parlour was the most representative and important room of the house, and it was used exclusively for special occasions, festivities, and for receiving visitors. Here, a multitude of tiles with biblical stories adorned the walls and accentuated the ceremonial character of the setting. In addition, by incorporating a large-scale depiction of boats on a stormy sea that was made of twenty tiles, emphasis was placed on the patron’s identity as a sailor. Indeed, Dutch sailing ships are often included in ‘Delft’ decorations, particularly vessels that were usually used for maritime trade.27 These images stress the common trait of maritime commerce that connected the various destinations. Once the blue and white tile was established as a genre and spread through the routes along the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, the practice of incorporating large-scale tile-pictures emerged, thereby enabling the patron of an architectural compound to add a personal note to a common maritime identity. It was in this capacity that Captain Bandik commissioned the depiction of sailing ships from

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the tile painter Pals Karsten in Harlingen. The picture was to include references to the captain, to his wife, and to a small sailing boat that had been lost off the coast of Sweden in 1766. An inscription above the image refers to the salvation of the crew: “With this the lord has helped us. In the year 1766” (Tot Hiertoe heeft ons de Heer geholpen. anno 1766). On the smaller tiles depicting bible stories, the verses the pictures were based on are indicated. We can assume, therefore, that the wall covering was not merely intended as a decoration, but also as a source of inspiration in a room that would have been used for various religious ceremonies, including baptisms. A second variant in the creation of a new identity was the merchant’s perspective. This particular feature became prevalent in the eastern regions of the former Hanseatic League with Gdańsk serving as the major hub. To get an idea of the extraordinarily high turnover of goods, including ‘Delft’ tiles, in the second half of the eighteenth century, one can consult, for example, Czesław Biernat’s compilation of custom’s registers.28 An assessment of the aesthetic and artistic qualities is more difficult to determine in light of the severe losses incurred by war. In a number of the patrician houses that were built by the rising merchants over the centuries the walls of the great hall on the ground floor was covered with Dutch tiles. Our information about this pre-war decoration is based on the evidence provided by a small number of preserved fragments, documents, engravings, and photographs.29 Until just a few years ago a rare example of one such patrician house decorated with ‘Delft’ tiles was still extant. Unfortunately, the house was abandoned, allowed to decay, and eventually collapsed, whereupon a large number of the tiles were stolen.30 As a result, the most vivid insight we have today of a typical Gdańsk interior is now only provided by engravings like those published by Johann Karl Schultz.31 One of the prints depicts the hall of his own family home (fig. 9). Unlike the sailor’s parlour this room had a representational rather than a ceremonial function. Accordingly, the tiles seem to have been arranged in a rather decorative manner that mixed different types of subject matter. From the description Schultz provides of the standard decoration of a hall (Diele) it is clear that ‘Delft’ tiles not only constituted a major component, but also defined other features of the interior design. In addition, the reader learns that the space in which they were displayed served as a kind of reception hall: “Our ancestors—being fully aware that the first impression had to be a favourable one—always devoted a big, high room, adorned with architectural splendour, for their hall, the atrium of the ancients.”32 Its decoration followed patterns that were characteristic for Gdańsk: “… the walls are covered with small, white glazed and blue painted Dutch tiles.”33 The tiles were accompanied by prestigious pieces of imported porcelain displayed on wooden furniture and consoles positioned against the walls.34 The elaborately carved wood of the furniture juxtaposed with the ceramics formed a whole aesthetic entity: “Beautifully carved cabinets, tables, and other furniture, generally from walnut, in some cases from amaranth and ebony wood, were never missing in such a hall, and a set of vases and cups, either of painted Chinese porcelain or Dutch faience, crowned the cabinets and any other protrusion.”35

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Fig. 9: Johann Carl Schultz, Hall of my parental home in Danzig’s Jopengasse, etching, after 1867.

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Within this ensemble material aesthetics evolved, which in turn became closely associated with the cultural impact of the individual components. Both aesthetic and cultural baggage were shaped by the routes and stages of commerce that led from the nearby shores of the Netherlands all the way to China. During the transmission and adoption of these foreign identities new aesthetic and functional properties were ascribed to the artefacts at their destination in the Baltic, thereby creating stereotypes about their origins. It can only be assumed that Schultz was inspired by the specific properties of the material and surface of ‘Delft’ tiles when he saw in them a symbol of the tidiness of the Dutch people: “namely, there is represented here [in the hall] Dutch tidiness and cleanliness. The bright glazed Dutch tiles, painted in blue on a white ground with which the walls are lined, as well as the dark polished oak staircase, and the likewise treated pieces of old walnut furniture, do not tolerate any speck of dust. They gleam at the entrance and create, including the painted ceiling, extraordinarily pleasant colour contrasts and colour definitions.”36 ‘Delft’ tiles were robust and could be cleaned easily, and hence they gave the impression of cleanliness and clarity. Schultz must have been inspired by the material and aesthetic qualities of the tiles when he invented the national stereotype of Dutch tidiness. A third variant in which the use of ‘Delft’ tiles created a new identity in an architectural setting can be seen in the ruler’s perspective. In this respect the tiles were meant to convey an idea of national or regional belonging as well as one of social distinction. The semantic level is particularly clear in areas where the ruler reigned over the Dutch. This was certainly the case for Max Emanuel of Bavaria. He not only governed Bavaria, but was also Elector of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the last governor of the southern, Spanish part of the Netherlands. While at war with the Ottoman Empire from 1685 to 1688 he gained direct access to commodities in the Far East, and afterwards resided in Brussels for nine years. He not only collected goods from the Far East but also a considerable amount of ‘Delft’ tiles, which he later used to adorn his park palaces in Nymphenburg. In contrast to the sailor’s parlour and the merchant’s hall, the notions of origin and meaning were blurred in the context of a ruler’s palace. Instead, the aesthetic and material qualities of the single pieces were increasingly used to create an opulent display of splendour, to reference a general notion of the exotic, and to reflect a more profane perception of function. Thus, ‘Delft’ tiles shaped the first of the park palaces commissioned by Max Emanuel, the so called Pagodenburg, and were later used to adorn a spacious bath, as well as a kitchen, in other buildings.37 While the patrician houses in Gdańsk simply connected Dutch tiles and Chinese porcelain by incorporating both elements in the same decorative scheme, the ‘Delft’ blue-and-white design on the ground floor of Pagodenburg determined the entire composition of the parlour, including the ceiling painting and the enormous luster (fig. 10). In the ceiling painting, which used the colours of the ceramics, the German artist Johann Anton Gump combined European allegories with an imitation of stylistic elements from the Far East.38 Pagodenburg was built according to plans by Joseph Effner, who served as architect to the elector’s court from 1716 to

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Fig. 10: Nymphenburg (Munich), garden pavillon Pagodenburg, interior of the ground floor, 1716‒1719.

1719.39 The name of the castle is derived from the Chinese term “pagoda,” a spiry building that is characteristic of parts of Asia. Its shapes are emulated in the ornamentation of the chinoiseries in the space.40 An early visitor from France, Pierre de Bretagne, describes these exoticisms as apt adornment for a maison de plaisance: “The house of the Indies, in other words Pagottembourg, is a place designated for

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the princes to freshen up and to change, if they wish to do so, after having played the jeu de mail…; albeit small, this house is very convenient and in wonderful taste. The ground floor consists of a salon and two cabinets, the ceilings are painted with arabesques and mosaics, flowers, and birds of all sorts from the Indies with figures from China that are like the pagodas that lent their name to the castle Pagottembourg in German.”41 On the whole, the park palaces in Nymphenburg lend the ‘Delft’ tiles an aristocratic character. This was not only due to the commodities being drawn from the dominion as well as from areas trading with the dominion of Elector Max Emanuel but also to certain stylistic features. As described above, the design of the tiles influenced other aspects of the baroque decoration in the castle. In addition to the ceiling on the ground floor of Pagodenburg, this is most obvious in the incorporation of two larger pictures in the staircase that were ordered from the Rotterdam tile painter Cornelis Pietersz Boumester and depicted typical garden landscaping of the time; the influence of the tile is also reflected in the Elector’s gigantic bath in Badenburg, which included white stucco consoles that were a distinctive feature of aristocratic palaces (fig. 11). Within the context of the garden palaces, ‘Delft’ tiles were clearly associated with the recreational realm. The buildings were remote from the main castle and given over to rather private social activities beyond politics and the official ceremonial life. As regards the tiles, De Jonge has differentiated four different groups of origin that represent the whole threefold repertoire of ‘Delft’ motifs: landscape, genre, and bible stories. However, he was not sure about their specific origin.42 As a matter of fact, neither their provenance nor the specific meaning of any single tile appears to have been critical to their selection and incorporation into the park palaces. Instead, they were applied according to their functional qualities and their general reference to the Netherlands. This is particularly clear in the bath in Badenburg, where cleanliness is less of a metaphor than in Schultz’s description of the typical Gdańsk hall, but is a quality that is celebrated in their actual use. The design alludes to the most simple national stereotype possible: the single tiles display a very limited range of repeating landscapes which are arranged in slightly differing compositional variants that include a maritime shore, a windmill, a church, and a group of houses.43 Ultimately, in Pomerelia the ‘Delft’ model prompted the manufacture of Polish genre tiles, in the artisan hubs of Gdańsk, Malbork, and Elbląg, which were well connected with the Baltic.44 The design of these Polish tiles drew on a similar repertoire of genres used in the Dutch prototypes, and the grounding was generally white and the paint initially blue, later turning to other monochrome variants. Thus, a third ceramic component was added to the interior design of patrician houses in that region. In addition to the Dutch blue-and-white ceramics arranged on the walls and the Dutch as well as Chinese porcelain displayed on furniture and consoles, ovens were faced with tiles from local workshops. At this point the artefact presented both a Polish and a Hanseatic identity, all the more so as it replaced an older Hungarian type that was formerly imported via land routes from the south.

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Fig. 11: Nymphenburg (Munich), garden pavillon Badenburg, bath, 1718‒1722.

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The multiple Hanseatic identities that emerged from constant cultural exchange eventually explain why the architect engaged to ‘restore’ Malbork castle incorporated ‘Delft’ tiles as a means of suggesting German heritage: Once the tiles were shipped to foreign destinations and installed in the architectural, stylistic, and functional order that was common at the place of encounter, the “cosmopolitan Hanseatic ‘signature’” that unified the region, as David Gaimster has pointed out, assumed local connotations. Hence, it was both the routes and the roots that shaped meaning in a transcultural process that generated art along the channels of trade, connecting not only the Netherlands with the Baltic but also Europe with the Far East.

Notes   1 About the visit of William II in Marienburg 1894 cf. Conrad Steinbrecht, “Die Wiederherstellung des Marienburger Schlosses” Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung 16 (1896), 397–399, 405–406 and 411–413, here 413.   2 About the ‘reconstruction’ of Malbork Castle cf. Steinbrecht, “Die Wiederherstellung des Ma­ rienburger Schlosses” (cf. note 1); Barbara Pospieszna, “Karl Schäfer a Conrad Steinbrecht. Z historii idei i praktyki konserwacji zabytków w 2. połowie XIX w. w Prusach” in Dzieło sztuki a konserwacja. Materiały LII Ogólnopolskiej sesji Naukowej SHS, Kraków 20–22 XI 2003, ed. Dariusz Nowacki and Jerzy Żmudziński (Kraków: Stowarzyszenie Historyków Sztuki, 2004), 275– 289.   3 “Und dieses Ordens Haupthaus, Marienburg, war Jahrhundertelang der Mittelpunkt jenes welthistorischen Ereignisses.” Joseph von Eichendorff, Die Wiederherstellung des Schlosses der deutschen Ordensritter zu Marienburg (Berlin: Edition Truso, 2002, first 1844), 5. This and the following translations are by the author.  4 “… eine unwürdige Theatergotik,” Steinbrecht, “Die Wiederherstellung des Marienburger Schlosses” (cf. note 1), 405.   5 “… damit das Deutschthum auf dem strittigen Boden an der Weichsel sich seines älteren Heimathsrechtes und seiner höheren Culturaufgaben bewusst bleibt.” Steinbrecht, “Die Wiederherstellung des Marienburger Schlosses” (cf. note 1), 406. Cf. Heinrich Knapp, Das Schloss Marienburg in Preußen. Quellen und Materialien zur Baugeschichte nach 1456 (Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1990, Univ. Diss. Freie Universität Berlin, 1987), 108.   6 The ‘reconstruction’ of the cloister was undertaken in 1892 (Steinbrecht, “Die Wiederherstellung des Marienburger Schlosses” (cf. note 1), 413). For the adjustments due to the emperor’s frequent visits cf. Knapp, Das Schloss Marienburg (cf. note 5), 108.   7 Cf. Mariusz Mierzwiński, “Die Marienburg” in Marienburg. Das Schloss des Deutschen Ordens, texts: Michał Wożniak, Mariusz Mierzwiński and Mieczysław Haftka; photos: Wacław Górski and Marek Żak (Malbork: Excalibur, 1993), 7–23, here 8.   8 For the Hansa cf. Johannes Schildhauer, The Hansa. History and Culture, trans. Katherine Vanovitch (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1985). For its impact on trade with the Baltic cf. Rolf Hammel-Kiesow and Matthias Puhle, Die Hanse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 110–123, 174–181.   9 Cf. Nikolaus and Rosemarie Zaske, Kunst in Hansestädten (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1985); Die Hanse. Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, ed. Jörgen Bracker, exhibition catalogue (Hamburg: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1989). 10 David Gaimster, “The Baltic Ceramic Market 1200–1600. Measuring Hanseatic Cultural Transfer and Resistance” in Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, vol. 4, Forging European Identities, 1400–1700, ed. Herman Roodenburg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 30–58, 34.

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11 For the following section cf. “Schlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift”, n.s. vol. 1, Jahrbuch des Schlesischen Museums für Kunstgewerbe und Altertümer 1 (1901), 52; Jolanta Sozańska, “Błękitne Niderlandy” Spotkania z zabytkami 9 (2003), 32–34; Magdalena Szmida-Półbratek, Świat zaklęty w błękicie. Pokój Beyersdorfów w pałacu królewskim we Wrocławiu – Die in Azur verzauberte Welt. Beyersdorf-Zimmer im Königsschloss in Breslau (Wrocław: Muzeum Miejskie Wrocławia, 2010). The spreading of Dutch tiles in Wrocław was outlined in an exhibition of the Museum of Architecture, cf. Beata Fekecz-Tomaszewska, Holenderskie płytki ścienne w XVII i XVIII wieku, exhibition catalogue (Wrocław: Muzeum Architektury we Wrocław, 1984). Besides the two above-mentioned scenes there is some similarity in the depictions of Moses Parting the Red Sea and Outing in a carriage (for illustrations cf. Szmida-Półbratek, Świat zaklęty, 31 and 56). 12 Cf. Sozańska, “Błękitne Niderlandy” (cf. note 11), 33; Szmida-Półbratek, Świat zaklęty (cf. note 11), 17. 13 I am grateful to Barbara Pospieszna, Kurt Perrey, Jan Pluis, and Piotr Michał Oczko for helping me find this information and for sharing their partly unpublished knowledge with me. In her article on the whole project of the renovation in Malbork, Pospieszna provides an introduction, cf. Pospieszna, “Karl Schäfer a Conrad Steinbrecht” (cf. note 2), 283–284. She has written about the subject before in the Polish trade magazine Ceramika w Łazience, which I was not able to consult, unfortunately, see Barbara Pospieszna, “Cesarska umywalnia” Ceramika w Łazience 2 (1997), 54–56. 14 For the commercial relations of Gdańsk and the introduction of ‘Delft ties’ in the whole region via this commercial hub cf. Elżbieta Kilarska, Fajanse z Delft w dawnym Gdańsku (Gdańsk: Muzeum Narodowe, 2003), 18–41. A historic survey over the trade connections between Gdańsk and the Netherlands is, among others, given by Lucia Thijssen, 1000 jaar Polen en Nederland (Zutphen: Walburg Press, 1992), 44–51 and in various publications by Maria Bogucka (cf. e.g. the collection of previously published essays in Baltic Commerce and Urban Society, 1500–1700. Gdańsk/Danzig and its Polish Context (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Variorum, 2003)). I am grateful to Piotr Michał Osczko for providing references to historic overviews. 15 Cf. Heinrich Kohlhaussen, ed., Schlesischer Kulturspiegel im Rahmen der Kunstsammlungen der Stadt Breslau (Breslau: Schlesisches Museum für Kunstgewerbe und Altertümer, 1935), “Delfter Fliesen”. 16 See Schlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift (cf. note 11), 52. 17 At any rate, this can be deduced from the two scenes David’s seduction of Batsheba and Balaam and the angel shown on the detail from Malbork castle in fig. 2 and in a like manner found in Wrocław. There are also similarities to models circulating in Rotterdam in the depictions of Jonah and the whale as well as Moses parting the Red Sea, cf. Jan Pluis, Bijbeltegels. Bijbelse voorstellingen op Nederlandse wandtegels van de 17e tot de 20e eeuw – Bibelfliesen. Biblische Darstellungen auf Niederländischen Wandfliesen vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Freundeskreis Heimathaus Münsterland (Münster: Ardey-Verlag, 1994), cat. no. 819, 341, 785–786, cat. no. 651, 309, 767–768, cat. no. 1031, 381, 810, cat. no. 598, 299, 598. 18 For the sugar dish cf. Robert D. Aronson and Suzanne M.R. Lambooy, Dutch Delftware. Facing East. Oriental Sources for Dutch Delftware Chinoiserie Figures (Amsterdam: Aronson Antiquairs, 2010), cat. no. 48, 91. 19 For the growing turnover of Chinese porcelain through the establishment of permanent trade connections cf. Tijs Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company as Recorded in the Dagh Registers of Batavia Castle, those of Hirado and Deshima and Other Contemporary Papers by 1602– 1682 (Leiden: Brill, 1971, repr. of the edition 1954, Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, vol. 11); Brian Shane McElney, Chinese Ceramics and the Maritime Trade pre‒1700, exhibition catalogue (Bath: Museum of East Asian Art, 2006), 34–36; Marion S. van Aken-Fehmers, “Dutch Delftware. The ‘very best’ Imitation of Chinese Porcelain” in Transfer. The Influence of China on World Ceramics, ed. Stacey Pierson (London: University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2009), 93–121. For the emerging trade with tea and the related market for porcelain cf. Martin Krieger, Tee. Eine Kulturgeschichte (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau, 2009), esp. 102–178. 20 Cf. McElney, Chinese Ceramics (cf. note 19), 5–7.

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21 The term was coined only in 1877 by Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen in China. Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien, 5 vols. (Berlin: Reimer, 1877–1912). Cf. Daniel C. Waugh, “Richthofen’s ‘Silk Roads.’ Toward the Archaeology of a Concept”, The Silk Road 5, no. 1 (2007), 1–10. 22 Cf. McElney, Chinese Ceramics (cf. note 19), 6. 23 For the following section cf. Claire Durmortier, Céramique de la Renaissance à Anvers. De Venise à Delft (Brussels: Éditions Racine, 2002). 24 Cf. Durmortier, Céramique de la Renaissance (cf. note 23), cat. 2, 163–165; Christine Lahaussois, ed., Delft––Faïence (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux and Bruxelles: Fonds Mercator, 2008), 22–23. 25 Cf. Karin Annette Möller, “Italienische Majolika in Schwerin” in Von Venedig bis Neapel. Renaissance und Barock in Italien. Sammlungen Malerei, Zeichnung, Plastik, Majolika, ed. Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, exhibition catalogue (Schwerin: Staatliches Museum, 1999), 28–39, here 34–36 and 261, cat. no. 77. 26 Cf. James Clifford, Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1997). 27 Cf. Bernhard Hagedorn, Die Entwicklung der wichtigsten Schiffstypen bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Curtius and Hamburg: Gräfe, 1914), 102–118. 28 Cf. Czesław Biernat, Statystyka obrotu towarowego Gdańska w latach 1651–1815 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1962, Żródła do dziejów handlu i żeglugi Gdańska, vol. 1), plate 14, 177 (seaward import of tiles in the years 1745–1789), plate 35, 244 (export and import of tiles in the years 1794 and 1795), plate 44, 297 (seaward import of goods in the years 1751– 1789). 29 A documentation of material in the National Museum of Gdańsk (exceeding the exhibits) is given in the appendix of Kilarska, Fajanse z Delft (cf. note 14), 178–212. 30 I am thankful to Piotr Michał Oczko for this information. 31 For examples other than his parental house discussed below cf. Johann Carl Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke in malerischen Original-Radierungen mit geometrischen Details und Text (facsimile edition Berlin: Ernst & Korn, 1872), second series [1856], 22, no. 12 (ulica Śwatego Ducha, Heilige Geistgasse 101, 1839); Kilarska, Fajanse z Delft (cf. note 14), 30, fig. 13, 199 (ulica Mariacka, Frauengasse 381, 1843); Piotr Korduba, Patrycjuszowski dom gdański w czasach nowożytnych (Warsaw: Neriton, 2005), figs. 66 and 86. 32 Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke (cf. note 31), 4 with description of plate 8 in the first series [1855]: “Unsere Vorfahren,–sich deutlich bewusst, dass der erste Eindruck ein günstiger sein müsse,–verwandten stets einen grossen, hohen Raum, mit architektonischer Pracht ausgestattet, für ihre Hausflur, das Atrium der Alten.” 33 Ibid.: “… die Wände sind ganz bedeckt mit kleinen, weiss glasirten und blau bemalten holländischen Fliesen.” 34 Both the ‘Delft’ tiles and the rising interest in porcelain took hold at the same time. For the display of ceramics on furniture in patrician houses in Gdańsk cf. Kilarska, Fajanse z Delft (cf. note 14), 113 (explanation of Schultz’s engraving Pfarramts-Stube von St. Barbara, 1868), 25, fig. 7 (Netherlandish cabinet with porcelain on its top), 30, fig. 11 (Chlebnicka 11, Brodgänkengasse 666, 1843) and 12 (ulica Mariacka 18, Frauengasse 853, 1843), 31, fig. 14, plate V (Albert Woycke, Portrait of a Women in a Blue Dress, 1854), cf. Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke (cf. note 31), first series [1855], 4, no. 8 (ulica Długiej 30, Langgasse); third series [1868], 32, no. 6 (ulica Mariacka 18, Frauengasse 18), 35–36, no. 10 (ulica Chlebnickiej 11, Brodbänkengasse); cf. Kilarska, Fajanse z Delft (cf. note 14), 200–202. 35 “Schön geschnitzte Schränke, Tische und andere Möbel, gewöhnlich aus Nussbaum, theilweise von Amaranthen- und Ebenholz, fehlten nie einer solchen Hausflur, und ein Satz Vasen und Becher, entweder von chinesischem bemalten Porzellan oder holländischer Fayence krönten die Schränke und jeden andern Vorsprung.” Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke (cf. note 31), 4. 36 Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke (cf. note 31), 22 with description of plate 12 of the second series (1856): “… namentlich ist hier [in der Hausflur] holländische Reinlichkeit und Sauberkeit vertreten. Die hellen, auf weissem Grunde blau bemalten, glasurten holländischen Fliesen, mit denen die Wände ausgelegt sind, ferner die dunkle gebohnte Treppenanlage von Eichenholz, so wie die ebenso behandelten alten Möbel von Nussbaum, dulden kein Stäubchen, glänzen dem

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Eintretenden entgegen und machen einschliesslich der gemalten Decke ungemein wohlthuende Farben-Contraste und Farbenbestimmungen.” Schultz uses similar formulations for his general remarks on the decoration of patrician houses in Gdańsk and in the description of his parental home, cf. ibid., 4 (description of plate 8 in the first series, 1855), 37 (description of plate 12 in the third series, 1868). In the park palaces of Nymphenburg ‘Delft’ tiles can be found in the parlour of the first floor and the staircase leading to the second floor of Pagodenburg (built 1716–1719), in the spacious bath of Badenburg (built 1718–1722), and in the kitchen of Amalienburg (built 1734–1739). Unfortunately, the original design that was painted in 1717–1719, was subject to significant rework and renewal first by Ambrosius Hörmannstorffer in 1752 and 1768, then by August Schultze in 1870. Cf. Dietrich von Frank, Joseph Effners Pagodenburg. Studien zu einer ‘maison de plaisance’ (München: Tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985, Schriften aus dem Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität München vol. 2). For the ‘Delft’ tiles in Pagodenburg cf. Caroline Henriette de Jonge, “Hollandse tegelkamers in duitse en franse kastelen uit de eerste helft van de 18e eeuw” Nederlands kunsthistorisch jaarboek 10 (1959), 125–209, here 131–138. Cf. Ernst Götz, “The Pagodenburg in the Park of Nymphenburg Palace” in A Taste for the Exotic. Foreign Influences on Early Eighteenth-Century Silk Designs, ed. Anna Jolly (Riggisberg: AbeggStiftung, 2007, Riggisberger Berichte vol. 14), 175–186, here 182–184. Pierre de Bretagne, Rejouissances / Et / Fétes magnifiques / Qui Se sont faites en Baviere l’an 1722 (München: Imprimerie de Marie Magdeleine Riedline Veuve, 1723), 57: “La maison des Indes autrement Pagottembourg est un lieu destiné pour les Princes, pour s’y rafraichir & changer s’ils le souhaittent après avoir joüé au Mail …; cette maison quoique petite est trés commode, & d’un goût merveilleux, le rez de chaussée est compose d’un Sallon, & de deux Cabinets, les plafonds sont peints d’Arabesques & de Mosaïque, Fleurs, & Oiseaux des Indes de toute sorte, avec des figures de la Chine, qui sont comme des Pagottes, ce qui lui a fait donner le nom en Allemand de Pagottembourg.” See Jonge, “Hollandse tegelkamers” (cf. note 39), 131–138. For the bath in Badenburg cf. Gesche von Deessen, Die Badenburg im Park von Nymphenburg (München: Tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986, Schriften aus dem Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität München vol. 9), 53–56. Today, there are considerable collections of Chinese, Netherlandish, and Pomeranian ceramics in these cities, in Gdańsk in the Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku, in Malbork in the Muzeum Zamkowe w Malborku, in Elbląg in the Muzeum Archeologiczo-Historyczne, cf. Mirosław Marcinkowski, Fajans pomorski ze starego miasta w Elblągu (Elbląg: Wydawnictwo Tekst, 2011).

Illustrations Fig. 1: Malbork Castle, cloister, second floor, sink coated with ‘Delft’ tiles, 1893 (reproduced from: Bogusław Świtała and Marisz Mierzwiński, Zamek Krzyżacki w Malborku [Ząbki 2003], fig. 57). Fig. 2: Malbork Castle, cloister, ‘Delft’ tiles from the cloister’s sink, detail (photo: the author). Fig. 3: Solemn Entry of Emperor Wilhelm II in Marienburg/Malbork Castle, 1902 (reproduced from: Hartmut Boockmann, Die Marienburg im 19. Jahrhundert [Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Vienna: Propyläen Verlag] 1982, plate 54). Fig. 4: Blue and white footed sugar dish, Delftware, ca.1690–1710, private collection (reproduced from: Dutch Delftware. Including ‚ ‘Facing East. Oriental Sources for Dutch Delftware Chinoiserie Figures’ and highlights from the Mr. J. Visser Collection, Heemstede, and the Stigter-Gysberti Hodenpyl Collection, Singapore, ed. Robert D. Aronson [Amsterdam: Aronson Antiquairs, 2010], cat. 48, 91). Fig. 5: Giudo Andries, workshop, Majolica pavement of the Abbey of Herkenrode, 1532–1533, Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. 2878 (reproduced from: Delft – Faïence, ed. Christine Lahaussois [Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux and Bruxelles: Fonds Mercator], 2008, 23, fig. 1).

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Fig. 6: Holy Family with Joachim and Anne under a tree, majolica plate from Venice or Urbino, height: 5 cm, diameter: 29.5 cm, ca. 1550, Schloss Güstrow (Mecklenburg), inv. KG 516 (reproduced from: Von Venedig bis Neapel. Renaissance und Barock in Italien. Sammlungen Malerei, Zeichnung, Plastik, Majolika, ed. Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe, exhibition catalogue, Schwerin: Staatliches Museum, 1999, 34). Fig. 7: Albrecht Dürer, Holy Family with Joachim and Anne under a tree, woodcut, 235 × 158 mm, 1511 (reproduced from: Albrecht Dürer. Das druckgraphische Werk, ed. Rainer Schoch, Matthias Mende and Anna Scherbaum, vol. 2: Holzschnitte und Holzschnittfolgen [München, London and New York: Prestel, 2002], cat. 226, 353). Fig. 8: Hanswarft, Hallig Hooge (Schleswig-Holstein), parlour with marine motives on tin-glazed tiles, Harlingen, after 1766, Museum ‘Der Königspesel’ (photo: Maren and Uwe Bendixen). Fig. 9: Johann Carl Schultz, Hall of my parental home in Jopengasse 25 (Ulica Piwneij 25), etching, after 1867, in: Johann Carl Schultz, Danzig und seine Bauwerke (cf. note 31), ser. 3, fig. 12. Fig. 10: Nymphenburg, garden pavillon Pagodenburg, interior of the ground floor, 1716–1719 (photo: the author). Fig. 11: Nymphenburg, garden pavillon Badenburg, bath, 1718–1722 (photo: the author).

Ulrike Boskamp

Suspected Prospects Art, Topography, and Identity in the Portsmouth Area around 1800 The prominent London artist George Morland (1763–1804) spent part of the summer of 1799 working on the Isle of Wight on the south coast of Britain where he frequently sketched the shoreline and its inhabitants. An anecdote, first published shortly after the artist’s death in William Collins’s 1805 biography of Morland, relates how the artist and his companions––a servant and his brother Klob–– were arrested in their rooms in Yarmouth.1 The group were suspected of spying for France. Collins’ gives an account of how Klob defended Morland by trying to prove the purely aesthetic purposes of his sketching to the lieutenant of the local militia: in order to convince him of the absurdity of such groundless suspicions, [Klob] produced several drawings … This proceeding, however, only served to confirm the lieutenant … that they were, in fact, nothing but spies. So that one fine drawing in particular, although it was only of a spaniel dog in a landscape, was construed by the honest lieutenant into a plan of the island, and the dog he was confident represented the very part of it upon which … the enemy were to land.2

The suspicion that Morland was sketching the coastal landscape for military reasons led to surprising interpretations of his other works: Not only was the drawing of a dog suspected of concealing military maps useful for a French invasion of the British coast, so was his oil painting Paying the Horseler (fig. 1, pl. XXIIa).3 But the mystery of an oil painting nearly finished, which they shewed him, was still more ingeniously decyphered. This picture, which has since been engraved, is the celebrated one of the farmer holding his purse, as if considering what he should give the hostler, who stands with his hat in one hand, and the bridle of a white horse over his arm. … The white horse ready bridled and saddled in the stable, he said represented the plan of all the coast of England, which latter place clearly was the stable; the hostler meant the spy or draftsman, who would not give up his work till the enemy paid him. The farmer could be no other but the French agent, who was now in the Channel, reflecting upon the risk he runs of escaping; and therefore, as in the picture, even a private in the ranks may see, is very loth to part with all his money to the spy, as by that means, all hopes of his retreat would certainly be cut off.4

The absurdity of the accusation is heightened by the reinterpretation of the Horseler’s genre imagery as a scene depicting a spying draughtsman selling a map to his

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Fig. 1: George Morland, Paying the Ostler [Horseler], oil on canvas, ca. 1788‒1804, Newcastle, Laing Art Gallery.

French employer whose position is marked as being in the middle of the English Channel. The anecdote tells us that the three men were arrested, that the artworks were confiscated, and that both men and artworks were handed over to the judges at the island’s capital in Newport. Despite a widespread “spymania,” they got off lightly: “… after a very grave admonition from their worships, who very minutely examined every drawing and sketch which had been seized upon to prove the guilt of the prisoners; we say, they received a strict admonitory caution never again to be guilty of such dangerous practices as painting and drawing, during their abode in that island, as long as the war should continue.”5 According to Collins, the artist light-heartedly ignored this judicial instruction: Not only did he continue to sketch picturesque coastal landscapes, he regularly dispatched them to the capital for sale.6 It is not insignificant that Morland was suspected of being a French spy while travelling on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire, an island that is situated opposite the French coast in the English Channel outside the town of Portsmouth and protects

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the entrance to its natural harbour. This area was a highly active, multifunctional hub, a crossroads at land and on sea that was used to transfer and transport people, ships, weapons, provisions, and commodities. In this era Portsmouth was the most important military harbour in Britain, and the point from which the navy’s control of the Channel was orchestrated. The Channel Fleet, destined to defend Britain against a French invasion, was permanently moored in the waters called Spithead between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.7 The largest of the six Royal dockyards, where warships were built and repaired, was also located in Portsmouth. 8 At the same time, the harbour housed thousands of foreigners; prisoners of war from all over Europe who were jailed on prison hulks and in Portchester Castle on a peninsula in the harbour. In addition to these military functions, the area was a highly frequented destination for British tourism, especially during wartime when travelling through Europe became difficult and domestic tourism was deemed patriotic. Thus, the region was characterised by the habitual coexistence of military and civil transfers and transportations, parallel movements that could lead to conflict in wartime. In addition it is situated at the border and contact zone between France and Britain, who were at war not only when the Morland anecdote took place, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793–1801 and 1803–1815 respectively), but had also been adversaries throughout all the military conflicts of the eighteenth century. The threat of a French invasion led to a high alert on these coasts, particularly in the years 1797/98, when the failed attempts on the Irish and Welsh coasts were seen as proof of the French determination to conquer Britain, and again in 1803/04 when Napoleon was preparing the “descente” with his Armée des Côtes de l’Océan based in Boulogne. 9 As a hub on a coastal border during a period of invasion threats, this region facilitates a case-study for the conditions and meanings of artistic practice, in particular the representation of landscape, in a contact zone under pressure, of which the Morland anecdote is a prime example. The historian Renaud Morieux has recently investigated the practices of bilateral relationships and contacts between the French and the British across the Channel during this period. In a careful collection and analysis of the shared history that has been omitted in traditional, identitarian renderings of national histories in both countries, he has been able to demonstrate practices of encounter and habitual exchanges in spite of conflict. He has stressed the role of border-crossing merchant families and smugglers as cultural brokers and “agents of transculturation.”10 His analysis is in accordance with Mary Pratt’s concept of a contact zone as a “social space where cultures meet, clash and grabble with each other,”11 a space whose characteristics include a heightened sense of identities and the negotiations that result. The Morland anecdote presents one such case of negotiation in the art world, where the practice of drawing the coast led to a charge of Frenchness or of loyalty to the French enemy. As a reaction to French invasion threats, British war propaganda and politics very actively countered any such cultural meetings and grabblings. War propaganda worked with the constructions of new national stereotypes by fixing identi-

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Fig. 2: Anonymous, John Bull viewing the preparations on the French coast, coloured etching and aquatint, 1803, London, British Museum.

ties and introducing a binary relationship between the French and the British as opponents and opposites. Visual representations played an important role in this construction, mainly through the medium of caricature, which had gained in popularity by the end of the eighteenth century. As Tamara Hunt has shown, it was during this period that the image of John Bull (fig. 2), the strong, bulky, and simple Briton defending his country with a pitchfork, became the new emblem of middle-class identity.12 John Bull offered a role-model for male British civilians who were organising in local militias to defend their country. 13 He was the opponent of Boney, the small and effeminate caricature image of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was characterised by an “unmanly” tidiness and elegance in uniform and posture and was sometimes accompanied by his equally skinny and inefficient troops.14 The meetings in caricature between these antagonists were usually staged across the Channel coast, mostly from cliffs on either side, which represented the natural––and naturally closed––borders of the their respective habitats and made any crossing appear invasive. These abbreviated topographies of the Channel’s coasts set the stage for the display of identity and difference by connecting national stereotypes with defined areas of land (fig. 3). The largely symbolic renderings of the coastal geography in caricature allude to a novel connection between topography and nationalism that was first analysed by

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Fig. 3: Anonymous, Conversation across the water, coloured etching, 1803/1804, London, British Museum.

Nicholas Alfrey and Stephen Daniels. 15 Their interpretation of the simultaneous rise of map-making and of landscape art in the second half of the eighteenth century situates both techniques in the same historical context of nation-building and the formation of a new British identity that was to visually include Wales and Scotland after the Jacobite upheavals. 16 Ron Broglio has built on these authors in his research on “the meeting of nationalism, cartography, and the picturesque.”17 Thus, the activity of topographical representation, both of mapping and of landscape art, are interpreted as approaches through which a new and unified British identity was constructed. Through visual media, the inhabitants were linked to the topography of the entire country, a unity then serving as a foil for the analogous construction of the French enemy.18 Within the larger framework of an investigation into charges of spying that were levelled against draughtsmen travelling in contact zones and borderlands within Europe, I would like to pose a number of questions about the historical practices of drawing this area, using the Morland anecdote as a point of departure: Which practices of representing the topography can be established in this region; and why, where, and by whom was the topography of the area of Portsmouth represented, mapped, or sketched? How would a draughtsman working for the French have worked and what would he have drawn? Can different drawing practices be distinguished, and was a military drawing even recognisable in its content? Was the

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question of national identity contained or addressed in the production and/or in the reception of these images? Activities of topographic representation can be found in all the different groups of travellers through or temporary inhabitants of this hub around 1800, including members of the military, prisoners of war, French spies, and travelling artists. The investigation into the representations of this limited space in a short period of time will help to facilitate a better understanding of the background to the Moreland anecdote and to see whether the suspicions against the artist had any grounds. In addition, these practices will be examined in order to more generally elucidate the specific conditions of artistic practice in a borderland and to discern what characterises the visual “arts of the contact zone” and the discourse around them. Contemporary artistic practices and textual transmissions like the Morland anecdote form the basis for an investigation into the special arrangement of such regions with respect to visual and artistic representation. It will be investigated whether and how national identities or loyalties were negotiated, and whether the role of travelling artists in such a region may be that of “agents of transculturation.”

Sketching and mapping the Portsmouth area: Visual entanglements in a military hub A landscape painting of 1778 by Dominic Serres (fig. 4, pl. XXIIb) can help to elucidate the topographical situation in the Portsmouth area. The view is taken from the heights of Portsdown Hill, and in the foreground Portchester Castle and a line of prison hulks moored in the natural harbour are visible. Portsmouth town and dockyards, situated on Portsea Island on the left-hand side, are situated opposite the fortified town of Gosport at the harbour’s entrance. In the background the Channel Fleet can be seen anchored in the Spithead between the Isle of Wight and the mainland. In some ways, this painting initiates questions of national identities, since Serres, a French-born artist who had settled in London after arriving in Britain around 1745 (probably) as a prisoner of war, went on to become the most prominent British marine painter of his time.19 The first practice of representation to be presented here is military topographical sketching or mapping. The Morland anecdote made the claim that the artist’s sketching was not at all comparable to these techniques. John Constable voiced an analogous disdain for the military use of “artistic” techniques when he famously declined to work as a drawing master at the military academy at Woolwich in 1802, declaring that “it would have been a death blow to all my prospects of perfection in the Art I love.”20 Still, the anecdote highlights the indistinct line between a landscape sketch made for military or civil––that is, a purely artistic––purposes. One reason for such doubt was that military engineers were often very able draughtsmen: The training at military academies not only included mapping and measuring, but also the drawing techniques that were deemed necessary to create over-

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Fig. 4: Dominic Serres, View from Portsdown Hill overlooking Portsmouth Harbour, oil on canvas, ca. 1778, Hampshire County Council Arts and Museums Service.

views of mapped landscapes for reconnaissance (i.e. spying) and for the preparation of battles.21 In the second half of the eighteenth century, mapping gained a new quality and importance and, according to Stephen Daniels, “helped to coordinate Britain.”22 Until the mid-eighteenth century, British military surveying had lagged very much behind the more advanced techniques used by the French, but from the 1740s onwards, when the British army realised their painful lack of precise cartographic information on Scotland during the Jacobite uprising, they began to develop surveying techniques of their own. Although the military mapping of the British mainland began earlier, it was only in 1791 that the Board of Ordnance initiated the Ordnance Survey as a national, military undertaking to measure and map the whole country at an equalised scale of 1 inch to a mile.23 In the era of a new “enlightened” type of warfare, this exact topographical information was not only deemed necessary for actual fighting, but also for the planning of transportation, refurnishing, and feeding of the troops––in short, for the vital topics of contemporary military discourse, and strategy.24 Two different types of survey were undertaken simultaneously: the trigonometrical survey, which produced an exact measurement by triangulation, resulting in a web of triangles over the whole of Britain; and the topographical, or interior survey, which filled this grid with smaller-scale measurements and local detail.25 The Ordnance Survey’s surveyors travelled to each region of Britain, beginning with the southern coast, to produce detailed information about the areas under direct threat of invasion.26 The Isle of Wight was had an important measuring point for the trigonometrical survey at Dunnose,27 and the interior survey of the Isle of Wight was initiated in 1793. The highly fin-

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Fig. 5: William Gardner, Yarmouth 27A (Ordnance Survey drawings), pen and ink on paper, 1793, London, British Library

ished drawings by William Gardner representing small portions of the island highlight the precision and the perfected use of “artistic” techniques of shading and colouring in this enterprise (fig. 5). The surveyors worked in teams of five and used large measuring equipment for their projects.28 Indeed, after 1801, to mark their service to the war efforts, all surveyors wore uniforms. Two types of records were kept in different notebooks for the topographical survey, a smaller one for the notation of triangulations and measurements, and a larger one for sketches showing overviews of landscapes. The new Ordnance Survey maps, which were originally conceived to aid wars, were also destined for eventual use by the public. But when the maps of the threatened south coast were finished, printed, and ready for public consumption in 1810/11, the government suddenly realised the danger of imparting new and more exact topographical knowledge of Britain to the enemy and halted the sale.29 The second type of draughtsman working in the Portsmouth region in this era was the actual spies in the service of the French. As early as 1762 at the order of the Duc de Choiseul, the French minister of war, and in preparation for a “Descente en Angleterre,” the French military had already produced a precise map of the Portsmouth area and the Isle of Wight.30 Thus, the general topography of the area was well known. Nonetheless, several French reconnaissance ventures to the British southern coast were undertaken during the course of the wars in the second half of the century.31 What a draughtsman spying for the French might represent, how he might work, and how his drawings appeared is a pertinent topic of exploration. It seems that the aim of spying was usually to procure visual details that would answer

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to specific problems: details of defence architectures, especially newly built ones, of possible invasion beaches, and of routes and roads across the country. An excellent example of French spy fieldwork, although executed slightly earlier, is the singularly well-documented reconnaissance voyage undertaken by the French engineer Colonel de Béville, who spent two months secretly mapping and investigating the south coast of England in 1768. 32 He returned to Paris, where he supplied the war archives with 22 precisely detailed and annotated maps of sites of strategic importance and of beaches along the south coast of Britain that could accommodate possible invasion ships, as well as an extensive “mémoire” proposing three different scenarios for invasion. Béville’s marching orders, given by the minister of war, the Duc de Choiseul, provide us with information on the aims, techniques, and practices of a French spying draughtsman. The aim of Béville’s mission was clear: He was instructed to find landing places for the French boats on the British south coast: “His main mission is to reconnoitre which is the part of the British coasts where an invasion would best succeed, and from where an army could move most easily into the interior of England.” 33 Béville’s interest centred on the Portsmouth area, and the invasion plans he developed were focused on the capture of Portsmouth town, harbour, and especially of the dockyards. Thus, his largest and most elaborate map was devoted to Portsmouth (fig. 6, pl. XXIIIa).34 Béville’s proposition was to land the French army on small beaches in the surrounding country and then to capture the town from the land by marching troops down from Portsea hill in the north. However, he had two significant concerns, the greatest being a potentially disruptive bottleneck that could form on the fortified bridge connecting Portsmouth island with the mainland. With this in mind he carefully drew and described the details of this bridge’s fortification. Comparing his plan with the 1762 French military map, it is clear that the fortifications had changed considerably in the elapsed time. Béville’s second concern was to locate sites that were appropriate for a landing. One possibility was the small fishing town of Littlehampton, and he produced a precise map detailing the exact shape and angles of its beaches.35 There is also some information on the working practices applied by Béville on his mission. At the end of his instructions, Choiseul remarks: As the care and discretion that such a commission demands are natural for Sr. de Béville, it would be useless to warn him about the attention given to the actions of strangers, and especially of Frenchmen, he must continually be on his watch and avoid carrying anything written or sketched on his person that could lead to the slightest suspicion; [but] engraved maps and plans from the country itself will not [be suspicious], and they will help him to fix his observations and allow him to achieve a state [of mind] from which to compose the memoirs that he is to deliver on his return. 36

As a result, every single one of Béville’s maps noted not only its date but also affirmed that he had produced it from memory––as instructed––, and not on the spot. The map of Portsmouth, for instance, is inscribed: “Figured from memory on

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Fig. 6: After Colonel de Béville, Plan de la Ville, du Port, et des Chantiers de Portsmouth, pen, ink, and watercolour on paper, after 1768, London, National Archives.

the 2nd and 3rd October 1768.”37 According to his official report, Béville was reconnoitering in Portsmouth on these dates. It follows that a French spy did not sketch in the open like a travelling artist. Because of the great danger of being found out, he would memorise what he saw while walking about places of interest and would draw his maps afterwards, probably sending them off immediately in the post in order to remain free of any suspicious evidence that could expose him. Many drawings of the Portsmouth area and the Isle of Wight were produced by artists who were travelling as tourists and were part of the larger British craze for picturesque travelling in the late eighteenth century. This aesthetically motivated travel and art practice sought new destinations within the country, with a notable preference for wild and “original” places.38 The picturesque movement created a boom of inland tourism, which provided a viable alternative to the Grand Tour and to Italy and was particularly important during wartime when it became difficult to leave Britain. One effect of and motivation for this new type of travel was a heightened national pride and patriotism.39 National identity was found in what was interpreted as the original wildness of rough landscapes, and in the strength and simplicity of the country people who lived in them. Travellers, mostly from the capital, visited picturesque destinations in search of unsullied perspectives onto an older, more original, and united country. An unprecedented rise of landscape art, especially of watercolour, went hand-in-hand with this kind of tourism, transforming these experiences into a collective and metropolitan art experience. Certain travel routes were quickly canonised and shaped into “picturesque tours,” which were made accessible by a touristic infrastructure that included printed maps and

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Fig. 7: Thomas Girtin, Porchester Castle from the North-East, graphite on paper, ca. 1797, London, Tate.

guides, and could be visited alone or in small groups.40 The Portsmouth area was one such destination; the first travel guide for this area was published in 1775.41 There were two picturesque highlights on this tour: the medieval Portchester Castle situated on a peninsula in Portsmouth’s natural harbour and the Isle of Wight with its varied coasts and beaches. Portchester Castle, a large and austere coastal fortress built after the Norman conquest on a Roman site, held great appeal for picturesque travellers because of its ancient, overgrown grandeur, which evoked the heroic history of early Britain and its powers of defence against invaders from the sea. One highly characteristic view of it was sketched by the London artist Thomas Girtin, who took the trip in 1797 (fig. 7). Another example from these years is a print made by Edward Orme in 1799.42 Both images provide close views of the castle by situating the building in the middle ground, a characteristic visual strategy of picturesque landscape art43 that differed markedly from open classical landscape views. The Isle of Wight, on the other hand, provided a number of coastal features of sublime grandeur including wild beaches with steep cliffs, large rocks, and caves. By the 1790s, a canon of the most important of these features was established in various guides and in copiously illustrated publications44 about the places that were visited by most travelling draughtsmen. George Morland’s biographer John Hassel

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Fig. 8: Philippe de Loutherbourg, View of Shanklin Chine, Isle of Wight, pen, ink, and grey wash over graphite, 1794, London, British Museum.

writes that the artist started out from Freshwater on the island’s south coast and “made innumerable sketches, and indeed through all the tract extending from thence to Black Gang Chine, Undercliffe, Steephill, Bonchurch, and as far as Shanklin.”45 Contemporaries would probably have understood which types of coastscape were meant by each of these titles. While Morland’s own landscape drawings from the Isle of Wight are lost today, a watercolour, probably painted on the spot by another prominent French-born London artist, the stage painter Philippe de Loutherbourg who travelled to the Isle of Wight in 1794, depicts a characteristic view of Shanklin Chine (fig. 8, pl. XXIIIb). While picturesque views alluded to the grandeur or originality of British history through land- and seascapes, and can therefore be interpreted as part of a patriotic visual culture and discourse that was boosted by the wars,46 the actual military aspects of these regions, especially the fortifications and the military architecture, are generally and pointedly absent, both from the sketchbooks of travellers and from the illustrations in contemporary travelogues and guidebooks. For example, Thomas Girtin’s view of Portchester Castle (see fig. 7) completely omitted the thousands of French prisoners of war held there, as well as the barracks and the wooden prison fences that had been put up around it. It seems that such features only gained visibility in the work of artists serving the British military. One of the places generally not represented by picturesque travel-

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Fig. 9: John Wells after Richard Livesay, Grand Review at Sandham [Sandown] Bay in the Isle of Wight on the 4th June 1798, coloured aquatint, 1800, London, British Library.

lers was Sandown Fort on the Isle of Wight. While the island was considered a natural stronghold against the French because of its steep hills and stony beaches, the 1775 guidebook reveals that Sandown Bay was the one exception to this rule: “The extremities of the land are for the most part a natural fortification of rocks and cliffs. There is one place on the south-east part, which lies open to the incursions of an enemy, but this is strongly fortified by art.”47 A view of Sandown Bay presenting the coastal landscape as a backdrop for both the fortress and the local defence forces was published in 1799 by Richard Livesay, an artist from London who had been appointed drawing master at the Naval Academy at Portsmouth the year before (fig. 9).48 Livesay invokes the threat of invasion in his depiction of the reviews of the local militia, a display of citizenship and defence capacities. 49 A watercolour of the same piece of land with the fortress in full view was painted by Captain John Durrant, an amateur artist.50 Durrant also produced a series of watercolour sketches of Portchester Castle, where he worked from about 1802 to 1813, again showing those aspects that picturesque travellers left out of their pictures (fig. 10); namely, the fences and newly built barracks in the area of the castle, and the activities of the prisoners and of the soldiers in and around it.

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Fig. 10: John Durrant, Small Tower, & Court – Portchester Castle, watercolour, 1802‒1813, Captain Durrant Collection, Hampshire Museums.

Thus, in their artwork, members of the military stationed in the Portsmouth area represented those military sights that travelling artists did not record. While it is possible that artists did not consider these views sufficiently picturesque, it is more likely that it was simply too dangerous to produce such views, which could easily be misinterpreted as espionage. The views of Portsmouth harbour made by French prisoners of war, the last group of contemporary representations of this area, are of particular interest as regards the question of national identity and the representation of the landscape. Between 1793 and 1815 approximately 360,000 prisoners of war went through Portsmouth, these were not just French, but also Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, American, Russian, Greek, Croat, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Polish.51 They lived either in Portchester Castle and the large wooden barracks built around it for this purpose, or on prison hulks, the unrigged and decommissioned warships that were anchored on long chains in the harbour. The earliest representation of this situation, a watercolour probably made by a French ex-prisoner, shows the view from Portchester Castle looking out at Portsmouth over the harbour and its sandbanks (fig. 11, pl. XXIVa). It is titled in French: Vue du Port de Portsmouth Gosport L’isle D’Huite et les Prisons Flotantes. All sights and landmarks, churches, the towns,

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Fig. 11: H. G., Vue du Port de Portsmouth, Gosport, l’Isle d’Huite et les Prisons Flotantes, watercolour, 1802, New York, Graham Arader Gallery.

and the prominent ships are numbered and identified in the caption at the bottom of the piece, also in French; it is signed with initials and dated: “H.G. le 10 juin 1802.” The piece, about which nothing more is known, was finished shortly after the Peace of Amiens was signed on March 25, 1802, which was followed by a release of the prisoners of war. It seems that its painter was an amateur: the line of the prison hulks in the foreground is arranged in a simple parallel to the painting’s edges, without much reference to the conventions of artistic landscape or marine painting. The view onto the extensive sandbanks that cover most of the middle ground reveal a more documentary than professional approach to imagemaking. As the picture does not carry any particularly detailed information on weapons, troops, or fortifications, it is probably not the product of military espionage but perhaps a picture painted from memory by a liberated French prisoner of war. The work of the French painter Louis Garneray, who was imprisoned on a hulk from 1806 to 1814, opens up questions regarding identity on various levels.52 Descended from a family of painters, Garneray had joined the French navy as a young man. He was taken as a prisoner of war in 1806 by the Cape Verde Islands, lived on the hulks in Portsmouth until the end of the war, and, according to his autobiography “Mes Pontons,”published in 1851, taught himself to paint while

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Fig. 12: Ambrose-Louis Garneray, Prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour, oil on canvas, ca. 1810, London, National Maritime Museum.

imprisoned.53 From his work during this period about 20 paintings survive, all of which depict the same view of Portsmouth harbour and a line of prison boats looking out at Portsmouth, Gosport, and the Isle of Wight (fig. 12, pl. XXIVb).54 Compared with H.G.’s view, it is very clear that Garneray was working within a tradition of pictorial intelligence and culture that he had acquired previously. All of his representations of Portsmouth Harbour arrange the hulks in dynamic diagonals, leading the eye through the painting and the harbour to its exit. Garneray varied the lighting, the weather conditions, the detail, and the British vessels in the background, but otherwise his motif and scale remained fixed. The chain of unrigged ships, motionless upon the water under an enormous open sky, forms an ornamental band towards the open sea. In this context, the hulks––terrible places to live, according to the artist’s autobiography––acquire a serene beauty. Garneray claimed that his paintings sold well through different art dealers in Portsmouth who came to collect his work regularly. One possible reason for the British appreciation of these paintings must have been the melancholic and proto-romantic melange of maritime painting with an iconography of imprisonment and desolation, which was probably heightened by the knowledge that these British land- or seascapes had been painted by a captured Frenchman living on a prison hulk. To the buyers of his art, the paintings might have represented on the one hand an appreciation of the still widely acknowledged superiority of French painting, and on the other a triumph over an exemplar of this culture. Still, while these pictures bear witness to both the blending of the military and the artistic contexts, as well as to contacts and exchanges between the British and the French as a consequence of war imprisonment, the theme of national identities is very subtle. With reference to the workings of the hub around him that form part of his pictures, Garneray reveals the forced immobility of a military prisoner, which is emphasised by the motionlessness of the hulks in the foreground, and referenced by his practice of repeating the same motif over and over. The prisoner’s own mo-

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bility remains imaginary, his gaze following the route of the ships, towards freedom and France. The exemplary exploration of the different topographical representations of the Portsmouth region during a short time span around 1800 has shown that in most of these cases and genres, the French enemy formed a palpable presence: The threat of invasion either gave the impetus for these representations, as was the case with military mapping and French espionage, or was the reason for the presence of the British military stationed in the area, whose subjects in turn show the military reaction to invasion threats. Likewise, in the case of the travelling artists, the war and invasion threat gave the backdrop for the picturesque and patriotic interest in sites like Portchester Castle. Finally, the actual existence of the French enemy formed a more concrete and complex presence, as found in the art of French prisoners held in Portsmouth. Up to this point the mingling and grabbling between members of the contact zone and the question of national identities have only remotely been touched upon, particularly in the last example of Garneray, and have been merely hinted at in the surprising presence of a number of French-born British artists. The review of the visual testimonials from a contact zone under military pressure points towards a more complicated, multi-layered situation than was suggested by the images created within the binary structure of national identities created by war propaganda. In the following, the textual transmissions of the Morland anecdote and other similar anecdotes broaching the issue of artistic landscape drawing in the coastal contact zone will be investigated to complement the picture.

Artist’s anecdotes as texts about the contact zone An understandig of the different contemporary practices of representing the Portsmouth area is useful for a better understanding of the Morland anecdote.55 Comparing Morland’s work practice and subject matter with that of military draughtsmen and in particular with the practice and the subject matter of the actual French spy leads to the conclusion that a spy most likely would not have sketched the landscape openly or worked on the spot at all, as Morland did. Certainly a spy would not have been interested in representing the beaches of the Isle of Wight, which were clearly unsuitable for a landing in the case of an invasion. Whether or not a spy would have used the complicated device of hiding a military representation of the area behind an artistic one must remain open to speculation. The charges levelled against Morland were related to a practice called steganography, which stems from early cryptographic literature and seems to have been introduced into a military context in the seventeenth century.56 The practice involves the embedding of either images or text into images, with the purpose of transferring visual or textual information unnoticed and unsuspected. The Morland anecdote proves that the technique had gained notoriety around 1800, but nothing seems to be known

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as yet about the actual military uses of this pictorial device.57 At the same time, the accusations against the artist are reminiscent of the use of zoomorphic or anthropomorphic maps in contemporary caricature, for example the 1791 image of a united Britannia enthroned on a fish (fig. 13).58 The anecdote’s focus on the ignorance of the locals who were unable to distinguish between different practices of visual representation––that is, between spy work and art work––points to a different aspect of social contact: the meeting between metropolitan travellers and the inhabitants of the area. In his anecdote, the aesthetically educated, urban author William Collins states very clearly that he does not admire the patriotism and straightforward simplicity of the rural John Bulls on the Isle of Wight. Quite to the contrary, his text exposes the guileless patriotism of the rural population and the local authorities and the xenophobia created by war propaganda, which led to the identification of Morland as an agent of the French. As such, this anecdote is clearly a report from a contact zone, but here the actual mingling takes place between city and country people, and is described from the point of view of the city. The (mutual) enemy––France––is only present as a threatening phantasm, one that has triggered overblown fears and led to false accusations by the rural militia. The Morland anecdote is one of a large group of similar anecdotes about the confusion between spy and artist that reach back to sixteenth-century Italy.59 In Britain, the anecdote about William Hogarth, who was arrested for sketching in Calais in 1748, is a very prominent example of this confusion, as is his famous picture and print O the roast beef of old England, where the topic was clearly national identity and the difference between the French and the British.60 In the second half of the eighteenth century the practice of picturesque travelling led to an apex of such accusations and anecdotes, particularly during wartime.61 Indeed, the author of the Percy Anecdotes, published in 1820, emphasises this connection: The time of the threatened invasion of England by the French, was a sad time for the hunters of the picturesque, more especially along the coasts. To be caught taking a sketch of even an old pigstye, was enough in some instances to get seized and carried before a magistrate as a French spy, engaged in stealing plans of all the strong points of the country; and as magistrates are not in all parts much more sensible than the ignorant rustics they keep in order, it happened more than once, that professional ardour was sent to cool itself within the walls of a gaol.62

Picturesque travels seem to have led to meetings between different inhabitants of Britain, in which the strangeness of the wandering artist was frequently interpreted as a national difference, an imaginary that was also present through the images of war propaganda. Two more examples corroborate this. A case in which the anecdote of the spying accusations was set to poetry can be seen in that of Michael Angelo Rooker, which took place in the village of Bungay in Suffolk, near the British east coast. Samuel Ashby, a local gentleman who had witnessed the incident, published his account in 1810 as “The True Story” in the

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Fig. 13: G. M. (attr. to James Gillray), Britannia, hand-coloured etching and aquatint, 1791, London, National Portrait Gallery.

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Gentleman’s Magazine.63 In his introductory verse, the wandering artist’s appearance of poverty and malnutrition overlaps with the national stereotype of the skinny Frenchman: From London came an Artist of the Brush, / And through the country made pedestrian push / For subjects new—as landscapes, ruins, charts, / Majestic oaks, and castles; and, perchance, / Poor, hungry biped! just as if from France! / He hop’d to find, along his dirty dance, / Food for himself as well as for the Arts!

What the anecdote––told at epic length––highlights is the contact between the cultivated artist and the narrow-minded country people. The travelling draughtsman is threatened with prosecution under the vagrant act, and then required to swear to his British identity by one of his accusers: He thus: ‘Sir Painter, to be plain, we doubts / That you design, by lurking hereabouts, / To map our forts and harbours, sound our moats; / While thus, to blind us harmless country-folks, / You sham to draw old antient walls and oaks, / Anon to show the French to cut our throats. / We’re loyal friend! your looks betray the spy! / These gem’men all think so—and so thinks I! / You ’fore our Justus must disprove the fact; / Swear you are he his-self, the painter Rooker; / If not—God bless the King! we must, odzooker! / Straitway commit you on the vagrant act.’ / The Painter then, ‘Most worthy sirs! I prize / You much, you are so loyal and so wise; / I joy our gracious King such subjects rules. / Now to his Worship; pray debate no further; / I’ll swear I am myself, and not another: / That asses still are asses, fools are fools.’

The “gentleman” author Ashby marks difference not only through his ridicule of the misinterpretation of the itinerant artist’s mission and identity, but adds distance through the accent and choice of vocabulary given to the rural persecutors. The last anecdote from the Reminiscences of Henry Angelo is also from the Isle of Wight. It was published in 1830, but takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and in a climate of invasion threats––that is, between 1803 and 1805.64 Angelo reports that the watercolourist John Alexander Gresse and another artist were accused by local fishermen of being spies when found sketching on the rugged cliffs at Shanklin Chine (see fig. 8, pl. XXIIIb). The second artist, who was as long and thin as Gresse was stout, was spotted first. He was immediately identified as a Frenchman and attacked with stones. Gresse intervened in a peculiar way: He presented his belly to the fishermen, shouting: “Away with ye, smugglers––rogues!––Does this look like any thing French?”65 Gresse’s corpulent body, for which he was nicknamed “John Grease,” sufficed as proof of his Britishness.66 Presented on the threatened coastline, this belly assumed its meaning from the iconographic arsenal of contemporary caricature (fig. 14) and transformed the artist into John Bull. From the safety of this persona, his assessment of the aggressors as smugglers or rogues reduced the local fishermen to mixed and impure inhabitants of the contact zone. The travelling draughtsman in this case claimed the identity of the true, original Briton, and was able to vouch for his skinny friend. The gesture is a particularly telling one as it is used here by an immigrant of the second generation: Gresse was raised in London, but his family had moved there from the French-speaking part

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Fig. 14: Piercy Roberts, National Contrasts or Bulky and Boney, coloured etching, 1804, London, British Museum.

of Switzerland just before his birth. The anecdote claims his use of the persona of John Bull as a costume or a masque, the evocation of a collective imaginary and identity through his physique. The Morland anecdote as well as the other artist’s anecdotes about accusations of spying in the late eighteenth century involve negotiations about art and non-art, but are clearly about identity and difference. Yet in these examples, the issue of national difference is more than counterbalanced by that of social difference. The blind spot in these texts ridiculing the fears of the rural population seems to be a lack of awareness about the possibility that such accusations may have been accurate. As the reports about Napoleonic spies in Spain suggest, the use of historic practices of ruse, hiding, and masquing in military reconnaissance may well have included spies posing as artists. 67

Conclusion Returning to the questions posed at the beginning of this paper, a few clarifications can be made about the special conditions of artistic production in the Portsmouth area as an exemplary hub or contact zone under pressure. For a start, military con-

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flict and the threat of invasion led to a need for images of the region, which was followed by extensive military mapping and imaging both by the British and the French military. In the wake of this, a heightened sense of the power of the image in military conflict seems to have spread and led to various restraints and obstructions being placed on artistic production. Thus, the close reading of the topographical images of this area, and their contexts, shows them to bear witness of the political situation: Their production was either triggered by it, or they present, or pointedly omit, the signs and sightings of war and the enemy. With regard to the anecdotes on the confusion of military and artistic purposes of imaging, on the one hand, it has become clear that the practices and the subject matter of a spying draughtsman would have differed from that of an artist. On the other hand, a parallel between the mobilities of the art world and of the military world can be assessed: In both fields draughtsmen followed itineraries that were closely related to London, where artist’s wanderings and the military mappings were initiated, and the visual materials produced in the course of the travels to and around the periphery were brought back in order to be filed, presented, processed, or collected. Accordingly, draughtsmen and artists were metropolitans from the capital or foreigners, either itinerant, passing through the hub in connection with one of its functions like the military mapmakers, the spies, or the picturesque travellers, or themselves immobilised in this centre of high mobility, like the prisoners of war and the members of the military. The locals, pointedly absent from image production, are characterised in the anecdotes from the metropolitan point of view as “Others,” and are identified by their naiveté and their mistakes in the ascription of enemy nationality or loyalty to the itinerant imagemakers. Thus, the anecdotes do reveal some of the “meeting and grabbling” that was initiated by the artistic production of landscape sketches. Although the artists can positively be characterised as agents of transculturation, while the binary national differences created by war propaganda are played with here, they are not of primary interest. What is at stake (first negotiated and then fixed) in these texts is the division and social hierarchy within British society, a hierarchy here underscored by members of the educated society of the city––of which artists born in France seem to have formed a part quite naturally. In this process, acted out in the threatened borderland, the image and imaginary of the French serves as a strong catalyst for establishing social identity within Britain. Finally, the attempt to collect and analyse visual and textual evidences on the roughly simultaneous but differently motivated practices of rendering the topography of a delimited border region under military threat, also serves as a trial run in the search for new questions, methods, and categories for art historical research in a transcultural context. The concept of the contact zone, both in its social and its spatial implications, connects the micro-historical examples cited above, and makes it possible to characterise and specify it in relation to artistic production. The practice of sketching the landscape here provides the cause of the contacts, clashes, and misunderstandings, and is accompanied by ascriptions and negotiations of identities or loyalties that are characteristic for such a zone.

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Notes   1 William Collins, Memoirs of a Picture: containing the adventures of many conspicuous characters and interspersed with a variety of amusing anecdotes of several very extraordinary personages connected with the arts: including a genuine biographical sketch of that celebrated original and eccentric genius, the late Mr. George Morland, 2 vols. (London: C. Stower, 1805), 2: 107–112. Other contemporary versions of the anecdote: John Hassell, Memoirs of the life of the late John Morland (London: J. Cundee and C. Chapple, 1806), 38–40; George Dawe, The Life of George Morland (first ed. 1807; London: T. Werner Laurie, 1900), 84–85.  2 Collins, Memoirs of a Picture (cf. note 1), 108–109.   3 George Morland, Paying the Ostler [Horseler], ca. 1788–1804, oil on canvas, 71.9 × 92.4 cm, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle.  4 Collins, Memoirs of a Picture (cf. note 1), 109.  5 Collins, Memoirs of a Picture (cf. note 1), 110. Other versions claim that the three men were only released after surety was given by the local doctor, Lynn, or after presenting a letter of introduction from him. See Dawe, The Life of George Morland (cf. note 1), 85; Ralph Richardson, George Morland, painter, London (1763–1804) (London: E. Stock, 1895), 76.  6 Collins, Memoirs of a Picture (cf. note 1), 114.  7 The Channel Fleet and the Blockade of Brest, 1793–1801, ed. Roger Morris (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).   8 Roger Morriss, The royal dockyards during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), 2.   9 Robert Knight, Britain against Napoleon. The Organisation of Victory 1793–1815 (London: Penguin, 2013); Norman Longmate, Island Fortress. The Defence of Great Britain 1603–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1991), 258–300; Harold F.B. Wheeler and Alexander M. Broadley, Napoleon and the invasion of England. The Story of the Great Terror (1908) (repr. Chalford: Nonsuch Publishing, 2007). 10 Renaud Morieux, Une mer pour deux royaumes. La Manche, frontière franco-anglaise (XVVe–XVIIIe siècles) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 241–273, 334–336. See also Patricia Crimmin, “The Channel’s strategic significance: invasion threat, line of defence, prison wall, escape route” in The Channel in the eighteenth century: bridge, barrier and gateway. Transactions of the Anglo-French Colloquium held at the University of Southampton 20–23 September 1988 (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 292), ed. John Falvey and William Brooks (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1991), 67–79. “Agents of Transculturation: Border-Crossers, Mediators, Go-Betweens” was the title of an international symposium on these figures held at the University of Rostock in 2011, organised by the Graduiertenkolleg “Kulturkontakt und Wissenschaftsdiskurs.” 11 Mary Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone” in Profession. Modern Language Association of America (1991), 33–40, 34. 12 Tamara Hunt, Defining John Bull. Political Caricature and National Identity in Late Georgian England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 13 Mark Philp, ed., Resisting Napoleon: The British response to the threat of invasion, 1797–1815 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Austin Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 1794–1814 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); John E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1793–1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Erin MacCawley Renn, British civil and military preparations against Napoleon’s planned invasion, 1803–1805 (Ann Arbor: Univ. Microfilms Internat., 1971). 14 Alexandra Franklin and Mark Philp, Napoleon and the Invasion of Britain (Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2003), 13–14. It was the visual image of the buoyish, malicious and hungry Frenchman apparently invented by Hogarth and frequently used in war propaganda that entered into the image of Boney. See Peter Wagner, “The Artistic Framing of English Nationalism in Hogarth’s The Gate of Calais, or the Roast Beef of Old England” in Better in France? The Circulation of Ideas across the Channel in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Frédéric Ogée (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2005), 81–87; see also Peter Wagner, “The continental Foreigner in Hogarth’s Graphic Art” in La Grande-Bretagne et l’Europe des Lumières, ed. Serge Soupel (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1996), 107–132.

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15 Stephen Daniels, “Re-visioning Britain: Mapping and Landscape Painting, 1750–1820” in Glorious Nature. British Landscape Painting 1750–1850 (London and New York: Zwemmer, 1993), 61–71, 61; Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision. Landscape Imagery & National Identity in England & the United States (Oxford: Polity Press, 1993); and Nicholas Alfrey, “Landscape and the Ordnance Survey, 1795–1820” in Mapping the Landscape. Essays on Art and Cartography, ed. Nicolas Alfrey and Stephen Daniels (Nottingham: University Art Gallery/ Castle Museum, 1990), 23–55, 23. 16 Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 3rd revised edition, 2009). 17 Ron Broglio, Technologies of the Picturesque. British Art, Poetry and Instruments, 1750–1830 (Bucknell University Press: Lewisburg, 2008), 52. 18 For an interpretation of seascapes of the Channel coast painted around 1800 as patriotic imagery, see Christiana Payne, Where the sea meets the land: artists on the coast in nineteenth-century Britain (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2007), 67–73. 19 Alan Russett, Dominic Serres, R.A., 1719–1793: war artist to the Navy (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2001), 14–15. 20 Quoted after Paul Gough, “‘Calculating the Future.’ Panoramic Sketching, Reconnaissance Drawing and the Material Trace of War” in Contested Objects: Material Memories of the Great War, ed. Nicholas J. Saunders and Paul Cornish (London: Routledge, 2009), 237–251, 238. 21 The military academy in Woolwich, founded in 1741, required its drawing masters to “teach the method of Sketching Ground, the taking of Views, the drawing of Civil Architecture and the Practice of Perspective.” The two distinct types of drawing actually used were (1) sketches made during mobile reconnaissance, used to record intelligence about enemy positions and key terrain; and (2) panoramas from a static position commanding an uninterrupted view of the enemy front, used to indicate targets and determine range and arc of fire. See Paul Gough, “Calculating the Future” (cf. note 20), 237–238. 22 Quoted after Broglio, Technologies of the Picturesque (cf. note 17), 53. 23 Rachel Hewitt, Map of a Nation: a Biography of the Ordnance Survey (London: Granta, 2010); Tim Owen and Elaine Pillbeam, Ordnance Survey. Map Makers to Britain since 1791 (London: HMSO, 1991). 24 Patrick J. Speelman, Henry Lloyd and the military Enlightenment of Eighteenth-Century Europe (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2002). 25 W. A. Seymour, ed., A History of the Ordnance Survey (Folkestone: Dawson, 1980), 44–45. 26 Owen and Pillbeam, Ordnance Survey. (cf. note 23), 13. 27 See William Mudge and Edward Williams, “A Plan of the Principal Triangles in the Trigonometrical Survey 1791–1794” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1795), Tab. XLVI, 592; reproduced in Hewitt, Map of a Nation (cf. note 23), 132–133. 28 Seymour, A History of the Ordnance Survey (cf. note 25), 48. 29 Alfrey, “Landscape and the Ordnance Survey” (cf. note 15), 25. 30 Jacques Bellin, Carte Reduite de l’Isle de Wight et Costes Voisines depuis Selsey jusqu’a la Pointe Peverel, avec les portes rades et mouillages et le deteil de l’interieur du pais, dressee au depost des Cartes Plans et Journaux de la Marine, pour le service des vaisseaux du roy. Par ordre de M. le duc de Choiseul Ministre de la Guerre et de la Marine., engraved by Raineau, published at the Depot de la Marine, Paris, France, 1762. (scale about 2 inches to 1 league, 2 statute miles to 1 inch), http://www.geog. port.ac.uk/webmap/hantscat/html/h0107445.htm; accessed January 1, 2014). 31 Another prominent but early case is that of the Welsh-born military engineer and war theoretician Henry Lloyd who had reconnoitered the Welsh and Channel coasts for the French in 1754 while disguised as a priest, and in 1756, disguised as a tradesman, see Patrick J. Speelman, ed., War, Society and Enlightenment. The Works of General Lloyd (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 323. 32 For Béville, see Margaret Cotter Morison, “The Duc de Choiseul and the Invasion of England, 1768–1770” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd series, vol. 4 (1910), 83–115, 94–100. 33 Instruction pour le Sr de Béville L.t colonel des dragons, chargé de faire une reconnoissance en angleterre, London, National Archives, PRO 30/8/86, Item no. 3: “Sa mission de borne est reconnoistre quelle est la partie des côtes Britanniques, ou une descente pourroit le plustot reussir, et d’ou une armée se porterait le plus facilement dans l’interieur de l’angleterre.” This and the following translations from the French are by the author.

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34 The map illustrated here is a British copy of the original map in the French war archive from the British National Archives where there are a number of copied French documents about an invasion from the papers of Lord Chatham (William Pitt the Elder) who probably procured them from the French War Office through counter-intelligence. See Cotter Morison, “The Duc de Choiseul and the Invasion of England” (cf. note 32), 106–107. For the development of the invasion plan of 1779, which was taken up by Napoleon later, and for Béville’s role and also his maps, see A. Temple Patterson, The other Armada. The Franco-Spanish attempt to invade Britain in 1779 (Manchester: The University Press, 1960), 1–20, esp. 10. 35 Colonel de Béville, Sussex: River Arun, London, National Archives, MF 1/54/14, planche 12. 36 Instruction pour le Sr de Béville (cf. note 33): “La prudence, et la discretion, qu’exige une pareille commission estant naturelles au Sr. de Béville il seroit inutil de le prevenir sur l’attention qu’en Angleterre on donne aux démarches des etrangers, et surtout des francois, il doit estre continuellement sur ses gardes, et eviter d’avoir rien d’ecrit ou de dessiné sur luy capable de donner le moindre soupcon; les cartes, et les plans graves, et du pays, ne sont pas dans ce cas, et luy suffiront pour fixer ses observations et le mettre en etat de former a son retour les memoires qu’il a fournir.” 37 “Figuré de memoire les 2 et 3 Octobre 1768.” 38 The vocabulary of the picturesque was laid out by William Gilpin who published the illustrated diaries from his travels around Britain after 1782. See Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape, Aesthetics and Tourism in England 1760–1800 (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1989), 57–66. 39 Broglio, Technologies of the Picturesque (cf. note 17). 40 Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque (cf. note 38) describes some of these tours in detail. 41 R. Carr, The Portsmouth Guide; or, a description of the ancient and present state of the place (…) (Portsmouth: R. Carr, 1775). 42 Edward Orme, after William Orme, Porchester Castle, 1799, hand-coloured mezzotint, London, British Museum (online collection). 43 Hein-Thomas Schulze Altcappenberg, “Le Voltaire de l’art.” Johann Georg Wille (1715–1808) und seine Schule in Paris. Studien zur Künstler- und Kunstgeschichte der Aufklärung (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 1987), 131. 44 John Hassell, Tour of the Isle of Wight, the drawings taken and engraved by J. Hassell, 2 vols. (London: John Jarvis, 1790); Charles Tomkins, A tour to the Isle of Wight, 2 vols. with 80 illustrations (London: G. Kearsley, 1796); John Bullar, A Historical and Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (Southhampton: Baker and Fletcher, 1806). 45 John Hassell, Memoirs of the life of the late John Morland (London: J. Cundee and C. Chapple, 1806), 38–40. 46 Christiana Payne, “Our English coasts: defence and national identity in nineteenth-century Britain” in Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge, ed. Tricia Cusack (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012); see also Payne, Where the sea meets the land: artists on the coast in nineteenth-century Britain (cf. note 18), 72–73. Karen Junod has built on Ellen G. D’Oench in suggesting that Morland’s imagery focusing on contemporary rural motifs actually served the demands of a clearly nationalist art market during the time of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, see her Writing the Lives of Painters. Biography and Artistic Identity in Britain 1760–1810 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 176–200. 47 Carr, The Portsmouth Guide (cf. note 41), 71. 48 The Royal Naval Academy (1733–1837) was established in 1733 at Portsmouth Dockyard as a training facility for officers for the Royal Navy; see H. W. Dickinson, Educating the Royal Navy (London: Routledge, 2007), 33–56. 49 The print is one of a series of five military scenes from the Isle of Wight, printed by J. Wells after Richard Livesays designs: View of West Cowes with the Volunteers on the Parade, April 1, 1799; Grand Review near Freshwater Bay, April 1, 1799; Volunteers receiving the Island Banner, presented to them by his Lordship at Carisbrook Castle, June 1, 1799; Officers and Corps of the Newport Volunteers, August 12, 1799; Grand Review at Sandham Bay in the Isle of Wight on the 4th June 1798, January 1, 1800; coloured aquatints, British Library. 50 An album of watercolours and pencil drawings by Captain John Durrant in the Hampshire County Council holdings includes ca. 142 representations of landscape, military architecture, and

284

51

52

53 54 55

56 57 58

59

60

61

Ulrike Boskamp

other subjects of mainly military interest, dated between 1802 and 1813. See the “Durrant Collection” at hcms.firstoption.net/peach2cms/SiteResources/hcms_durrant.jsp. Patricia K. Crimmin, “Prisoners of War and British Port Communities, 1793–1815” The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du nord 6, no. 4 (1996), 17–27, 17–19; see also John Vaughan, “French Prisoners at Portchester” in The wild-flowers of Selborne and other papers (London: J. Lane, 1906), 201–215; Francis Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain, 1756 to 1815. A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings (London and Edinburgh: Oxford University Press, 1914). The literature on Garneray is limited. See Laurent Manoeuvre, Louis Garneray 1783–1857. Peintre, Écrivain, Aventurier (Arcueil: Anthèse, n.d., ca. 1997); François Beaudouin and Etienne Bernet, eds., Louis Garneray. pêche à la morue, pêche au hareng (Fécamp: Musée des Terre-Neuves, 2000). Louis Garneray, The Floating Prison. The Remarkable Account of Nine Years’ Captivity on the British Prison Hulks during the Napoleonic Wars, 1806 to 1814 (orig. Mes Pontons, 1851), ed. and trans. by Richard Rose (London: Conway, 2003), 55–56. Richard Rose, “Garneray’s Views of the Portsmouth Hulks” (Appendix H) in Garneray, The Floating Prison (cf. note 53), 233. While there is no reason to doubt that an occurrence like the one described actually happened to Morland, it is also clear that these anecdotes were shaped according to the needs of their authors. Until the 1980s the anecdotes about Morland were interpreted as source material, for example in John Barrell, The dark side of the landscape. The rural poor in English painting 1730–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980). Ann Wyburn-Powell investigated the anecdotes’ relationship with historical truth and found that they were regularly invented or exaggerated to serve the commercial interests of their authors. See her “George Morland (1763–1804): beyond Barrell. Re-examining textual and visual sources” The British Art Journal 7 (2006), 55–64. See Blaise de Vigenère, Traicté des Chiffres ou secrètes manieres d’escrire (Paris: Abel L’Angelier, 1586), 261. An example of the application in military reconnaissance work, (i.e. spying), see for example Allain Manesson Mallet, La géometrie pratique, 4 vols. (Paris: Anisson, 1702), 3: 8. James Fox has investigated a similar fear of steganography in Britain around the First World War, see his “Traitor Painters: Artists and Espionage in the First World War, 1914–1918” The British Art Journal 9, no. 3 (2006), 62–68. This print, which is normally attributed to James Gillray, has Morland’s initials “G.M.” on the bottom edge. Another contemporary example is Robert Dighton, Geography Bewitched, or a droll Caricature Map of England and Wales, 1793, hand-coloured etching, London, British Museum (online collection). The tradition of such maps can be traced back to the Middle Ages, but the most prominent example is the Leo Belgicus, see H.A.M. van der Heyden, Leo Belgicus. An Illustrated and Annotated Carto-Biography (Alphen aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1990). Ulrike Boskamp, “The Artist as Spy – Artistic Mobility and the Power of the Image” in Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture, ed. Lewis Johnson (London: Routledge, 2013), 185–198, 193–194; Denis Ribouillault, “Artiste ou espion? Dessiner le paysage dans l’Italie du XVIe siècle” Les carnets du paysage (numéro spécial Du dessin), no. 24 (2013), 131–147; Fox, “Traitor Painters” (cf. note 57). Wagner, “The Artistic Framing of English Nationalism” (cf. note 14). It was also a British artist who was to invent an iconography for this subject––Richard Doyle in his The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones & Robinson of 1854, see Ulrike Boskamp, “‘Märtyrer des Zeichenstifts’––Reisende Künstler aus Großbritannien, Zeichenverbot und Spionageverdacht im habsburgischen Lombardo-Venetien des 19. Jahrhunderts” in Der Künstler in der Fremde. Migration, Reise, Exil (Mnemosyne. Schriften des Internationalen Warburg-Kollegs, vol. 3), ed. Uwe Fleckner, Maike Steinkamp, and Hendrik Ziegler (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2015), 191–217. This iconography was still used in Britain during the First World War, see Fox, “Traitor Painters” (cf. note 57). Other cases include the arrest of the artists William Blake, Thomas Stothard, and Mr. Ogleby in 1780 or 1781 while they were on a boating and sketching tour on the river Medway located near the British naval base at Upnor Castle, see Gerald E. Bentley, “Blake’s first arrest, at Upnor Castle” Blake 31, no. 3 (1997–98), 82–84, or Joshua Cristall and John Sell Cotman who were twice suspected of spying while travelling in Wales in 1802 and 1803; see John Lewis Roget, A History of the ‘Old Water-Colour’ Society, now The Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, with biographical notices of its older and of all deceased members and associates, preceded by an account of English wa-

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ter-colour art and artists in the eighteenth century, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891), 1: 190–191. 62 Sholto and Reuben Percy [Joseph C. Robertson / Thomas Byerly], The Percy Anecdotes. Original and selected, by Sholto and Reuben Percy, brothers of the Benedictine monastery Mont Benger, 20 vols. (London: T. Boys, 1820–23), 4: 119–120. There is certainly a reference to the story of George Morland in this quote, in whose work “pigstyes” were a recurrent feature. 63 Samuel Ashby, “The True Story” The Gentleman’s Magazine 80, pt. 2 (1810), 568. 64 Henry Angelo, Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, with memoirs of his late father and friends, including numerous original anecdotes and curious traits of the most celebrated characters that have flourished during the last eighty years (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 1: 179–181. 65 Angelo, Reminiscences (cf. note 64), 1: 181. 66 Lionel Henry Cust, “John Gresse” in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900, vol. 23, http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Gresse,_John_Alexander_(DNB00)&oldid=3285711 (accessed March 12, 2014). 67 Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 3rd edition, 1855), 1: 13: “This Oriental dislike to the impertinente curioso tribe dates from the French having, previously to Buonaparte’s invasion, sent emissaries in the guise of travellers, to obtain such information as afterwards facilitated their obtaining possession of the citadels, treasures, and pictures of their deceived ally.”

Illustrations Fig. 1: George Morland, Paying the Ostler [Horseler], oil on canvas, 71.9 × 92.4 cm, ca. 1788-1804, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle. Fig. 2: Anonymous, John Bull viewing the preparations on the French coast, published by William Holland, hand-coloured etching and aquatint, 250 × 353 mm, 1803, London, British Museum. Fig. 3: Anonymous, Conversation across the water, hand-coloured etching, 247 × 353 mm, 1803/1804, London, British Museum. Fig. 4: Dominic Serres, View from Portsdown Hill overlooking Portsmouth Harbour, oil on canvas, 73 × 133 cm, c. 1778, Hampshire County Council Arts and Museums Service. Fig. 5: William Gardner, Yarmouth 27A (Ordnance Survey drawings), pen and ink on paper, 31 × 53 inches (ca. 79 × 135 cm), 1793, London, The British Library. Fig. 6: (After) Colonel de Béville, Plan de la Ville, du Port, et des Chantiers de Portsmouth, ou sont marqués les Retranchements à l’Entrée de l’Isle de Portsea. Figuré de memoire les 2. et 3. Octobre 1768, pen, ink, and watercolour, 535 × 915 mm, London, National Archives (MF 1/54/13). Fig. 7: Thomas Girtin, Porchester Castle from the North-East, graphite on paper, 150 × 209 mm, ca. 1797, London, Tate Gallery. Fig. 8: Philippe de Loutherbourg, View of Shanklin Chine, Isle of Wight, pen and brown ink with grey wash over graphite, 236 × 333 mm, 1794, London, British Museum. Fig. 9: John Wells after Richard Livesay, Grand Review at Sandham [Sandown] Bay in the Isle of Wight on the 4th June 1798, hand-coloured aquatint, 480 × 580 mm, 1800, London, British Library. Fig. 10: John Durrant, Small Tower, & Court – Portchester Castle, watercolour, from the album of watercolours/drawings of Kent, Hampshire, Sussex, Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, Essex, Suffolk and Devon, 1802–1813, Captain Durrant Collection, Hampshire Museums. Fig. 11: H. G., Vue du Port de Portsmouth, Gosport, l‘Isle d‘Huite et les Prisons Flotantes, watercolour, 508 × 686 mm, 1802, New York, Graham Arader Gallery. Fig. 12: Ambrose-Louis Garneray, Prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour, oil on canvas, 43.2 × 103.2 cm, ca. 1810, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum. Fig. 13: G.M. (attr. to James Gillray), Britannia, hand-coloured etching and aquatint, 270 × 197 mm, 1791, London, National Portrait Gallery. Fig. 14: Percy Roberts, National contrasts or Bulky and Boney, hand-coloured etching, 267 × 350 mm, 1804, London, British Museum.



IV. PLATES



 I PLATE

Faiz Allah (attr.), Palace, harem and garden, manuscript illumination, 1765, Copenhagen, The David Collection.

PLATE  II 

Kesu Das, Saint Matthew and the Angel, gouache on paper, 1588, Oxford, Bodleian Library.

 III PLATE

Artists at work, page from Jahangir Album, gouache on paper, early 17th century, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

PLATE  IV

Zhou Lang, Tribute Horse from Europe, handscroll, 1342 (Ming copy?), Beijing, Palace Museum. (a) Detail with Emperor Shundi and his entourage. (b) Detail with tribute horse and two attendants.

 V PLATE

(a) Ren Xianzuo, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, 1342, Beijing, Palace Museum. (b) Ren Bowen, Tribute Bearers, handscroll, late 1340s, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Avery Brundage Collection.

PLATE  VI

Huang Xiangjian, Xiangshui Pass, leaf from Ten-Thousand Li in Search of My Parents, 1656, Suzhou, Suzhou Museum.

 VII PLATE

Huang Xiangjian, The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua, leaf from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum. (a) The Pine Trees and Stone Steps of Taihua; (b) Detail with travellers.

PLATE  VIII 

Huang Xiangjian, leaves from A Record of the Journey in Search of My Parents (Diannan album), 1658, Nanjing, Nanjing Museum. (a) Dawn on Lotus Peak, detail; (b) Numinous Peaks and Billowing Clouds, detail.

 IX  PLATE

(a) William Sharp after John Webber, The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound, engraving, London 1784, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz. (b) John Webber, Interior of a House in Nootka Sound, pencil on paper, April 1778, Scottish National Gallery.

PLATE  X

(a) John Webber, Interior of a Habitation at Nootka Sound, pencil and ink on paper, April 1778, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. (b) James Heath after John Webber, The Reception of Captain Cook, in Hapaee, engraving, London 1784, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

 XI PLATE

Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, sections of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection.

PLATE  XII

(a) Dong Qichang (attr.), Misty River, section of a handscroll, 1626, Taipei, National Palace Museum Collection. (b) Wang Hui, Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangzi River, section of a handscroll, 1699, collection of Wan-go H. C. Weng.

 XIII PLATE

(a) Huang Binhong, Mt. Tianmu, hanging scroll, 1955, collection unknown. (b) Huang Binhong, Fuqiu Stream, hanging scroll, late 1940s or 1950s, National Art Museum of China.

PLATE  XIV

Huang Binhong, Seen from a Boat on Shujiang, hanging scroll, c. 1940s, Nanjing Museum.

 XV PLATE

Huang Binhong, White Cloud Retreat, ink and colours on paper, leaf B from the album Scenes of Mt. Huang, 1938, Hong Kong Museum of Art.

PLATE  XVI

(a) Jan Brueghel the Elder, View of a Port City with the Continence of Scipio, oil on copper, 1600, Munich, Alte Pinakothek. (b) Jan Brueghel the Elder, Fish Market at a Sea Harbor with Family-Portrait, oil on panel, 1603, Munich, Alte Pinakothek.

PLATE XVII

Kano Naizen, Nanban byōbu, pair of six-panel folding screens, late 16th century, Kobe City Museum.

PLATE XVIII

Cornelis de Jode after Gerard de Jode, The Hemisphere from the Equator to the Artic Polar Circle, colored engraving from Speculum orbis terrae, Antwerp 1593.

 XIX PLATE

Nanban byōbu, right screen of a pair of folding screens, detail with pictorial adaptation of the northern hemisphere; last quarter of the 17th century, Nara, Tōshōdaiji.

PLATE  XX

Malbork Castle, cloister, second floor, sink coated with ‘Delft’ tiles, 1893.

 XXI  PLATE

Guido Andries and workshop, Majolica pavement of the Abbey of Herkenrode, 1532‒1533, Brussels, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire.

PLATE XXII

(a) George Morland, Paying the Ostler [Horseler], oil on canvas, ca. 1788‒1804, Newcastle, Laing Art Gallery. (b) Dominic Serres, View from Portsdown Hill overlooking Portsmouth Harbour, oil on canvas, ca. 1778, Hampshire County Council Arts and Museums Service.

PLATE XXIII

(a) After Colonel de Béville, Plan de la Ville, du Port, et des Chantiers de Portsmouth, pen, ink, and watercolour on paper, after 1768, London, National Archives. (b) Philippe de Loutherbourg, View of Shanklin Chine, Isle of Wight, pen, ink, and grey wash over graphite, 1794, London, British Museum.

PLATE XXIV

(a) H. G., Vue du Port de Portsmouth, Gosport, l’Isle d’Huite et les Prisons Flotantes, watercolour, 1802, New York, Graham Arader Gallery. (b) Ambrose-Louis Garneray, Prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour, oil on canvas, ca. 1810, London, National Maritime Museum.

V. APPENDIX

List of Contributors Ulrike Boskamp is a senior research fellow in the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art” at Freie Universität Berlin. Her project “On the border: Travelling artists accused of espionage (17th–19th centuries)” examines transcultural confrontations over practices of landscape sketching within Europe. A recent publication is “‘Märtyrer des Zeichenstifts’ – Reisende Künstler aus Großbritannien, Zeichenverbot und Spionageverdacht im habsburgischen Lombardo-Venetien des 19. Jahrhunderts” in Uwe Fleckner et al., eds., Der Künstler in der Fremde. Migration, Reise, Exil (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 191–217. Her other research topic is the history of colour. She is the author of Primärfarben und Farbharmonie (2009). Karin Gludovatz is Professor of Art History and Member of the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art” at the Institute of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focusses on early Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch art and art theory, theories of authorship and historical concepts of artistic production as well as art and mobility in early modern times. She is the author of Fährten legen – Spuren lesen. Die Künstlersignatur als poietische Referenz (2011). Monica Juneja holds the Chair of Global Art History at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context,” University of Heidelberg. Her research and writing focus on transculturality and visual representation, disciplinary practices in the art history of Western Europe and South Asia, modernism as a global process. Her recent publications include theme issues of Kritische Berichte (2012, with M. Bruhn and E. A. Werner on the Universality of Art History) and The Medieval History Journal (2012, with V. Beyer and I. Dolezalek on Islamicate Objects in European Worlds); Disaster as Image. Iconographies and Media Strategies across Asia and Europe (2014, edited with G. J. Schenk). Her book in preparation is entitled Can Art History be made Global? A Discipline in Transition. Elizabeth Kindall is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Her research examines historical regimes of visuality in paintings of specific places produced for Chinese local elites of the thirteenth through twentieth centuries. It encourages new readings of such works as indexical social commodities that reveal previously unrecognized categories of Chinese site painting. Most recently, her work has appeared in The Art Bulletin and Toung P’ao. Her forthcoming book with Harvard University Asia Center is entitled Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son: The Paintings of Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673). Sophie Annette Kranen is a researcher at the Department of Art History at Freie Universität Berlin. Her MA thesis dealt with images produced during James Cook’s third expedition to the Pacific. Currently she is working on a dissertation project

316

List of Contributors

on Northern European travellers in the eastern Mediterranean in the seventeenth century, with a focus on these travellers’ conceptions of the historical topographies of this region. She pursues this project as a member of the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art.” Christian Kravagna is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. His recent publications include Transcultural Modernisms (2013), co-edited with Model House Research Group; “Transcultural Beginnings: Decolonisation, Transculturalism, and the Overcoming of Race” in Transcultural Modernisms; “Vom ethnologischen Museum zum unmöglichen Kolonialmuseum”, Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, 1, 2015; “Encounters with Masks: Counter-Primitivism in 20th Century Black Art”, in Art History & Fetishism Abroad: Global Shiftings in Media and Methods, ed. G. Genge/A. Stercken (2014); “Toward a Postcolonial Art History of Contact”, Texte zur Kunst, 91, 2013. He curated several exhibitions such as Living Across: Spaces of Migration (Vienna 2010), and Routes: Imaging Travel and Migration (Graz 2002). Juliane Noth is Principle Investigator of the DFG research project “Landscape, Canon and Intermediality in Chinese Painting of the 1930s and 1940s” at the Institute of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin. Her main field of research is the re-configuration of Chinese painting traditions in the twentieth century. She is the author of Landschaft und Revolution. Die Malerei von Shi Lu (2009), and co-editor of the conference volumes Negotiating Difference: Chinese Contemporary Art in a Global Context (2012) and Huang Binhong and the Evolution of Modern Ideas in Art (in Chinese, 2014). Julia Orell is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica (2015‒17), where she is revising her dissertation on Southern Song depictions of the Yangzi River (University of Chicago, 2011) into a book manuscript titled Landscape Painting and Geographical Knowledge in Song China. Besides her work on Song-Yuan dynasty landscape painting, a second research area is the historiography of East Asian art history with recent and forthcoming publications on Josef Strzygowski, Karl With, Alfred Salmony, and Ludwig Bachhofer. Julia Orell has taught Chinese art history at the University of Zurich, where she was assistant in the Section for East Asian Art History (2010‒14), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2014‒15). Joachim Rees is Principal Investigator in the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art” at Freie Universität Berlin where he directs a project on the visual history of long-distance maritime trade in the early modern period. His research areas cover the cultural history of travel, drawing practices and animal studies. Pertinent book publications are: Künstler auf Reisen. Von Albrecht Dürer bis Emil Nolde (2010) with an enlarged Korean edition Yesulgaui yeohaeng. Rubens-ui Spain-eseo Gauguin-ui Tahiti-kaji (2012), Die verzeichnete Fremde. Formen und

List of Contributors

317

Funktionen des Zeichnens im Kontext europäischer Forschungsreisen 1770–1830 (2015). Evelyn Reitz is currently working as a lecturer in art history and as coordinator in the areas of science management and international relations. Her research focuses on early modern art, exploring the impact of artists’ travels, intercultural exchange, working techniques, and collecting history on the formation of style and meaning in Central and Southern Europe. Current publications include a study on religious dimensions in the art of Netherlandish migrants around 1600. Her dissertation on the formation of style in Rudolfine Prague will be published in 2015. She joined the DFG Research Unit 1703 from 2011 until 2014. Nora Usanov-geissler is a research fellow in the Research Unit “Transcultural Negotiations in the Ambits of Art” at Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Japanese Studies and East Asian Art History in Berlin and at Waseda University in Tokyo. In cooperation with the Tokyo National Museum and funded by the DAAD she conducted research on exhibitions of Japanese Art in foreign countries. Her current project focuses on transcultural exchange on the Japanese coast in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its visualisation on nanban folding screens. She has carried out field research in the Kansai Area and Kyushu and was guest lecturer at Kobe University and Kyushu University. Eugene Y. Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. His extensive publications cover a full range of Chinese art history from the early funerary art to modern and contemporary art and cinema. He has received Guggenheim, Getty, and ACLS Ryskamp Fellowships. His book Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China garnered the Academic Achievement Award (2006) from Japan. He is the art history editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004). His current research encompasses issues of art without spectators, visual programming (i.e., how images add up), mind and matter, material forms of intelligence, subjectivity effects, and visual representation of “consciousness” and multi-sensorial experience.

Index References to illustrations are in italics. Abyssinia 135 Aflatun (→ Plato) Akbar, Jalaluddin Muhammad 63, 70 Al Farabi, Abu Nasr Muhammad 63 Albert, Archduke of Austria 213 Alexander the Great 63, 69 Allami, Abu’l Fazl 67, 69, 70 Amsterdam 31, 239 Andrade, Oswald de 20, 38, 40 Andries, Guido (Guido di Savino) 242–244 Anhui 153, 173, 180, 181, 185, 189, 195, 198 Antonioni, Michelangelo 19, 36, 37, 45, 48 Antwerp 21, 27, 65, 206, 210–213, 216, 217, 219–222, 224, 230–232, 242, 244 Aristotle (Aristu) 63 Arnemuiden 231 Ashby, Samuel 276, 278, 285 Ash-Sharif al-Idrīsī 100, 104 Awadh 60 Azuchi Castle 207, 228

Bril, Paul 211 Brueghel, Jan (the Elder) 27, 207, 211–213, 216, 217, 219–221, 226, 231 Brueghel, Isabella, née de Jode 216, 230, 231 Brueghel, Paschasia 216 Brussels 213, 249 Bungay 276 Bungo 220 Burke, Edmund 134, 135, 149

Calais 276, 281 Cambalec 91 Cao Ba 98, 103 Cape Verde Islands 273 Cartagena (Carthago Nova) 211 Cartari, Vincenzo 228 Carteret, Philip 134 Cézanne, Paul 65, 81 Changshu 167 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 223 Chen Ding 130 Chen Jiru 160, 172, 173 Chen Shu 155 Banks, Joseph 139, 149 Choiseul, Étienne-François, Duc de 266, Bayan 89–91 267, 282, 283 Beigu, Mount 158, 160, 172 Chongqing 30, 153, 184 Beijing (Beiping) 22, 90, 91, 95, 167, 215, Collins, William 259, 260, 276, 281 230 Cook, James 24, 133–135, 139–141, 142, Benedict XII 90 147–150 Benjamin, Walter 14 Biernat, Czesław 247 Da Chongguang 173, 174 Bihzad, Kamāl ud-Dīn 67 Dadu 91, 98 Bikaner 21, 70 Danzig (Gdańsk) 28, 239, 247–249, 251, Black Gang Chine 270 254–256 Bögel, Adrian 239 Dayao, Yunnan Province 112 Bonchurch 270 De Bary, William Theodore 125 Boulogne-sur-Mer 261 De Béville, Colonel 267, 268, 283 Boumester, Cornelis Pietersz 251 De Bougainville, Louis-Antoine 134, 140 Brahma 70 De Jode, Cornelis 221, 222–224, 231 Braudel, Fernand 9 ‒11, 15, 29, 203–205, De Jonge 251 227 De Loutherbourg, Philippe 270 Braun, Georg 210 Deccan 73 Bremen 235 Dégerando, Joseph-Marie 136

320 Delft 9, 240–242 Deng Huoqu 125 Dong Qichang 25, 154, 158–163, 165, 169–173, 197 Dong Yuan 161, 163, 167, 173 Donglin 161 Du Fu 98, 103, 104 Duanfang 174 Dunnose 265 Dürer, Albrecht 66, 244 Durrant, John 271, 272, 283 Edo (Tokyo) 11, 15, 31, 232 Effner, Joseph 249 Eichendorff, Joseph von 237, 253 Elbląg 251 Emei, Mount 173 Faenza 244 Fan Chengda 170 Fan Kuan 155, 170, 172, 173 Farang 98 Flora Fu 29, 109, 199 Forster, Georg 134, 141, 150 Frans, Petrus 242 Gao Kegong 161, 163 Gao Panlong 125 Gao Shiqi 171 Gardner, William 266 Garneray, Louis 273–275, 284 Gegna, Bernardino 139 Ghosh, Amitav 10 Girtin, Thomas 269, 270 Gold Mountain 154 Gosport 264, 272–274 Gregory XIII 224, 228 Gresse, John Alexander 278 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 11 Groningen 88 Guan Tong 173 Guangdong 181 Guangxi 181 Gump, Johann Anton 249 Guo Dukun 160 Guo Pu 154 Guo Xi 155, 170 Hamburg 239, 240 Hamilton, Sir William 141

Index

Hangzhou 170, 183 Hannibal 211 Hapaee (Ha’apai, Kingdom of Tonga) 139–141, 142 Harlingen 239, 240, 246, 247 Hassel, John 269 Hawai’i 147 Hawkesworth, John 134 Heng, Mount 161, 164 Heraclitus 153 Herculaneum 141 Herder, Johann Gottfried 133, 135, 149 Hirado 218–220 Hogarth, William 276, 281 Hogenberg, Franz 210 Homer 141 Hongren 183 Hooge 246 Hu Zhi 125 Huang Binhong 25, 175, 176, 180–185, 187, 189, 192, 194, 195, 197, 199 Huang Gongwang 157, 161, 163, 171, 173 Huang Kongzhao 111, 112, 120–125, 128 Huang Xiangjian 23, 111, 112, 114, 120–125, 127, 128, 130 Huating 160, 172, 173 Hubei 153, 156 Huguang 120 Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain and Portugal 213 Isle of Wight 28, 259–261, 264–266, 268–271, 274–276, 278 Istanbul 21 Jiang Shen 155 Jiangnan 24, 153, 163, 167 Jiangsu 111, 153, 167, 174 Jiangxi 189 Jin and Jiao, Mountains 173 Jing Hao 155, 161, 163, 170, 173 Jinhua 183 Jinling (→ Nanjing) Jiuhua, Mount 161, 163 Juran 155, 166–168, 172, 173, 174 Kaifeng 167 Kaiyuan 98

Index

Kangli Naonao 94 Kangxi Emperor 120, 130, 167 Kano Eitoku 228 Kano Mitsunobu 207, 208, 210 Kano Naizen 27, 207, 213, 215, 216, 220, 226, 230 Kesu Das 67 Khanazad, Madhu 63 Khanfu (Guangzhou) 99 Khubilai 89 King Robert 91 King, James 134 Krishna 70 Kuanglu, Mount 161, 163 Kublai Khan 95 Kuo, Jason 175, 176, 193, 196 Kyoto 11, 206–208, 224, 230 Kyushu 26, 27, 207, 213, 215, 218, 220, 226, 228, 230 La Pérouse, Jean-François de Galaup 136, 148 Lahore 21, 63 Levant 21, 216 Lever, Sir Ashton 141, 147 Li Bo 122 Li Cheng 173 Li Daoyuan 154 Li Gonglin 155, 156, 172 Li Kaishu 114 Li River bank 127 Li She 122 Li Tang 155, 170 Li Yu 120 Liang Qingbiao 120 Liang Wu 160, 172 Lisbon 31, 210 Liu Guandao 95 Liuguozi Lane 120 Livesay, Richard 271 Livy 211 London 28, 29, 31, 259, 264, 269–271, 278, 280 Longchang 123 Lu You 170 Lü Zuqian 125 Lu, Mount 122 Lübeck 235 Lude (Chen Chun) 183, 195

321

Mahāprajāpatī 94 Majnu 63 Makkum 239 Malbork Castle (Marienburg) 28, 235–239, 253, 254 Malcolm, James Peller 146, 147 Mani 69 Manicheans 22, 91, 94, 103 Marignolli, Giovanni 22, 85–87, 89–91, 94, 96, 100, 101 Max Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria 28, 249, 251 Meizhou 154 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 65 Mi Fu 160, 163, 164, 167, 172 Mi Youren 163 Middleburg 231 Min River (Minjiang) 171 Min, Mountains 155, 158, 160, 171 Ming (dynasty) 15, 17, 23, 29, 31, 88, 102, 111, 112, 114, 120, 123, 125, 154–158, 160, 163, 165, 167–169, 174, 189, 192–194, 207, 208, 216, 230, 231, 241 Miyako (→ Kyoto) Morieux, Renaud 261 Morland, George 28, 259–261, 263, 264, 269, 270, 275, 276, 279, 283–285 Nagasaki 26, 220 Nagoya (Hizen) 207–210, 213, 214, 229, 230 Nancheng County 189 Nanjing 165–167, 172, 173 Naples 212, 219 Napoleon Bonaparte 261, 262, 283 Nara 224, 229 Narwa 235 Newport 260 Ningbo 215, 216, 230 Nizami, Ganjavi 63, 69 Nootka Sound 136–139, 143, 144, 146 Nymphenburg Castle 28, 249, 251, 252, 256 Oda Nobunaga 207, 228 Ogilby, John 17, 32 Orme, Edward 269 Ortelius, Abraham 221, 222, 231 Ortiz, Fernando 20, 41–43

322

Index

Osaka 11 Ostend 213, 230 Ouyang Xuan 98 Padua 222 Panofsky, Erwin 65 Paris 267 Pearl River Delta 26 Perrault, Claude 143 Philip II, King of Spain and Portugal 206, 213 Pierre de Bretagne 250 Pignoria, Lorenzo 228 Plato 62, 63, 64 Pliny the Elder 145 Pluis, Jan 240 Plymouth 134 Polo, Marco 21, 86, 101 Portchest 261, 264, 269–272, 275 Portsmouth 28, 29, 260, 261, 263–269, 271–275, 279, 283

Shah Jahangir 63, 77, 82 Shanghai 24, 153, 155, 172, 173 Shen Zhou 160, 172 Shexian (She County) 180, 183–186, 189, 195 Shu River (Shujiang) 156–159, 161 Shundi (→ Toghōn Temür) Sichuan 153–156, 158, 167, 169 170, 173, 174, 180, 184, 197 Sikandar (→ Alexander the Great) Siraf 99 Steinbrecht, Conrad 237 Strait of Anián 223 Stüler, Friedrich August 237 Su Shi 153, 154 Suzhou 23, 111, 112, 119, 120, 124, 130, 167

Tabriz 21 Tagore, Rabindranath 20, 40 Tahiti 24, 140, 141 Tai, Mount 109 Qianlong Emperor 170, 171 Taicang 167 Qiao Yu 109 Qing (dynasty) 15, 16, 114, 120, 154–156, Taihua, Mount 121 Tardieu, Nicolas-Henri 140 165, 167–169, 173, 174 Tarmashrin Khan 99 Qingbian Mountains 109, 173 Tehran 75 Qinghai 153 Tianmen, Mount 160, 163 Qutang Gorge 158 Tianzhu Peak 189, 190 Toghōn Temür 89–91, 94, 103 Ra’s al-Jumha 99 Toghtō 89–91 Ren Bowen 85, 91 Tōkaidō 11, 12 Ren Xianzuo 22, 85 Tokugawa Ieyasu 216 Richard the Lionheart 242 Tokyo (→ Edo) Richthofen, Ferdinand von 12 Tosa Mitsushige 228 Rome 219 Tōshōdaiji (Nara) 224, 226, 229 Rooker, Michael Angelo 276, 278 Toyotomi Hideyori 214 Rottenhammer, Hans 221 Toyotomi Hideyoshi 27, 207, 208, 210, Rotterdam 239, 240, 251, 254 213–216, 229, 230 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques 136, 148 Sadeler, Raphael 66 Sakyamuni 94 Urbino 242 Schiller, Friedrich 146 Utrecht 239 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 237 Schultz, Johann Karl 247, 249, 251 Scipio, Publicus Cornelius 210–213, 216, Valencia 244 Van Vinghe, Philips 228 230 Venice 242 Serres, Dominic 264 Vermeer, Jan 9 Seyller, John 71 Virgil 141 Shah Jahan 63

Index

Vistula (Wisła) 237 Vos, Martin de 66

323

Ya’qubi 99 Yan Wengui 167, 168, 173 Yang Zhaolu 173, 174 Wallis, Samuel 134 Yangzi River (Changjiang) 23–25, Wang Haojing 187, 189 153–160, 162, 164–169, 170–174, 197 Wang Hui 25, 154, 165–169, 173 Yarmouth 259, 266 Wang Keyu 155 Ye Cheng 109 Wang Meng 109, 161, 164, 171, 173, Yuan (dynasty) 21, 22, 85, 88–91, 94, 95, 176, 180 98, 99, 101–103, 129, 157, 161, 163, Wang Wei 176 174, 176, 241 Wang Yangming (Wang Shouren) 122, 123 Yuan Haowen 174 Wang Yi 98 Yun Shouping 166, 173, 174 Wang Zai 171 Yunnan 23, 110, 112, 114, 115, 120, 128 Watteau, Antoine 140 130, 153 Webber, John 24, 134, 136, 139 William II, German Emperor 235, 237 Zhang Chou 170 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 141 Zhang Yanfu 85 Woolwich 264, 282 Zhang Zhao 170 Wrocław (Breslau) 239, 240, 254 Zhao Fu 169 170, 171 Wu Peiyi 125 Zhao Mengfu 99, 176 Wu Wei 157, 171 Zhejiang 158, 181 Wu Zhen 171 Zhenjiang 158 Wu, Mount 161, 164 Zhenzhou 174 Wudi (Han dynasty) 95 Zhong, Mount 160, 163, 164 Zhou Danling 120 Xia Gui 155, 156, 170, 171 Zhou Lang 22, 85, 94, 95, 98 Xiao and Xiang Rivers 173 Zhou Qi 155, 169 Xu Hongzu 189 Zhou Shichen 166 Xu Xiake 25, 189 Zhu Xi 125, 171 Xuanzang 100 Zhu Xiyan 171 Xuanzong (Ming dynasty) 88 Zou Zhilin 173, 174 Xuanzong (Tang dynasty) 98