Due to heavy reconstruction of this webpage, this blog is temporary suspended to renew in this summer, it will be updated again after late-autumn, thank you for your visits in these 9 years.

26 August 2011

Peafowl in western's eyes (2) - Giuseppe Castiglione

India Peafowl (藍孔雀) ; Peony (牡丹)
Taiwan (1991)
18th March, 2011. Neihu, Taipei

It is the second peafowl drawing to show here, and also it was painted by western during 18th century. Giuseppe Castiglione (19 July, 1688 - 17 July, 1766) was an Italian Jesuit who born in Milan, he began to have interesting on Chinese culture during visiting Lisbon and Coimbra of Portugal in 1714. After a year he arrived Macao for studying Chinese, and having a Chinese name Lang Shih-ning.

He stayed in China more than 50 years, participated the design work of the Old Summer Palace, the imperial gardens of early Qing dynasty. Also he painted couple of paintings with emperors and concubines, nature, horses. Above souvenir sheet is one of his painting finished on 1758, now the ancient painting is a collection of National Palace Museum, Taipei.

The postage label is another ancient painting collection of National Palace Museum, painter Yun Shouping (1633-1690) also an important artist in early Qing dynasty. He specialised in flower painting and regards as one of the "Six Masters" of the Qing period.