Visual and material culture
Whether for one’s own research or for teaching or lecture purposes, images and objects are crucial in shaping our understanding of the past. These may be paintings, drawings, engravings, ceramics, jades, books, buildings, rooms, snuff bottles – the list goes on and on. In some cases one may be lucky enough to have the real thing on hand, but more commonly one must rely on photographs. Locating such images is not hard. There are countless publications with photos, including exhibition catalogues, museum journals and glossy collector’s books, and so forth. One can also consult art historical journals such as Artibus Asiae, semi-scholarly journals such as Orientations, and auction catalogues from Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Some useful publications are listed below, but this is a small fraction of what is available.
Books
*Aside from "Qingshi tudian 清史圖典：清朝通史圖錄," all the items below can either be accessed online or checked out through Harvard's libraries.
China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795. Regina Krahl, ed. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2006.
For an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Dianshizhai huabao 點石齋畫報. Shanghai, late 19th c.
This was a very popular Guangxu-era publication published in Shanghai, filled with large illustrations of stories of current interest from all over the country. There are a number of recent reprints and a monograph discussing its history.
Emperor Ch’ien-lung’s Grand Cultural Enterprise 乾隆皇帝的文化大業. Taipei: National Palace Museum, 2002.
For an exhibition at the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Includes items of both artistic and historic interest.
Gugong bowuyuan cang Qingdai gongting huihua 故宮博物院藏清代宮廷繪畫. Beijing: Wenwu CBS, 1992.
Large-format album with beautiful reproductions of a variety of court painting.
Gugong bowuyuan cang liangchao yulan tushu 故宮博物院藏兩朝御覽圖書. Zhu Jiajin, ed. Beijing: Zijincheng, 1992.
Mostly images of well-known publications from the Ming and Qing periods, the vast majority of them palace publications.
Huang Qing zhigong tu 皇清職貢圖. Fuheng, et al. between 1761 and 1805; Zhuang Jifa, ed. Xie Sui "Zhigong tu" Manwen tushuo jiaozhu 謝遂《職貢圖》滿文圖說校注. Taibei Shi : Guoli gugong bowuyuan, 1989.
Zhigong tu is a compilation of pictorial descriptions about people of foreign countries as well as variant ethnic groups of the Qing dynasty. Each entry comprises a picture of man and woman, which shows their appearance, costumes, and customs, and an explanatory text of the people.
Images of China: William Alexander. ed., Susan Legouix.1980.
Alexander was the artist for the Macartney embassy in 1793 and his wonderfully detailed drawings are of great value for the social historian. There are also the books that Alexander himself published in his lifetime.
Liaoning bowuguan canghua ji, xuji 遼寧博物館藏畫集，續集. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1999.
Among the images in this volume is a scroll painting by a Qianlong-period court painter named Xu Yang representing the city of Suzhou in great detail: hundreds of buildings, thousands of figures. The handscroll is reproduced in 24 clear plates in this publication. The artist's inscription at the end has a date corresponding to 1795.
Morokoshi meishō zue 唐土名勝圖會. 6 juan. Okada Gyokuzan, comp. 1806.
A similar work to the preceding item, by a well-to-do Osaka book collector. The first 4 juan provide detailed information of the forbidden city and the imperial court, including architecture, customs, banners, as well as ceremonies. The last two juan introduce counties and noted places in Zhili. It is a good source for studying Qing Beijing and its vicinities. The entire work has been digitized and is available here.
Qingdai wenshu dang’an tujian 清代文書檔案圖鑒. Beijing: First Historical Archives, 2004.
Splendid visual catalogue of all manner of archives (books, documents, drawings, charts, etc.) held in the FHA.
Qingshi tudian 清史圖典：清朝通史圖錄. 12 vols. Zhu Chengru, ed. Beijing: Zijincheng, 2002.
Comprehensive visual encyclopedia covering the political, geographic, and cultural aspects of life (mostly elite life) during the Qing period.
Sancai tuhui. 三才圖會. Wang Qi 王圻. 1607.
This is the great visual encyclopedia of the late Ming, later included in the Siku quanshu. It contains sketches of everyday items, explanatory diagrams, maps, and portraits, among other miscellaneous images. It is organized by topics and includes: astronomy, geography, people (individuals and groups), astrology and the calendar, official buildings, tools and utensils, anatomy, clothing, "human affairs" (including different forms of calligraphy, rituals, the handling of animals, etc.), rites, treasures, 文史, animals (real and fantastic), and plants. A Japanese encyclopedia of 1712, the Wakan sansai zue 和漢三才図会, based on the Sancai tuhui, has been digitized by the National Diet Library. A digitized version of the Chinese text is available on C-Text.
Shinzoku kibun 清俗記聞. 13 juan. Nakagawa Tadahide, comp. 1799.
Nakagawa was a magistrate in Nagasaki ca. 1800, and compiled this work on the basis of materials gathered from Chinese merchants trading in that port. Though he never actually visited China, the images (of cities, customs, clothing, people, markets, etc.) are detailed and reliable. A modern reprint is linked here: Volume 1, Volume 2. A Chinese translation of this work was published by Zhonghua shuju in 2006.
Splendors of China’s Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong. Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, eds. London and New York: Merrell Publishers, 2004.
For an exhibition at the Field Museum, Chicago.
Zhongguo hui hua quanji 中國繪畫全集. Zhongguo gu dai shu hua jian ding zu bian. Beijing : Wen wu chu ban she, 1997-, 30 vols.
Of 30 volumes, v.10-18 are Ming, and v.19-30 are Qing.
Online Collections: General
Historical Photographs of China
Historical Photographs of China is a collaborative venture by scholars at the Universities of Bristol, Lincoln and Lyon which brings together digitized images from a number of significant photographic collections. The collections of Fu Bingchang and G. Warren Swire are probably most relevant to projects on late imperial/early Republican history. At present, a total of c.7,000 images are hosted on this site.
Search Harvard's collection of photographs, many of which are related to China.
Located on the National Mall in Washington DC, the Freer and Sackler galleries contain a wide variety of paintings, sculptures, furniture, pottery, and other artifacts from throughout Asia (along with some more contemporary American works). The Chinese collection, linked to here, contains more than 10,000 items from antiquity to the present day. Many of them can be viewed online alongside curatorial information (usually very basic, but occasionally including paragraph-length descriptions). The collection may be searched by keyword and/or date.
The Jarring Collection at the Lund University Library
Digitized images of documents from East Turkestan/Xinjiang collected by Swedish scholars. Most documents are in Chaghatay, Persian, or Swedish, but the majority were produced in the Qing dynasty. This is an excellent resource for the legal and social history of Xinjiang, as it includes such diverse materials as craft manuals, legal documents, contracts, religious texts, legends, records of traditional narratives, descriptions of daily life, and schoolbooks.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Asia Collection.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has an extensive collection of Asian art, and more than 35,000 items have been listed online here. Basic curatorial information is given; the search interface is somewhat rudimentary, however - for instance, the country of origin can only be specified as a keyword - and many items lack an image.
The New York Public Library Digital Gallery
A quick search for the word "China" reveals some two thousand and five hundred images held by the New York Public Library, ranging from sixteenth-century European engravings to twentieth-century tourist photographs. The database also includes such treasures as diagrams on torture, scientific drawings of birds, and architectural engravings.
Waseda University Kotenseki Sogo Database 古典籍総合データベース
300,000 digitized volumes of Japanese and Chinese books and visual images in Waseda University's library collection. Can be browsed by title, author, and keyword. All pages have been digitized in both HTML and PDF format, but are not full-text searchable. Rare Chinese materials include: 635 Qing literary works, epigraphs, and histories in the Noguchi Collection, 93 histories of the Ming dynasty in the Shimomura Collection, 63 volumes of Ming and Qing military manuals in the Tada Collection, numerous works on classical Chinese mathematics in the Ogura Collection, and 124 titles on Ming economic history in the Shimizu Collection. Unclear to what extent these special collections have been digitized within this database.
one may access all of the artifacts including many of the visual arts objects stored in the Palace Museum in Beijing now through this website.
Online Collections: Specific Authors and Themes
Contains more than 100 pictures and drawings of beheadings in China or Japan (馘首). These photos were often photographed by foreigners. Warning: If you are offended by pictures of blood, death and decapitated bodies, do not enter this site!
Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927
Photographs of plants, people, and landscapes of the late Qing and early Republican periods in the Arnold Arboretum's collection. Taken by American explorers for Harvard University, including the naturalist Joseph Rock who took several trips to the Chinese frontier from 1920 to 1949.
This collection of postcards contains over a thousand images spanning from the late Qing through the PRC. On a number of the postcards scanned, the original messages are preserved.
China: Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980
A significant collection of digitized images and English-language sources on Chinese history, mostly from the British Library and SOAS, but also other British and Commonwealth institutions and Yale. Very heavy on the Qing, particularly periods of military conflict or diplomatic contact with the British, such as the Macartney mission, Opium Wars, and the Boxer Rebellion. The compilers have put considerable effort into making the materials accessible, as with the inclusion of an interactive map and extensive keywording, but the project seems unfinished, and considerable care should be taken when searching. Pay attention to romanization, and do not rely on placename searches.
This online database by Boston University Center for Global Christianity and Mission exhibits hundreds of Christian propaganda posters that circulated in China in the early 20th century, with the texts on the posters transcribed and translated.
Held in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia, this collection of menshen zhima 門神紙馬 (paper images of deities to be pasted on walls throughout the house and then ritually burned) is an important resource for reconstructing the material context of everyday life and belief in all its vibrant color. The collection has an interesting story: it was put together by an American missionary in Peking in the 1930s who donated it to Columbia shortly before her death in 2005–at the age of 109 and ten months.
Displaying the Forbidden: Images of China's Imperial Palaces
Taken by University of Stockholm professor Osvald Siren, these photographs date from the 1920s, and pay particularly close attention to the built environment of the Forbidden City. including gardens, bronzes, stone carvings, and more.
Exhibition of 郎世寧/Giuseppe Castiglione's paintings
The National Palace Museum in Taibei held an exhibition of 郎世寧/Giuseppe Castiglione's paintings. Castiglione, a Jesuit missionary, was one of the most famous artists serving in the early-mid Qing court. The online collection of the exhibition scanned dozens of his paintings of portraits, horses, birds, wars, court rituals, and flowers. He is well-known for his unique style that blends European and Chinese painting techniques.
Joseph Needham Photographs - Wartime China, 1942-1946
Decidedly not a source of photographs for late imperial Chinese history, this collection is nonetheless too good not to mention. The NRI now hosts more than 1,000 photographs taken by Joseph Needham during his wartime travels in China on behalf of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office.
List of publications containing climatological data for China
Publications from about 1870 through 1912 and beyond concerning climate and medicine in eastern China. Collected by the staff at NOAA. Available in .PDF and .TIFF format. Mostly in English, French, and Japanese.
Maintained by a group of amateur historians, this website documents a series of Jesuit-style engravings ordered by the Qianlong emperor and others in order to commemorate campaigns against the various peoples living in present-day Yunnan, Hunan, Xinjiang, Taiwan, Nepal, and Vietnam. Though the U.S. Library of Congress and Louvre Museum, among other institutions, own copies of these works, this is the only site where one can view high-quality images.
Robert Henry Chandless Photographs
The University of Washington maintains this database of some two hundred images, from an original collection of over 1400 photographs by Robert Henry Chandless, who had arrived in Shanghai from New York around 1900 to join the British import-export firm of Pool Lander. The collection includes candid scenes and tourist views of Beijing and Tianjin, foreign legations and private residences of diplomats, documentation on the wool industry in Tianjin and the Boxer Rebellion.
Shackford Collection of Photographs of China
Taken in the late 1920s and early 1930s by John B. Shackford during his travels and tenure as an English teacher in southern China; according to the host, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the total number of images number over eight hundred, including nearly three hundred photographs.
Sidney Gamble Collection of Historic Photographs of China
A digital collection of about 5,000 photographs shot primarily in China between 1917 and 1932 by Sidney Gamble, a sociologist noted among other things for his early studies of urban society in Beijing. The photos chart Gamble's travels between Liaoning in the northeast and Tibet in the southwest. Captions are often too brief to allow proper identification.
Terry Bennett Collection of Early China Photographs
A vast collection of some 8,600 original photographs of China, covering the late Qing period from 1844 to 1911. This database archives images from such historic events as the Anglo-French Bombardment of Guangzhou (1857), the Opium War (1860), a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh to Hong Kong (1869), the first railroad in China from Shanghai to Wusong (1876), the Franco-Chinese War (1883-1885), the Hong Kong Plague (1894), the construction of the Jinghan Railroad from Beijing to Hankou (1898-1905), the Boxer Rebellion (1900), both the Emperor's and Cixi's Funeral (1908), the Manchurian Plague (1910-1911), and many more.
The Frederick Wulsin Photographs of China and Mongolia (search within the Peabody Museum here)
About 1200 images taken on an expedition by Frederick and Janet Wulsin in the early 1920s. Photographs now held in the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology along with plant specimens collected on their travels.
The Giles-Pickford Photographic Collection
These albums, archived at Australian National University, document China from 1860 to 1950, through the eyes of Lancelot Giles, Student Interpreter in the British Consular Service. All captions are as they appear in the albums; those that appear in brackets were written by the curator.
The Hedda Morrison Photographs of China
Born in Germany and married to an Australian, photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison lived and worked in Beijing from 1933-1946. The entire archive of her photographs (5,000 prints and 10,000 negatives) is held in the Harvard-Yenching Library. A significant portion of these materials is available online, covering all aspects of society, especially religion and street life.
The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China
Over 1000 photos of Muslims and Christian missionaries working among them in Western China in the 1920s and 1930s form the core of this collection, which is supplemented by several hundred books, pamphlets, broadsides, etc., in several languages. Some of the pictures are ID protected but can be accessed by Harvard PIN.
The Tibet Album: British Photography in Central Tibet, 1920-1950
The Pitt Rivers Museum at Cambridge and the British Museum have combined their collections as this digital archive of six thousand images, documenting the ways in which British visitors encountered Tibet and its inhabitants. It features photographs taken by Charles Bell, Arthur Hopkinson, Evan Nepean, Hugh Richardson, Frederick Spencer Chapman, Harry Staunton and the previously unidentified photographs of Rabden Lepcha.
Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images: Historical Photographs of China
A collection of over six hundred photographs by a private collector that includes such highlights as pictures of Yuanmingyuan, documentation on the Manchurian Plague, and Republican nudes.
From the official project description--"Virtual Shanghai is a research and resource platform on the history of Shanghai from the mid-nineteenth century to nowadays. It incorporates four sets of documents: essays, original documents, photographs, and maps. The objective of the project is to write a history of the city through the combined mobilization of these various sets of documents. The implementation of this approach relies on the use of NTIC and GIS technologies. On the research side, the platform will offer various ways to step into the history of the city and follow its course at different levels over time. On the resource side, apart from providing original textual and visual documents, it develops a powerful cartographic tool for both analysis and real-time mapping. The authors of the present project suscribe to the idea of sharing scholarship and research tools for the benefit of scholars, students, and citizens at large."
The collection of stone rubbings and inscription rubbings from different localities of China and different time periods of Chinese history, stored in the Institute for Research of Humanities of Kyoto University. Requires djvu plug-in.
Visual, Audio, and Other Media
Swedish Missionary Project: Audio and Film Archive from Twentieth-Century Xinjiang
Includes silent films and audio recordings from the Swedish Mission, active in Kashgar, Yarkand, and Yengi Hissar, Xinjiang from 1892 to 1938.
The Travel Film Archive: Stock Footage From Around the World
Features about five black-and-white travel films dating from the 1920s to the 1940s and showcasing the Chinese cities
of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, as well as Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
Buddhist Images
Digital Museum of Buddhism in Taiwan
An online museum by National Taiwan University, Chung Hwa Buddhist Institute and National Taipei Arts University
Fojiao Tuxiangji: Yiqianwubainian fojiao huihua xunli 佛教图像集: 一千五百年佛教绘画巡礼. Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 2001.
Located in the Harvard Rubel (Fine Arts) Library. Contains images of Buddhist sculptures over the course of Chinese history.
Qianlong Manwen Dazangjing Huitu: Zangchuan Fojiao Zong 藏传佛敎众神 : 乾隆满文大藏经绘画. 2 volumes. Beijing: Zijincheng chubanshe, 2003.
Contains 709 images from the 108 boxes of Manchu Canon. The images are catalogued according to the boxes from 001 to 108. The captions are provided in four languages: Tibetan, Manchu, Sanskrit and Chinese.
Selected Bibliography
Clunas, Craig. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Ebrey, Patricia. "Illustrating Chinese Women's History." In Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for Chinese Women's History, edited by Jo-shui Chen, Patricia Ebrey, Louise Edward, Grace S. Fong, Hu Qing, and Joan Judge, 217-259. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012.
Hegel, Robert E. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Wu, Hung. The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. London: Reaktion Books, 1996.
Yeh, Catherine. Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850-1910. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.
Yip, Hon-ming. "Between Drawing and Writing: Prostitutes in the Dianshizhai Pictorial." In Overt and Covert Treasures: Essays on the Sources for Chinese Women's History, edited by Jo-shui Chen, Patricia Ebrey, Louise Edward, Grace S. Fong, Hu Qing, and Joan Judge, 487-542. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2012.