Taiping kung, near Kiukiang, Kiangsi province: a ruined religious building, China. Photograph by John Thomson, 1872.

  • Thomson, J. (John), 1837-1921.
Date:
1872
Reference:
19410i
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Description

A stone flagged path, in the centre foreground, a woman standing to the left. A tower in the distance at the right hand side. Similar to John Thomson, Illustrations of China, London, 1873-4, vol. III, pl. XV, fig. 29. According to Thomson, this photograph was taken in a small town called Taiping kung, about ten miles from Jiujiang. The area was close to Bailu Cave in Mount Lu, where the celebrated neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi once stayed. Although Thomson was told this was once a famous Buddhist monastery, he thought the ruin resembled the pointed Gothic apertures of a medieval European building. He thought at one point that it might be a Jesuit mission. However, Matteo Ricci only stayed in the Nanchang area, and there is no record of him building a mission near Mount Lu. The old lady in the photo is there perhaps to symbolise the antiquity of the ruin

Publication/Creation

1872

Physical description

1 photograph : glass photonegative, wet collodion : stereograph

Lettering

Kiukiang ruins inland, China. Tai-ping-Koong Bears Thomson's negative number: "581"

References note

China through the lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872, Beijing: Beijing World Art Museum, 2009, p. 85 (reproduced)

Notes

This is one of a collection of original glass negatives made by John Thomson. The negatives, made between 1868 and 1872, were purchased from Thomson by Sir Henry Wellcome in 1921

Reference

Wellcome Collection 19410i

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