Landscape

Thomas Child
Jade Belt Bridge
1870s
Albumen print
22 cm x 29 cm

The famous Jade Belt Bridge was built in the 1750s during the Qianlong Emperor’s dramatic expansion of the Yuanmingyuan’s grounds. In Thomas Child’s masterly photograph, the arch of the bridge stands silhouetted against a clear white sky, as three dark figures ascend upwards, seemingly to the heavens. The underside of one half of the bridge appears in inky shadow, joining its mirror reflection to create a blackened crescent moon.

In Child’s great photographic image the sky and surface of the water under the arch of the bridge render as pure white; the land dissolving into bands of horizontal lines like brush strokes, and culminating in the distant shore, suffused with mist. Sky, mist, and water are shown the same way, as flat, unpigmented planes. The emptiness of space and the metaphorical relationship between sky, mist and water so magically captured in this photograph reflects an enduring focus of important traditions of revered Chinese literati painting.

John Thomson
Inscribed Boulder
Fuzhou. c.1870
Carbon print

Attributed Major J. C. Watson
Ningpo Path
c.1860
Albumen print
29 cm x 21 cm

Tung Hing Studio
Cliff Face of Tianyou Peak, Fujian
c.1875
Albumen print
22 cm x 29 cm

The landscape photographers of Tung Hing Studio were among the most original and innovative of the nineteenth-century. The firm’s topographical photographs reveal a unique sensitivity which recollects Chinese landscape painting. Certainly, the timeless beauty of this photograph of Tianyou Peak places the Tung Hing Studio at the forefront of artists who bridged the new technology of photography with Chinese pictorial traditions.

This is one of the earliest photographs of the grand cliff face of Tianyou Peak. This view shows Jiuqu (Nine-Bend) River, flowing through a gorge in the Wuyi Mountains. Situated along this river are numerous temples and monasteries, many now in ruins. This scenic part of Fujian attracts many visitors today as it has through the centuries.

Hedda Morrison
Mountain View at Mount Hua
Shaanxi. 1935
Gelatin silver print

Tung Hing Studio
Plantation in Wuyi Mountain Range, Fujian
c.1875
Albumen print
22 cm x 29 cm

John Thomson
Foochow
Fuzhou. c.1870
Carbon print

Lai Fong
Hong Kong Harbour Panorama
c.1870
Albumen print, 3 print panorama
23 cm x 90 cm

The misty atmosphere of this sweeping view contributes to the otherworldly scale conveyed by Lai Fong’s photograph. It was taken from part way up the mountain Peak overlooking Central, the administrative heart of Hong Kong Island, where Lai Fong’s studio was located on Queen’s Road. The photograph shows the westernmost tip of the Kowloon peninsula in the center of the composition. The ‘nine dragon’ mountains, after which Kowloon was named, are clearly visible in the distance. Lai Fong’s privileged view is that of an official surveying his kingdom, and indeed, the Hong Kong governor’s summer mansion was moved near to a location nearby at around the time this picture was made, in 1868.

Lai Fong
Guangzhou Waterfall
c.1860
Albumen print
29 cm x 21 cm

One of the most accomplished photographers of his time, Lai Fong was equally adept at landscape and portrait work. Here, he shows southern China as a tropical paradise, the long exposure giving the water a veil-like quality. Photographs like this one held special interest to those who knew traditions of Chinese brush painting.