In China history, from the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, there have been nearly 400 Emperors. Some declared themselves emperors and founded their own empires as a rival government to challenge the legitimacy of the existing emperor, such as Li Zicheng, and Yuan Shu. These emperors make up popular legends in China and are much better known. Among the Those Emperors, there are some ones who love arts so much and some even had a high artistic merit. Such as Emperor Li Yu(Southern Tang Dynasty), Tianqi Emperor(Ming Dynasty), Song Huizong(Song Dynasty), Qianlong Emperor(Qing Dynasty), and so son. Herewith we will show you their enjoy into arts and history contribution in arts.
Li Houzhu(Li Yu)
Li Houzhu (also known as Houzhu of Southern Tang , personal name Li Yu, courtesy name Chongguang), was a Chinese poet and the last ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom from 961 to 975, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period.
Li Houzhu devoted much of his time to pleasure-making and literature, and this is reflected in his early poems. However, his best-known poems were composed during the years after the Song formally ended his reign in 975. He was created the Marquess of Wei Ming. Li’s works from this period dwell on his regret for the lost kingdom and the pleasures it had brought him.
Li Houzhu has been called the “first true master” of the ci form[3]. Ci, a kind of lyric Chinese poetry, is also known as Changduanju ( “lines of irregular lengths”) and Shiyu “that which is beside poetry”). Typically, the number of characters in each line and the arrangement of tones were determined by one of around 800 set patterns, each associated with a particular title, called cipai. Originally they were written to be sung to a tune of that title, with a set rhythm, rhyme, and tempo. Therefore, the title might have nothing to do with the peom’s contents, and it was common for several ci to appear to have the same title. Ci most often expressed feelings of desire, often in an adopted persona. Li Houzhu developed the ci by broadening its scope from love to history and philosophy, particularly in his later works. He also introduced the two-stanza form, and made great use of contrasts between longer lines of nine characters and shorter ones of three and five.
Song Huizong
Huizong was a great painter, poet, and calligrapher. He was also a player of the guqin, he also had a Wanqin Tang (”10,000 Qin Hall”) in his palace.
Huizong took huge efforts to search for art masters. He established the “Han Lin Hua Yuan”(”Han Lin imperial painting house”) where top painters around China share their best works.
The primary subjects of his paintings are birds and flowers. Among is works is Five-Colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree. He also recopied Zhang Xuan’s painting Court Ladies Preparing Newly-Woven Silk, and Emperor Huizong’s reproduction is the only copy of that painting that survives today.
He invented the “Slender Gold” style of calligraphy. The name “Slender Gold” came from the fact that Huizong’s writing resembled gold filament, twisted and turned.
His era name of Xuanhe is also used to describe a style of mounting paintings in scroll format. In this style, black borders are added between some of the silk planes.
In 1114, following a request from Emperor Yejong of the Korean court of Goryeo, Huizong sent to the palace in the Goryeo capital at Gaeseong a set of musical instruments to be used for royal banquet music. Two years later, in 1116, he sent another, even larger gift of musical instruments (numbering 428 in total) to the Korean court, this time yayue instruments, beginning that nation’s tradition of aak.
Huizong was also a great tea enthusiast. He himself wrote the famous Treatise on Tea, the most detailed and masterful description of the Song dynasty sophisticated style of tea ceremony.
Qianlong Emperor
The Qianlong Emperor was also a major patron of the arts. The most significant of his commissions was a catalogue of all important works on Chinese culture, the Siku Quanshu. Produced in 36,000 volumes, containing about 3450 complete works and employing as many as 15,000 copyists, the entire work took some twenty years. It preserved numerous books, but was also intended as a way to ferret out and suppress political opponents. Some 2,300 works were listed for total suppression and another 350 for partial suppression. The aim was to destroy the writings that were anti-Qing or rebellious, that insulted previous barbarian dynasties, or that dealt with frontier or defense problems.
The Qianlong Emperor was a passionate poet and essayist. In his collected writings, which were published in a tenfold series between 1749 and 1800, over 40,000 poems and 1,300 prose texts are listed, making him one of the most prolific writers of all time. There is a long tradition of poems of this sort in praise of particular objects (yongwu shi), and the Qianlong Emperor used it in order to link his name both physically and intellectually with ancient artistic tradition. He also regularly added poetic inscriptions to the paintings of the imperial collection, following the example of the emperors of the Song dynasty and the literati painters of the Ming. They were a mark of distinction for the work, and a visible sign of his rightful role as Emperor. Most particular to the Qianlong Emperor is another type of inscription, revealing a unique practice of dealing with works of art that he seems to have developed for himself. On certain fixed occasions over a long period he contemplated a number of paintings or works of calligraphy which possessed special meaning for him, inscribing each regularly with mostly private notes on the circumstances of enjoying them, using them almost as a diary. They became part of his life and he took them with him on his travels in order to compare paintings with the actual landscape, or to hang them in special rooms in palaces where he lodged, to inscribe them on every visit there.
Pottery, ceramics and particularly applied arts, such as enameling, metal work and lacquer work flourished during his reign; a substantial part of his collection is in the Percival David Foundation in London. The Victoria and Albert Museum and The British Museum also have good collections of Qianlong reign Art.
