Reviving the lost glory of the Old Summer Palace

The China Yuanmingyuan Society announced at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday that a project to replicate the Forty Views of Yuanmingyuan Park (the Old Summer Palace in Beijing), a collection of Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) silk paintings featuring 40 scenes of the imperial palace, has been successfully completed.

The project, initiated by the society in April last year, brought together nearly 100 historians, intangible cultural heritage inheritors and artists to re-create the ancient masterpiece and the box and cabinet once holding it.

Zhou Zaolin, secretary-general of the society, said that because of this project, experts have systematically combed the architectural information in the paintings and this data will inform future studies on the ancient palace.

He said more initiatives will be carried out to re-create artifacts related to Yuanmingyuan Park. Moreover, results from the digital restoration of the park will also be promoted worldwide in various ways.

The original collection was created over 11 years on the orders of Emperor Qianlong, who reigned from 1735 to 1799. The collection features landscape paintings produced by court painters and each painting is paired with a poem composed by the emperor himself.

In 1860, when Anglo-French forces looted and burned Yuanmingyuan, they removed the original collection, which is now stored at the National Library of France.