Yiheyuan (New Imperial Summer Palace), Peking: Zhihuihai temple, at Wanshoushan. Photograph by John Thomson, 1871.

  • Thomson, J. (John), 1837-1921.
Date:
[1871]
Reference:
19240i
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About this work

Description

Zhihuihai: "Sea of Perfect Wisdom". Wanshoushan: "Hill of Longevity". A tall building seen through and above trees, with a dilapidated wall at right and three people sitting in the centre. The Sea of Wisdom Temple, also known as the 'hall without beams', is a religious building on top of Longevity Hill. Its name indicates that the Buddha's wisdom is as wide as the sea. First built in the latter half of the 18th century, its construction was undertaken without the use of either columns or beams, and it is faced entirely with glazed tiles. The original external decoration also included 1,100 small, glazed Buddhist sculptured tiles, but although the Temple survived the looting of 1860, many of the golden Buddhist sculptures swathed in the tiles were damaged

Publication/Creation

[1871]

Physical description

1 photograph : glass photonegative, wet collodion ; glass approximately 20.5 x 25.5 cm (8 x 10 in.)

Lettering

Bears Thomson's negative number: "492"

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

References note

Nick Pearce, Photographs of Peking, China 1861-1908: an inventory and description of the Yetts collection at the University of Durham: through Peking with a camera, Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005, no. 38, pp. 112-113
China through the lens of John Thomson, 1868-1872, Beijing: Beijing World Art Museum, 2009, p. 67 (reproduced)

Reference

Wellcome Collection 19240i

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