How many fakes has Qianlong Ye collected?

The Qianlong Emperor

Qianlong was a well-known "calligraphy and painting fanatic", as an emperor, he had unique and rich resources, he compiled the ancient masterpiece "Shiqu Baodi" in the history of mainland calligraphy and painting, and his collection was rich before and after the ancients. But even so, Qianlong Ye had also eaten a lot of "medicine". The so-called "taking medicine" is a joke for players who buy fake things.

Samhido Dharma, Vol. 1, p. 1

Sanhitang Dharma, Vol. 1, p. 3

Probably most people will not believe that in ancient times, the emperor was the son of heaven, how could it be possible to collect fake goods? But in fact, the Qing Palace collection is mixed, although there are many treasures, there are many fakes. Many scholars have found that many of his Qianlongye's collections are not original works, so how many fakes did he collect?

The most famous of Qianlong's collection of forgeries is probably Huang Gongwang's "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map". During the Qianlong period, a "Map of The Residence of Fuchun Mountain" was conscripted into the palace, and Qianlong loved it after seeing it, and used his own housekeeping trick - stamping everywhere, inscribing poems, and even the mountain crevices.

Yuan Huang Gongwang 《Fuchun Mountain Jutu· Useless Master Volume》

As a result, the next year, he got another "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map", and the second one was the real one, but he did not want to admit that he had collected fake paintings before, but at the same time, he bought what he called "fake paintings" at a high price, which became a joke in history.

Ni Zhan was one of the "Four Great Masters of the Yuan Dynasty", and Qianlong received at least three fakes from him.

Qianlong was very fond of Ni Zhan's "Lion Forest Map" and repeatedly inscribed six rules on the screen, but the famous expert Xu Bangda and the palace museum researcher Wen Jinxiang both believed that the work was "undoubtedly a copy of the Ming people". There is also the "Ancient Wood Bamboo Stone Diagram" of the Forbidden City, which is now in the Forbidden City, and Xiao Yanyi, president of the Academy of Calligraphy and Painting of the Palace Museum, through careful comparative study of the picture style, seal and inscription, believes that Ni Zhan's work is a fake.

In the Yangxin Hall of the Qing Palace, there is a painting of Li Gonglin's "Diagram of Exemption from The Emperor" of the Song Dynasty, also known as "Guo Ziyi Single Riding see Hui QiTu", which is "Chen Li Gonglinjin". The painting was recorded in the Qing Dynasty's book "Continuation of Shiqu Baodi", which was specially collected by the court, and the scroll depicted the famous Tang Dynasty general Guo Ziyi persuading Hui to break the Tubo. However, until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, many connoisseur experts found out after seeing the painting that although the picture coordination, the use of color and brush strokes have ancient styles, and the white depiction of characters is also very Song style, more evidence shows that this painting is not from Li Gonglin's handwriting, but a later imitation.

According to archival records, in the Qing Dynasty, there were two calligraphy works of Cai Xiang, a great calligrapher of the Song Dynasty, "Xie Zhi Yushu Poetry Table", which were the same in content, both of which were heavy in ink, peaceful in writing, and strict and strong in characters. At that time, people did not pay much attention to this issue, so it was impossible to make a detailed distinction. Therefore, one of the characters was easily rewarded by the Qianlong Emperor to his sixth son, Yong Yao, and at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it flowed abroad and was acquired by foreign collectors. The remaining one remained in the Qing Palace and was inscribed by the Qianlong Emperor into the Sanxitang Fa Ti. A hundred years later, experts sorted out the relics of the Qing Palace, only to find that although the characters left behind also had certain cultural relics value, they were just fakes.

This is the case with calligraphy and painting, and there are not a few problems with the collection of porcelain, gold and stone. According to Mr. Na Zhiliang, an expert who has been engaged in the study of cultural relics of the Forbidden City for life, he recalled before his death that when he counted the cultural relics of the Qing Palace, he found that there were many wrong porcelains of the "Great Ming Kangxi Year System". Many people are puzzled, thinking that most of the Qing Dynasty porcelain in the Qing Palace is produced by official kilns, how can such a mistake be allowed? However, after expert identification, it was found that most of these porcelains were counterfeit goods privately fired in the late Qing Dynasty, which can be said to be completely fake.

There are also such as ancient ink and ancient yan, which has always been a very favorite thing of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty, and there are many such collections in the court. The Qianlong Emperor also specially ordered the compilation of the "Western Qing Yan Genealogy" to record these royal collections. But in the same way, through today's scientific and technological analysis, researchers found that some of these treasures of QianlongYe were very unreliable.

Song Cai Xiang "List of Poems of the Imperial Book of Xie"

The above works are just the tip of the iceberg, according to experts in chinese Song and Yuan painting research, 60% of the Song Dynasty paintings collected by Qianlong are fakes. In the "Records of Paintings and Calligraphy of the Forbidden City" published in 1997, it directly printed reliable authentic works in color, and unreliable prints in black and white, resulting in most of the content of the book being black and white.

Song Mi Fu 《三吴诗帖》

Many people may ask, how did so many fake things flow into the palace? Isn't there discrimination when you enter the palace? Of course not, the appraisal must be done, and it is still quite strict, but since the appraisal is done by people, it is inevitable that there will be human problems. These human problems can be summarized in the following two categories. First, some of the Qing Palace's collections are relics of the former dynasty, and some are tributes from the ministers after entering the Qing Dynasty. Although it was also identified at the time, there were many times when the eyes were lost, so the fakes were regarded as treasures at the beginning of the collection.

According to historical records, gao shiqi, a famous eunuch in the Kangxi period, was deeply trusted by the emperor, so in order to repay the favor of knowing the encounter, Gao Shiqi often paid tribute with some famous paintings. But when he got old, he wrote a book called "Emura Calligraphy and Paintings". At this time, people knew that there were nine types of paintings in his collection, among which the so-called "eternal treasures" were all genuine, often preserved by themselves and never shown to others. Many of the inscriptions presented to Kangxi read, "Forgery and Extremely Cheap."

There was a legend in the Qing Palace that during the Qianlong period, there was a courtier who followed the emperor for many years, and When Qianlong Saw that he was experienced in his work, he gave him the opportunity to be a foreign official. It should be known that the rich income of foreign officials at that time was a fat shortage that many people dreamed of. Seeing that the emperor favored himself in this way, this benevolent brother was of course very moved, so he took advantage of his leisure time to collect more than ten calligraphy and paintings of the great calligrapher of the Song Dynasty, Mi Fu, and dedicated them to the emperor. However, Qianlong only glanced at the gift list and wrote with a large stroke of the pen, "Fake, don't." At that time, this benevolent brother was blinded, did not understand why, and was very depressed. After many inquiries, I woke up like a dream. Mi Fu has a thousand words, and there are very few surviving works, and he can buy so much at one time, qianlongye certainly does not believe it. It's a slap on the horse's hoof.

Yuan Ni Zhan "Lion Forest Diagram"

In the second case, the eunuchs manipulated the treasures they had entered. Although the power of eunuchs in the Qing Dynasty was not as great as in the past, they were after all the people close to the emperor. Many tributes and treasures are often dispatched by them. Therefore, some courtiers who wanted to seduce the emperor but could not come up with good things tried to win over the eunuchs, give the eunuchs a little benefit, and wrote the gift list of the emperor very expensive, but in fact, they only bought some fake goods to pay for the difference.

The eunuchs of the Qing Palace were not only good at indiscriminately counting under the eyes of the emperor, but also good at moving flowers and trees. Especially after the middle and late Qing Dynasty, in the face of internal and external troubles, the emperors could not care about the treasure Zhu Play, and the system supervision became increasingly relaxed, which provided an excellent opportunity for eunuchs to steal treasures. So many eunuchs colluded with each other to sell the treasures collected by the emperor. In order to hide their eyes, they bought back the fake goods on the antique stalls at an extremely low price. According to relevant archives, during the Republic of China period, the staff of the Palace Museum saw several large wooden boxes in the Yongshou Palace, and according to the inscription instructions, they should be full of famous paintings inscribed by Wu Daozi, Zhang Shengxuan, Fan Kuan, Li Tang and others. However, when everyone opened the box, they found that everything was a black piece, which was completely counterfeit in the late Qing Dynasty, and the quality of the counterfeit was still very poor.

In addition, some of the forgeries originated from previous collectors, which continued the previous misunderstandings, such as the "Lion Forest Map", which was handed over by collectors Sun Chengze and Gao Shiqi in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and was later included in the Qingnei Province.

Although Qianlong Ye has received a lot of fakes, it is impossible to examine the proportion of fakes in his collection, and even today's professional collectors will inevitably receive fakes. Because of his love of calligraphy and painting, Qianlong Ye once compiled the ancient masterpiece "Shiqu Baodi" in the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy, which includes all the works collected by the Qing Dynasty royal family during the heyday, with tens of thousands of pieces, including 2,000 calligraphy and paintings of the Jin, Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, and 2,000 calligraphy and paintings of the Ming Dynasty, which is a summary of the 600-year imperial court collection of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Only from the point of view of the number of collections, Qianlong Ye is indeed the first person in China's collection of no one before and after the ancients.