Chzhan Ts. Socio-Historical and Cultural Background of the Sino-European Style Formation in Court Painting During the Qing Epoch

Abstract: The object of the research is the pre-history of the development of Sino-European painting style at the court of Qing dynasty. The subject of the research is the social, historical and cultural background of the new style. Being the foreigners and the conquerors, the Manchu dynasty of Qing was less limited by Chinese canons in art and more susceptible to European influence. However, even during the previous epoch elements of Western influence were manifested in graphic arts including paintings which are also analyzed by the author of the article. The research methods include general scientific methods as well as specific scientific methods and principles such as the comparative principle, historical principles, system-oriented analysis, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction; sociological, art history and semiotic approaches to analysis of visual artworks.The main conclusions of the research is that Manchurians who had conquered China rather fast became 'Chinese' in the area of art. There had already been a background for the development of the Sino-European style in paintings during Ming dynasty. Conquerors, ironically, created the conditions for the emergence of the new Chinese court graphic arts during Qing dynasty. The novelty of the research is provided by the following statement: when two cultures meet, progressive development of graphic arts of high artistic value is possible even in a conquered country, as it happened in this case, despite the fact that until recently paintings of Sino-European style had been considered as 'non-Chinese' and not possessing the authentic aesthetic features by many of fine art experts and had remained understudied. 

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