Yuanming Garden The Forty Scenery Picture of Yuanming Gardon is one of the most accomplished meticulous color paintings in China. It reproduces the magnificent scenery of the heyday of Yuanming Garden. There are Forty unique landscape clusters in the garden landscape cluster.

 

 The "Forty Scenery Map" was drawn by the famous court painters Tang Dai and Shen Yuan around 1744 in accordance with the will of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty.  After the painting was completed, Qianlong wrote 40 poems in imperial pen for it, written by Wang Youdun, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry.  "Forty Scenes" was originally stored in the Old Summer Palace. When the British and French forces burned the Old Summer Palace in 1860, this set of colored drawings was looted by the invaders and is now in the French National Library.

 

 In the late 1920s, an Anhui native Cheng Yansheng discovered it in France and took it back with black and white photos.  In August 2003, the National Museum of China spent a huge amount of money to reprint the original color map in France and make this picture scroll.

 

 "Forty Scenes" has extremely high artistic and historical and cultural value.  The painted buildings, spring stones and other landscapes are all in a realistic style, the poetry inscription has a profound mood, the calligraphy is timeless and elegant, and the poetry, calligraphy and painting have reached a perfect unity.