On Four Paintings Showing Emperor Qianlong and His Children Celebrating the New Year and Their Related Problems

This paper deals with the representational problems of four paintings, The New Year Celebration (Suizhaotu), Entertaining in Snow (Xuejing xingletu), Entertaining on the New Year (Suizhao xingletu), and Entertaining on the Lantern Festival (Yuanxiao xingletu), which all show Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) and many children celebrating the Chinese New Year. Four issues to be discussed regarding these paintings include: 1. a brief comment on recent research of them; 2. their respective datings, representational characteristics, and iconographical relationships; 3. the reality of the figures shown in the paintings and their iconographical implications; and 4. the interactions between Emperor Qianlong and his children in real life. In the first part of this paper, the author, based on stylistic analysis and historical documents, discovered that these paintings were executed respectively in 1736, 1738, 1746, and probably 1750. Among these paintings, The New Year Celebration deserves special attention because its iconographical details served as archetype for those in the three other paintings through different degrees of modifications. Also, this painting pictorially suggests the event of Emperor Qianlong’s secret decision on selecting Prince Yonglian, his second son, to be the heir apparent in 1736. Moreover, these four paintings done from 1736 to 1750 sequentially show an increasing number of children; that reflects the emperor’s
wish for ever-growing off-springs in the imperial family. In the second part of this paper, the author, through investigations of historical
documents, describes how Emperor Qianlong educated his sons, his interactions with them, and his final decision on choosing Prince Yongyan (Emperor Jiaqing), his fifteenth son, as his successor in 1773.