The Qianlong emperor enjoyed scenic illusion paintings (tongjinghua). Over the six decades of his reign (1736–95), he commissioned a large number of these works for the private spaces of his residences. They are wall- and ceiling-mounted paintings in color on silk, produced by the best Chinese and Western painters serving at court, in a style characterized by realism. They use Western linear perspective, sometimes modeling through light shading, and were done to decorate a specific architectural structure. The majority of them have been lost, and these paintings are not mentioned in the catalogues of paintings commissioned by Qianlong. Those that are still extant were, until recently, despised or ignored by specialists of Chinese painting. The situation changed with the publication of the Palace Workshop archives in 2005 and the conservation work, completed in 2008, at the Palace of Tranquil Longevity (Ningshougong) compound of the Forbidden City. It is to this type of poorly investigated, yet fascinating eighteenth-century court painting that Kristina Kleutghen devotes a remarkably well-documented study.

In chapter 1, Kleutghen shows what cultural landscape Western pictorial techniques, realism, and illusionism were introduced into in seventeenth-century China, in a time marked by the triumph of literati painting and a contempt for mural, and more broadly, professional works. The Shixue (The study of vision) by Nian Xiyao (1671–1738) and linear perspective are the subject of chapter 2. Chapter 3 deals with images evoking Qianlong and his family, emphasizing auspicious symbols and rebuses through New Year and boys-at-play pictures. Three of the paintings are in the Ningshougong, constructed for Qianlong's retirement; the last one, which was initially in the Siyongzhai Huanxia (Studio for Contemplating the Future) of the Changchunyuan (Eternal Spring Garden), is now remounted as a hanging scroll. This painting, dated 1762–63, contains a portrait, certainly by Castiglione, of Yongyan (the future Jiaqing emperor) as a small child. According to Kleutghen, the work provides “an intimate and convincing expression of lineage and family through the connection the child creates between the real and painted worlds” (p. 139). The image at the core of chapter 4, Qianlong watching peacocks in their pride, pertains to the tribute-painting genre and may allude to the double role Qianlong wanted to embody, the expansionist politician and the retired literatus. Chapter 5 is devoted to the “perspective paintings east of the lake” (hudong xianfahua) at the end of the European Palaces of the Changchunyuan. With chapter 6, we come back to the Ningshougong and more specifically to the scenic illusions of the Juanqinzhai (Studio of Exhaustion from Diligent Service), built and decorated between 1771 and 1779. Kleutghen then deals, through the images of beauties in Qing palaces, with the ambiguous and contradictory attitude of the High Qing emperors towards eroticized Han women, the Jiangnan lifestyle, and, by extension, Han culture. Illusionism here is akin to fantasy.

Kleutghen provides excellent and very subtle descriptions of these different paintings. Being mainly interested in the signification and the symbolism of the images, she gives priority to a semiotic analysis, basing her interpretations largely on Qianlong's poems. The choice is easily understood, but we must not forget that these poems are not always spontaneous; many are a retrospect construction, propaganda, or self-promotion. Taken at face value, they may distort the interpretation.

One of the ideas at the back of Kleutghen's mind is that the scenic illusions, installed in some of the emperor's most private spaces, “offer Qianlong's personal (and even secret) thoughts on the major issues of his reign, including empire, ethnicity, identity, longevity, and legacy” (p. 21). In this framework, each of chapters 3 through 6 refers to one or several of these issues, which makes the book rich and stimulating, even if Kleutghen does not always avoid the risk of overinterpreting. These paintings are also understood as a porous boundary between illusion and reality and participate, as Kleutghen rightly says, in the general interest of High Qing culture in illusionism, if we take the term in its broadest meaning, including a taste for recreation and replication. There is no doubt that Imperial Illusions is an important contribution and provides a new perspective on visual culture at the Qianlong court.