China. Ink on paper. With fresh lines, the battle depicted on two fronts with swaths of Qing soldiers in the mountainous landscape. On the left edge, Qing musket men surround an outpost which is engulfed in flame and smoke. Across the river that runs through the center of the landscape, cannons fire on a second outpost as calvary and foot soldiers chase the Miao rebels off a neighboring cliff.

Inscriptions: The top with a poem composed by the Qianlong Emperor: 'For seven dynasties / The seal of the military I have not received / It is impossible to look south at night / Conquer the Huanggua Chaoxue Sao / first the helpless thief fled / I will inquire who is the first / Wu was called King of Wu for most of his life / But the three rebellions are the first / It is a disaster to submit to Wu's control / But easy to profit financially / Soma's lair is hidden deep / Five veteran generals led the troops into position / The thieves were driven back to the gates / the troops were divided into four regiments to swiftly attack / They scramble to climb into caverns and hidden places / The thieves are killed in droves / The flames of the village reached to the sky / the thief's head is turned to escape / Rest your troops and gather your strength before attacking / The upper and lower west cliffs are dangerous and solitary / I vowed to capture him first and erect a memorial / The generals of the two governors try their best / I can't bear to read the memorial / Jia's pity reaches covers everything / But advisor urged him to begin / He delivered swiftly within days / The victory, the rewarded of captives they celebrated. Written by Qianlong during the year of Diangmao (corresponding to 1795).'

Provenance: From an Austrian private collection.
Condition: Very good condition with minor wear, minor creasing, minimal soiling, light foxing, and small tears.

Dimensions: 87.2 x 49.8 cm

The present copper print is the eighth of sixteen engravings depicting the quelling of the Miao Rebellion of 1795-1806. The artist for the original drawings was the court artist Feng Ning, who specialized in portraits and architectural scenes at the end of the Qianlong period. Later in life he apparently changed his name to Feng Xiang.

The Battle Copper Prints are a series of prints from copper engravings dating from the second half of the 18th century. They were commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor and depict his military campaigns in China's inner provinces and along its frontier. The master illustrations for the first engravings were large paintings done by European missionary artists employed at that time at the court in Beijing. These artists were Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), French Jesuit Jean-Denis Attiret (1702-1768), Bohemian Jesuit Ignatius Sichelbarth (1708-1780), and the Italian Augustinian missionary, Jean-Damascene Sallusti (d. 1781). The engravings of the first set of 16 paintings were not produced in China but were executed in Paris, at that time home to the best European artisans working in this technique. The emperor even decreed that the work emulate the style of the Augsburg copper engraver Georg Philipp Rugendas the Elder (1666-1742), whose work he knew. Small-scale copies of the paintings by Castiglione and his Beijing colleagues were sent to Paris to be transferred on to copperplates, printed, and then sent back to China, along with the plates and prints. Later sets of engravings were executed in Peking by Chinese apprentices of the Jesuits and differ markedly in style and elaborateness from those of the Paris series.

Qianlong's Battle Copper Prints were just one of the means the Manchu emperor employed to document his campaigns of military expansion and suppression of regional unrest. They served to glorify his rule and to exert ideological control over Chinese historiography. In the history of Chinese art, copper-print engraving remained an episode. Seen in their political context, the Qianlong prints represent a distinct and exceptional pictorial genre and are telling examples of the self-dramatization of imperial state power.

The Battle of Simazhai, fought by the Qing general Heshen, took place during Emperor Qianlong's campaign to quell the Miao rebellion in the region of Hunan. The Miao rebellions were anti-Qing uprisings in Hunan and Guizhou provinces which took place during the reigns of Qianlong and Jiaqing. The battle of Simazhai was fought at the end of Qianlong's reign by the Qing general Heshen. It was catalyzed by tensions between local populations and Han Chinese immigrants. The rebellion was bloodily suppressed, but it served as the antecedent to the much larger uprising of the Miao rebellion between 1854 and 1873.

Literature comparison:
Compare an identical print of the Battle of Simazhai in the East Asia Department of the Berlin State Library, print number 52. Compare a closely related complete set of sixteen engravings of the Qianlong Emperor's conquests, each approx. 52.8 x 89.5 cm, at Christie's New York, 22 March 1999, lot 132.