Kien Long, Chinese Emperor, Writing an Eulogy on Tea

Chinese and Japanese subjects and motifs became popular in painting thanks to the penetration of Eastern culture into Europe since the 1830s - naturally, this interest in exotic art did not bypass Bohemia. Antonín Veith, a friend of Mánes, had his Chinese drawing-room at his Liběchov manor decorated with paintings. An exhibition of Eastern art was probably held in Prague in the second half of the fifties - Biedermeir society was fascinated by Chinese decorative art and began collecting vases, fans, screens, porcelain figures etc. This painting, with a motif unique in Mánes’s work, yet very interesting, comes from that period. The painter shows the emperor’s family in a moment of domestic bliss, rest and intimacy, in the exotic environment of a Chinese garden. The motif offered the painter an excellent opportunity to use a very wide range of colours, to create complicated reflexes of light and in the contrasts of light and shade to express the Oriental atmosphere in line with his ideas.