Sex in the imperial garden: an unpublished Chinese pillow book, or manual of love-making, in the Kinsey Institute is a remarkable version of a celebrated album without any erotic content painted in 1738 for Emperor Qianlong by the court painter Chen Mei, as Efrat El-Hanany reveals

Apollo, March, 2005 by Efrat El-Hanany

Chen's album bears graphic evidence of the Emperor's appreciation: each illustrated leaf received Qianlong's personal stamp. (12) In his old age, the Emperor restamped most of the pages a second time as a token of his enduring admiration. Furthermore, the Emperor even went to the extent of having the album duplicated in costly ivory inlaid with jade and gold. This work of remarkable craftsmanship, dated 1741 and also in the Palace Museum, Beijing, was executed by five famous Cantonese artists, Chen Zuzhang, Gu Pengnian, Chang Cun, Xiao Hanzhen and Chen Guanquan. (13) Here verses composed by Qianlong, written in his own hand and painstakingly reproduced in mother-of-pearl inlaid on a black lacquer ground, appear on twelve facing ivory leaves.

An erotic version of Chen Mei

The Kinsey album has the same dimensions and number of leaves as Chen Mei's earlier album in Beijing, and follows Chen's compositions almost exactly. Under close examination, however, it must be admitted that the Kinsey artist was not as skillful as Chen, being notably less interested in creating illusions of space and making use of simplified details and colour schemes. Additionally, the Kinsey album has no seals of any sort, and its facing leaves are bare, lacking any poetic writings. (14) The most important difference between the two works, however, is that the Kinsey artist has transformed Chen Mei's staid depiction of palace beauties into a pornographic version of the original. Into each composition, he has inserted a scene of explicit love-making between a man and woman, often assisted by eunuchs. To make room for these erotic vignettes, slight modifications were made to Chen's original composition, usually by adding or omitting some element of the architectural or garden setting. However, these changes were carried out with such elegance and discretion that in the majority of cases the transformed scene appears completely natural.

In all twelve leaves, we see that the Kinsey artist has followed Chen's compositions quite closely, with the obvious exception of the insertion of two lovers. In some cases the couple has simply been dropped into the scene, as we see in the ninth, eleventh and twelfth months. Other leaves, however, witness three distinct ways in which the original compositions were slightly altered in order to accommodate this addition. In the second, sixth and eighth months the artist has inserted the couple without any noticeable change in the composition but objects or figures seen in the original album have been discreetly replaced. A second and perhaps more noticeable transformation occurs when the artist shifts some figures from their original location in order to make room for the couple, as in the first, fourth and seventh months. Finally, the most extreme alterations made by the Kinsey artist might be those leaves--the third, fifth and tenth months--in which he has omitted major architectural elements of the garden. In all cases, however, the Kinsey artist has been concerned to manipulate certain features of the setting in order to highlight their sexual connotations and to make the garden a more suitable setting for amorous activities.