A Vignette of Life on the Frontier (c. 1717–22): Art, History and Details

A Vignette of Life on the Frontier (c. 1717–22) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jiao Bingzhen (Chinese, active c. 1670–1726); Giuseppe Castiglione (Italian, 1688–1766).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Jiao Bingzhen, a court painter largely active during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, was the senior artist on this fan. Jiao painted the Manchu horse trainer and the setting into which the horse was inserted by Giuseppe Castiglione. Each artist was bonded to his own artistic tradition, while flexibly and harmoniously accommodating the others’ style. Jiao’s brushwork displays rigor and control, particularly in the twisting and turning trunk of the willow. The treatment of the figure and his clothes is an exercise in linearity. The horse trainer’s gesture and posture closely adhere to the known repertoire of the Chinese figural tradition, but the specificity supplies a sense of documentary reportage of life on the frontier. His shaved forehead and white temples identify him as a Manchu. The thick fabric of his garments was defined in a different sort of brush line than Jiao typically used for Chinese scholars or travelers. Jesuit priest Castiglione, a newcomer to China at the time this was painted, brought a sense of Western realism to the horse. Poised at a slight angle, the horse is alert, its eye gleaming. Its contours suggest the bulk of its anatomy with skilled but not overpowering modelling, and careful and subtly wrought attention to detail, such as fluttering strand of mane. Because of his ability to combine traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western methods of perspective and chiaroscuro, Castiglione went on to be the most favored and honored of the missionary artists who served the early Qing emperors. Throughout his career, in addition to imperial demands for portraits and records of court events, Castiglione continued to paint favored imperial horses. These animal subjects reflect the desire of Kangxi and his successors to celebrate their nomadic origins and to keep alive the martial prowess of the Manchu warriors in their new and sedentary world of conquered China.

Object facts

• Title: A Vignette of Life on the Frontier
• Date: c. 1717–22
• Creator attribution: Jiao Bingzhen (Chinese, active c. 1670–1726); Giuseppe Castiglione (Italian, 1688–1766)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Kangxi period (1662-1722)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Folding fan; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 19 x 55 cm (7 1/2 x 21 5/8 in.); Overall with sticks: 33 x 55 cm (13 x 21 5/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1979.18

A detail from the museum

One horseshoe is visible beneath the uplifted hoof.

Collection credit

Gift of Eleanor and Morris Everett

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58-99.
• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Suzuki, Kei 鈴木敬. Chūgoku kaiga sōgō zuroku [中國繪畫總合圖錄= Comprehensive Illustrated Catalog of Chinese Paintings], 第1卷. アメリカ·カナダ篇[= vol. 1 American and Canadian collections]. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.