Public Lecture: The Development of Landscape Imagery on Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain

This lecture explores the evolution of landscape imagery found on Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. The nonlinear development of this motif from the Yuan to Qing dynasties will be illustrated with images of numerous works from international collections. Landscape decoration on Chinese porcelain profoundly shaped the ways the natural environment of China was imagined for centuries, and influenced the work of ceramicists, around the world. In the mid to late Qing dynasty, landscapes on porcelain were transformed from generalized and stylized images to depictions of specific sites, a development which may have been influenced by European ceramics.