Hong Kong Palace Museum | “Heavenly Horses: Masterpieces from the Palace Museum” Thematic Exhibition Talk | The Emperor’s Horses: Mulan Autumn Hunts and Tribute Horse Paintings in the Qianlong Period

The Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–1795) rides forth on a hunt, majestic and commanding—but what horse is that beneath him in the painting?

This talk focuses on a set of paintings in the Palace Museum collection depicting the royal hunt of the Qianlong Emperor. The set comprises ten scrolls, each showing the emperor engaged in hunting within a landscape. The human figures, horses, and game animals in the paintings are attributed to the Italian missionary Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766). The landscape backgrounds were completed by Chinese court painters—a demonstration of the collaboration between Chinese and European painters at the Qing court. Imperial portraits at the Qing court emphasised realism, suggesting that both the human figures and the horses in these paintings were drawn from real-life references. Which horses, then, did the Qianlong Emperor ride in these depictions? This talk will discuss the creative origins of these paintings. Using the depicted imperial horses as a point of departure, the representation of the Mulan Autumn Hunts and tribute horses during the Qianlong period will be further explored.

This talk accompanies the thematic exhibition “Heavenly Horses: Masterpieces from the Palace Museum”, which is on view in Gallery 4 at the Hong Kong Palace Museum from 20 March 2026 to 17 March 2027. The exhibition is jointly organised by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Palace Museum, and exclusively sponsored by the Institute of Philanthropy.

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