Sex in the imperial garden: an unpublished Chinese pillow book, or manual of love-making, in the Kinsey Institute is a remarkable version of a celebrated album without any erotic content painted in 1738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

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The eleventh month

In the penultimate month, Admiring antiques on a winter day, Chen for the first time invites us to witness a completely interior scene. In a lavishly appointed room, the court ladies admire a large set of beautiful objects, including ancient bronzes and porcelain vessels (Fig. 16). One of them has unrolled a large scroll, and the group examines the painted landscape appreciatively. A maid approaches the group with a further handful of unopened scrolls. The chill of imminent winter is evidenced by a large brazier of white-hot coals in the foreground as well as a smaller one by the bed visible in a room to the rear.

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In this bed the artist of the Kinsey album has inserted his love-making couple--finally granting them a measure of appropriate privacy (Fig. 17). And here a particularly interesting change appears on the large open scroll: Chen's original landscape has now been replaced by illustrations of two sexual positions. Here the demure court ladies, previously engaged in the refined perusal of antique artifacts, are now made to study various sexual positions--their landscape scroll now converted into a sex manual. While obviously echoing the intimate activity taking place in the adjacent room, such imagery also suggests the need for court ladies to be familiar with the physical aspects of love (commonly known as 'the art of the bedchamber').

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Women studying representations of the art of love is in fact a common theme in Chinese erotic art, as for instance in album leaves illustrating the famous novel Jin Ping Mei from the Qing period. It was customary for women and for couples to look at these pictures as a form of instruction. (28) In the poem T'ung-shen-ko, written by the celebrated Hart poet Chang Hen (78-139), a bride talks to her husband about sex on their wedding night, suggesting that they can refer to the illustrations in her copy of the Art of the Bedchamber so that 'we can practice all the variegated postures'. (29) 'Such manuals', as Charles Humana puts it, 'were frequently as much a part of the bedroom as cooking utensils in a kitchen'. (30) And indeed, many such manuals--presumably of a sexual nature--are shown piled on a bookshelf beside the bed in both Chen's album and its variant. Here the viewer encounters an interesting parallelism, for the figures he or she is observing in the Kinsey album--in essence a pillow book--are themselves engaged in the viewing of erotic drawings.

The twelfth month

A cold and chilly garden is the setting for the final month of Chen's album, Looking for plum blossoms in the snow. The court ladies retreat to one of the garden buildings for a cosy cup of tea, while on the path a late arrival, bundled up in winter furs and accompanied by two maids, hurries to join them. Perhaps she is returning from a quick stroll in the garden to look for the first plum buds that will soon be in blossom, thus suggesting a circular return to the first month of the album. Continuing the relative sense of privacy introduced in the previous month, the couple here make love on a rug within a small garden edifice (albeit with no walls) in the far back of the composition (Fig. 18). Here they can at last be alone, with no assistants, enjoying their mutual pleasure at a discreet distance from the court ladies. Even here, however, the coldness of the weather is evident, for finally the man is allowed to don a single article of clothing--a bright red cloak--to help keep him warm.