Observing Emperor Qianlong’s Taste in Jade through Oscar Raphael’s Bequest to the Fitzwilliam Museum
This is our annual Woolf Jade Lecture, kindly sponsored by Jonathan Woolf and the Woolf Charitable Trust.
Oscar Raphael is the major Asian arts donor to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His unique and impeccable taste laid the foundation of the Chinese art collection at the Museum. His donation included a large number of jades that had been produced in the Qing court during the reign of Emperor Qianlong. Some of them carry imperial marks and a few can be traced back in the imperial archives.
This talk will highlight Raphael’s best jade vessels that were produced in the Qianlong period, their provenance and how they reflect Qianlong’s tastes in jade through the designs, inscriptions and the poems he composed on jades.
Speaker
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James LinSenior Assistant Keeper of Applied Arts, Fitzwilliam Museum, CambridgeJames Lin obtained a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Chinese Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He worked as a research assistant in the Ashmolean Museum between 2000 and 2002. He was employed as a special assistant at the British Museum, helping to set up the Selwyn and Ellie Alleyne Gallery of Chinese Jade between June and November 2002. Afterwards he returned to Oxford as the first Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting, at the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Chinese painting gallery at the Ashmolean Museum. In September 2004 he was appointed as the Assistant Keeper of Applied Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Since 2012 he has been the Senior Assistant Keeper of Applied Arts.
