Khubilai Khan Hunting: Tribute to the Great Khan

Abstract

The magnificent Khubilai Khan Hunting (Yuan Shizu Chulie tu), a Mongol court painting produced during the Yuan era (1271–1368), depicts the majestic Great Khan Khubilai (Ch. Shizu) (r. 1260–1294) and his second empress Chabi on a leisurely hunting expedition (fig.1). Khubilai, grandson of Chinggis Khan (c. 1162–1227), was the universal ruler of the Mongol Empire from 1260 until his death in 1294, and beginning in 1271, concurrently the emperor of the Yuan dynasty in China. Here he is represented astride a horse at the height of his reign, wearing an ermine robe and watching an archer preparing to release an arrow (fig. 2). Though the painting is a pictorial tour-de-force of an illustrious subject with significant implications for the production of painting during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, it has received only modest scholarly attention. This is partly because its provenance is undocumented before the 1950s, when it was finally recorded in the catalogue of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and because it has rarely been exhibited. The painting also bears what some scholars consider to be a later, spurious signature by the Yuan artist Liu Guandao (fl. late thirteenth–early fourteenth century) since it displays no stylistic affinity with the only work comfortably attributed to this artist. Nevertheless, two modern scholars, Fu Xinian and Tao Qiyun, regard the painting as consistent stylistically with a mid- to late-Yuan dating. This article seeks to restore this grand painting within the history of Chinese art, seeing as incorporating some aspects that may relate to Song-dynasty art, but ultimately to regard it thematically and stylistically as an ambitious articulation of Mongol Yuan-dynasty art.