Boys Celebrating the Lantern Festival
late 18th century
The traditional “one hundred boys” subject of this decorative looking glass carries auspicious wishes for fertility and felicity. One boy lofts a lantern with the words, “A Great Age of Peace and Prosperity.” Some boys hold fish-shaped lanterns, play drums and cymbals, and light firecrackers. Others are theatre characters or perform the lion and dragon dances. The children are celebrating Yuanxiao, the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. Their procession begins on the far shores where there are European-style houses. Adopting Western painting techniques, the artists show the boys’ reflections on the river and depict the architecturally Chinese palace buildings as three-dimensional structures.
Trade with China was restricted to Canton alone, so most reverse-painted mirrors were made there. Intended for export, they offered romanticized visions of China for the Western viewer, who paid handsomely for them. The reverse is true here: a Chinese festival is situated within a pastoral European landscape and the usual Oriental fantasy is replaced by an imagined Occident. This mirror’s courtly refinement suggests that it was sent to the Qing imperial palace as tribute.
Pigment on glass
38 x 56 in. (96.52 x 142.24 cm)
Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection
43.107
Provenance: Yamanaka & Co., Inc., United States, to 1942; [liquidation sale by Alien Property Custodian, Yamanaka & Co., Inc., 1943, lot no. 1430]; purchased from Yamanaka Liquidation Sale by Seattle Art Museum, 1943
