Drawings, Proofs and Prints from the Qianlong Emperor’s East Turkestan Copperplate Engravings

At the command of the Qianlong emperor, Chinese troops conquered a vast territory in Central Asia in three campaigns between 1755 and 1759, greatly expanding the Qing empire. The emperor commemorated these victories in several ways, including the commission of a set of sixteen copperplate prints that were ultimately produced for the Qing court by engravers in Paris. These engravings, justifiably famous in their own time, continue to attract the attention of scholars and collectors. Recent publications in China and Europe, as well as the availability of archival documents in French and Chinese shed new light on the production of the “Conquest” engravings, one of the First and surely the most important, examples of cultural collaboration between China and Europe before modern times. This article describes the creation of the model drawings in China and the production process of the copperplate engravings and prints in France with reference to three contemporary 18th-century French publications. It further examines the existing proof prints and lists the extant sets of prints in different versions in museum and library collections as well as prints that have appeared in auction sales worldwide.