A case study on image-based cultural interactions: pictures of Chinese agrarian laborers and French visual culture in the 18th and 19th centuries

Abstract

A Case Study on image-based cultural interactions: Pictures of Chinese agrarian laborers and French visual culture in the 18th and 19th centuries Imagery and the interpretation of ideas associated with them provide an invaluable and often under-utilized resource in the study of cultural interactions. In this presentation I use the “Semallé scrolls,” a set of two handscrolls, which contain a version of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving produced by the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735-1796) as a case study to explore an alternative methodological approach for cultural encounters. The subject of the Semallé scrolls, the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving were initially designed in the 12th-century, during the Song dynasty; they comprise two handscrolls, one devoted to representing discrete procedures of men growing rice and the other depicts women in the stages of silk fabric production. A poem accompanied each scene. The name “Semallé” refers to the French diplomat Count Marie Joseph Claude Édouard Robert de Semallé (1849-1936) who had received these scrolls in the 1880s while serving in Beijing. In the 18th century, the Qianlong Emperor had the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving and their poems reproduced in stone carvings; the imagery carved was a copy of what was regarded as the original Song dynasty version. The stone carvings were installed in the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving region of the Summer Palace. The Semallé scrolls are rubbings taken from these stele. The Semallé rubbings were initially discussed and reproduced by Paul Pelliot in an important article of 1913. This article had formed a record of the only complete set of the imagery for nearly all the stones were lost or greatly damaged. Sadly, the scrolls were sold separately sometime later and disappeared from public domain. Happily, however, in December 2014 they were re-united by a collector. Their re-assembly offers a wonderful opportunity to reconsider 1) the import of the Qianlong Emperor’s project within the Qing empire, and 2) the implications of the transfer of the representations of Chinese agrarian laborers to France. This paper seeks to address such questions as what motivated the Qianlong Emperor to reproduce Song-versions of the Pictures of Tilling and Weaving in stone? How was the emperor drawing upon historical uses of agrarian labor imagery? Why would Semallé want imagery of Chinese laborers? What precedents were there for representations of Chinese farmers in France, and what had they meant for French viewers?