Step 2 of 3

The Creature

Related Images

  • **Fig. 2.** Page from [Manual of Sea Oddities](https://theme.npm.edu.tw/exh107/npmTaitung/en/selectionZoom/img1_5_1.html)
  • **Fig. 3.** - Example of [Album with dogs](https://en.dpm.org.cn/collections/collections/2014-04-14/1503.html)
  • **Fig. 4.** Image from [Illustrated Catalogue of Birds](https://www.journal18.org/issue7/taxonomy-of-empire-the-compendium-of-birds-as-an-epistemic-and-ecological-representation-of-qing-china/)
  • **Fig. 5.** Example of [fish album outside the court](https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/2018/11/on-a-newly-discovered-see-fish-album)
  • **Fig. 6.** Example of [Assembled Pictures of the Three Realms] - via [Shuge.org](https://www.shuge.org/ebook/san-cai-tu-hui/)
  • **Fig. 7.** Example of domesticated and fish on bowl - Metropolitan Museum of Art - [17.118.4](www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/48218)
  • **Fig. 8.** Example of Fish painting - [Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76536)

There are more albums with marine creatures, for example the Manual of Sea Oddities (Haiguai tu 海怪圖) at the National Palace Museum Taipei (Fig. 2). Other albums of animals made for the Qing emperors depict a variety of dogs (Fig. 3). An album on birds (Fig. 4) is particularly well-researched.[e.g. [Greenberg 2019 and Lai 2011]

But fish and other aquatic organisms are also depicted in albums outside of court contexts (Fig. 5). Scholars have written about The Illustrated Catalogue of Marine Creatures from an art historical perspective [Wu 2013]. In addition, Zhang Chenliang matched the creatures on the album leaves with living ones and carefully researched their context [Cf].

Fish appear throughout treatises that are earlier than The Illustrated Catalogue of Marine Creatures, for example the illustrated encyclopedia Sancai tuhui (Assembled Pictures of the Three Realms) of 1607–09 (Fig. 6). Some species were domesticated and fish bowls used for breeding show their images (Fig. 7). In addition to ceramic decorations, fish were also a common motif in Chinese paintings on silk and paper (Fig. 8). In the late Ming/early Qing dynasty, painter Bada Shanren (birth name: Zhu Da) (1626–1705) for example created several fish paintings. These have been the subject of scholarly research [e.g. Lee 1990].