THE SHIH-MUN, OR ROCK GATES

Artist: Thomas Allom ____________ Engraver: Le Petit

Note: the title in the table above is printed below the engraving

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AN ANTIQUE STEEL ENGRAVING MADE IN THE EARLY 1840s !! ITEM IS OVER 150 YEARS OLD!

VERY OLD WORLD! INCREDIBLE DETAIL!

FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: It is remarkable that people in a primitive state (and notwithstanding their superiority in handicraft, the Chinese do not rise much higher in the scale of nations) possess the truest and most admirable ideas of the picturesque. Presumption seems to be the characteristic of modern taste; agreeable and comfortable associations, of that which prevailed in the olden time. Our abbeys and convents are placed beside the running stream, or on the banks of a navigable river, sheltered from the rude blasts of winter by surrounding forests or impending hills. In all ancient countries, and where the highest degrees of civilization are unknown, domestic architecture is not only suited for the natural features of the landscape, but embosomed recesses, deep and densely-wooded dingles, valleys fertile and well watered, the romantic banks of some rapid but available river, a spot where business and beauty are combined, was uniformly selected as the abode, either of the individual or the community. This grateful and fascinating has withered into contempt before the growth of civilization, whose great glory is to level mountains, drain lakes, reclaim the barren wastes, and triumph open nature by erecting on those very sites which she had made the most repulsive, the very noblest works of art.

An instinctive love of the picturesque, a prerogative of the mountaineer in all parts of the world, is peculiarly the Chinaman's inheritance; and, in the province of Kiang-nan, enriched and adorned by a majestic river, they have indulged their taste for landscape scenery in a manner and degree calculated to raise our estimation of their intellectual qualities. For some miles above and below the Shih-Mun, the river is enclosed between banks abrupt, rocky, but interspersed with patches and plateaus of productive land. The country behind is of a totally contrary character; there a wide-spread morass exists, difficult of drainage from the rocky ridges that form the river's bed, through which a passage for the surplus waters of the fens can scarce be found. Abandoning this moor to the wild tenants of the earth and skies, the population have flocked to the water's edge, and possessed themselves of the projecting ledges at the mountain's foot, the retiring bays at their sheltered base, or the vicinity of some dark pool, whose scaly treasures repay the fisherman for his constant toil. As the junks descend the river the velocity of the current increases, until its maximum is attained between the herculean pillars of the Rock-gates. There the navigation requires much caution, and often the most vigilant, confounded by the suddenness with which the two high pinnacles seem to close over him, and embrace the azure vault of heaven, mistake their distance, and are carried against the rocks. In the surrounding district, limestone prevails very generally, but on the river's side it appears to recline on a species of breccia: it would not be untrue to characterize the stone in the immediate vicinity of the Shih-Mun as marble, although the natives do not place any value on it for decorative purposes, neither do they burn it into lime.

On either side, and just below the rude rocky pillars that contract the passage, small coves, of great depth and perfect shelter, afford safe wharfage for merchant-vessels; and there the trading junk is generally seen moored to the natural quay, the steadfast cliff; the contracted channel giving a violent and powerful efficacy to the volume of waters, which have consequently worked an immense depth here for their transit. In this deep basin, multitudes of fish collect, and render their capture, by trained fishing- birds, an achievement both easy and profitable. The privilege of fishing between the Rock-gates is rented at a very high price from the local government.

These lofty peaks, that pierce the clouds, derive the epithet " Shih-Mun" from the termination of a magnificent scene, so inclined to the direct view of the Rock-gates as to be incapable of introduction in the illustration. Its beauties, its solemnities, its horrors, have been described in bold and highly coloured language by native poets and tourists; nor has national prejudice, in this instance, outstepped the limits of veracity. Entering a deep, dark, close ravine, the opposite sides of which attain at least a thousand feet in height, with an intervening space of comparative insignificance, the traveller proceeds along his gloomy way, unable to distinguish, save by the occasional sparkling and floating foam, the torrent that tumbles and roars in the abyss below him. Having reached the length of a li, or more, he enters " the valley of mist," where he becomes enveloped in a thick vapour, filling the entire gulf which the torrent has hollowed out from the mountain's bosom by the labour of four thousand years; and, if he be not deterred by the humidity of the strange atmosphere, but persevere to the end, in a grand amphitheatre of rocks he will behold the origin of the dewy drapery that hangs over and around him-a splendid cataract, some hundred feet in height, falling over the very edge of the cliff; the spot he stands on, and the circular hollow all around him, being dimly lighted by the rays that pierce through the green waters, at the spot where they turn over the ledge of the summit. With this beautiful hue of green, the poetical historians of the wonders of the Shih-Mun are familiarly acquainted. They boast of having witnessed its lustre in the valley of mist, and compare its verdure to the Lan, the plant from which the rich colour employed in dyeing is extracted.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Thomas Allom was a Topographical Illustrator and Architect. He was born in London, England and in 1819 he was apprenticed to the architect Francis Goodwin. He produced designs for buildings, churches, workhouses and a military asylum in London and carried them out himself as well as working with the architect Sir Charles Barry on numerous projects. He found time to produce an enormous number of views, and like his contemporary William Henry Bartlett, illustrated places rather than people or still life. Allom was a founder member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He died at the age of 68 in Barnes, London, England.

Though he traveled widely in the course of his work, Allom produced his drawings of China, probably his most successful series, by merely crossing the road from the house in Hart Street to the British Museum. It was obviously an economical solution for his publisher, who had managed to convince himself that 'Having dwelt in "the land of the cypress and myrtle", Mr. Allom's talents were fully matured for the faithful delineation of Oriental scenery. His designs were based entirely on the work of earlier artists who had traveled in China, and although he has been justifiably criticised for failure in some instances to acknowledge the original sketches, Allom displays considerable resourcefulness and ingenuity in the way he borrowed and gathered his material from them. Acknowledgement was made to three amateurs, eight of the plates to Lieutenant Frederick White R.M., fourteen to Captain Stoddart, R.N. and two to R. Varnham (who was the son of a tea planter and a pupil of George Chinnery (1774-1852). Nine designs are taken entirely or partially from Sketches of China and the Chinese (1842) by August Borget (1808-1877)," which had been published in England the previous year. He made neat pencil sketches from an album of Chinese landscapes water colours by anonymous Chinese artists that he then turned into fourteen designs. "Another group are based on a set of anonymous drawings that show the silk manufacturing process. Allom made particularly ingenious use of the drawings of William Alexander (1767-1818). Having first traced over a number of Alexander's watercolors in the British Museum (a practice which would certainly be frowned upon today) he used these tracings' either in part or combination in about twenty of his designs. But he never uses exactly the same scene as Alexander without altering the viewpoint or changing the details, his knowledge of perspective enabling him 'to walk round' a view of a building as in his Western Gates of Peking, which takes a viewpoint to the other side of the river. He uses background to Alexander's more peaceful seascape of 1794, The Forts of Anunghoi saluting the 'Lion' in the Bocca Tigris, and updates it to an event sketched by White during the First Opium War of 1841 when the Imogene and Andromache under Lord Napier forced a passage through the straits. Two of Alexander's drawings are sometimes combined - his Chinamen playing 'Shitticock' (sic) are placed by Allom in front of the Pagoda of Lin-ching-shih taken from another Alexander drawing.

The prints were a welcome addition to Fisher's series and became the best known source on the subject of China. Until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 China had been almost totally inaccessible to the European traveller but the first Opium War had created a new sort of interest. The admiration of the 18th and early 19th centuries for Chinese culture and decoration was replaced by a more critical and inquiring attitude. Until photography gave a more accurate picture, a great many people's perception of China and the Chinese people was probably influenced by Allom's idealised images. An interesting use of these, on the ceramic pot lids produced by F. & R. Pratt and Co. throughout the second half of the 19th century, demonstrate how Allom's images, themselves derived from such a variety of sources, became in turn a design source for other ornamental applications. Because of their decorative appeal wide use is still made of reproductions of these illustrations.

SIZE: Image size is 5 1/2 inches by 7 inches. Print size is 7 inches by 10 inches.

CONDITION: Condition is excellent. Bright and clean. Blank on reverse.

SHIPPING: Buyers to pay shipping/handling, domestic orders receives priority mail, international orders receive regular mail.

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Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, heliogravure, lithograph, print, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, NOT blocks of steel or wood. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were inserted into the book with a tissue guard frontis, usually on much thicker quality rag stock paper, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper.

EXTREMELY RARE IN THIS EXCELLENT CONDITION!