Michele Matteini’s The Ghost in the City: Luo Ping and the Craft of Painting in Eighteenth-Century China offers insight on the eighteenth-century artist Luo Ping’s (1733­–1799) position in the history of painting in China and sheds light on the intricate relationship between artist and patron. Known as one of the “Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou,” Luo is primarily recognized for his unusual paintings of ghosts and his activities in the commercial city of Yangzhou. Luo Ping was introduced to audiences in Europe and the US through a 2009 exhibition that traveled between Museum Rietberg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in studies by Kim Karlsson (Luo Ping: The Life, Career, and Art of an Eighteenth-Century Chinese Painter, Peter Lang, 2004) and Ginger Hsu (A Bushel of Pearls: Painting for Sale in Eighteenth-Century Yangchow, Stanford University Press, 2001). Interpretations of Luo have largely focused on the economic and historical circumstances of his work.

For Matteini, Luo Ping is no longer just one of the “Eight Eccentrics”; rather, Luo played an important role in historicizing Yangzhou experimentalisms after arriving in Beijing in the 1770s. The author suggests that Luo’s art was an essential link between the orthodox traditions, the innovations of earlier individualist artists Shitao (1642–1707) and Jin Nong (1687–1773), and later nineteenth-century practices that developed into modern ink painting. Matteini’s understanding of Luo Ping helps reposition art from eighteenth-century China, challenging the conventional understanding that paintings from this period were either regurgitations of the past or idiosyncratic products of eccentricity.

The Ghost in the City is set in Beijing in the late eighteenth century when Luo created works for some of the most influential political figures in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) government. The book starts off with Luo Ping’s haunting In the Realm of the Ghosts, ca. 1766. The ghosts and demons, which Luo was allegedly able to see under broad daylight, are formed by subtle ink washes and blurry lines that capture the in-betweenness of their existence. This highly unconventional painting drew a great deal of attention and helped Luo Ping launch his career in the capital soon after its creation. While the ghost scroll is often interpreted as social and political satire, the author proposes that we “take ghosts as ghosts and not as ghosts of something” (7). <!—StartFragment—>In other words, to “take ghosts as ghosts” entails prioritizing what is on the scroll, embracing its complexity and ambiguity, and acknowledging that artworks and context are interdependent and mutually defined<!—EndFragment—> (10). It is under this premise that he approaches the dual goals of this book: trailing Luo Ping’s activities as they unfolded in Southern City in Qianlong-era (r. 1735–1796) Beijing and exploring the spaces in the capital as they appear in Luo Ping’s art (6).

Matteini’s approach combines the careful examination of images, inscriptions, and context, without losing sight of the surface of the paintings. While there is room for further clarification and exploration, The Ghost in the City concretizes the social mechanisms and creative considerations surrounding Luo Ping’s artistic practice. It not only lends insight into Luo’s art but can also inform our understanding of how other painters in similar situations functioned at that time.

The first chapter introduces the physical and cultural geography of Beijing’s southern quarters, what was then known as the Southern City. He highlights the dynamic, informal social networks prevalent among cultural elites in the area, where powerful officials supported their private entourage of political think tanks, literary advisors, and artists-in-residence. The author links this close-knit web of relationships to a new development in paintings of literati gatherings—a shift of focus from individuals to shared values and experiences. Instead of close-up scenes that highlight individual participants, Luo Ping portrayed these social functions as a cozy affair set against a spacious courtyard. Matteini calls these paintings “conversational,” in that the colophons that crowd the margins replicate the overlapping voices at a social event (29–30).

In chapter two, Matteini effectively argues that Luo Ping’s success in Beijing was largely due to his ability to capitalize on specific artistic and literary references that matched the preferences of his patrons. By channeling the innovations of his artistic predecessors from Yangzhou while also engaging with orthodox styles, Luo marketed himself as a Southern artist who combined art historical erudition and artistic originality. This chapter offers a compelling analysis of the stylistic relationship between Luo Ping’s landscape albums and works by his recent artistic predecessors—Dong Qichang (1555–1636), who prioritized art historical erudition, and Yangzhou-based Shitao and Jin Nong, who were both known for their artistic originality (76–80). The author suggests that Luo Ping historicized and canonized the visual experiments of Shitao and Jin Nong, securing Yangzhou’s place on the map of painting history (92).

Chapter three centers upon Luo’s painting The Two Miaos and Su Shi to discuss a cultural phenomenon where scholar-officials presented themselves as a reincarnation of their literary idols. In this painting, a scholar dressed in Su Shi’s signature headwear and staff greets a Buddhist monk and a Daoist priest, both named Miao. Weng Fanggang’s (1733–1818) title inscription tells us the “two Miaos” both painted Su Shi. But Matteini points out that the narrative in the image is intentionally ambiguous because none of the figures have clearly directed gazes. He argues that this “anti-theatricality” rejects a clear separation inside and outside the painting and suggests a continuity between the fictional and real worlds (102).

The relationship between the two worlds—fictional and real—is a recurring theme in The Ghost in the City. Matteini cites the canonical eighteenth-century novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, to illustrate how paintings can be taken as “real” instead of mere illusionary recreations of things. This epic story about the rise and decline of a prominent noble family is believed to be inspired by its author Cao Xueqin’s (1716–1762) family history. Cao’s novel is rich with allusions on these two worlds, starting from the “Land of Illusion” to the two surnames Zhen (real) and Jia (illusory). Matteini implies that the blurred boundary between real and fiction in Luo Ping’s art is comparable to that of the novel. But he makes no further indication as to whether this concept applies to the broader cultural production in eighteenth-century China and how this “worldview” compares to the theatricality in art and literature from seventeenth-century China.

In chapter four, Matteini returns to Luo Ping’s landscape paintings. While the paintings portray mountains and waters, the real subject matter is the people represented by the landscapes. The culturally-loaded landscape is not a new phenomenon—Matteini discusses Ming dynasty (1368–1644) “style name paintings” and Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) “landscapes of property” as points of reference. However, Matteini suggests that Luo’s The Sword Terrace, painted in celebration of Zhang Daowo’s (1757–1829) assignment to Sichuan, shows a notable departure from established genres in its combination of fictive, factual, and aspirational elements (163). Despite the author’s insistence upon Luo Ping’s departures from convention, Luo’s innovation remains opaque, given that preexisting examples of site-specific landscape paintings also demonstrate a mixture of reality and multiple, layered references. Comparison with other landscape subgenres, including farewell paintings, “geo-narrative” paintings discussed in Elizabeth Kindall’s Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son (Harvard University Asia Center, 2016), and those that are associated with placed-based remembrance inspired by huaigu (reminiscence of the past) literature, may provide further insight into how Luo Ping’s work differs from previous modes of landscape painting. 

Throughout the four chapters, Matteini examines how an educated professional artist from the south succeeded in the Qing capital and how regional styles from Yangzhou played out on the national level. As Luo Ping and his patrons (and everyone else in their circle) were each trying to position themselves in the cultural arena of Beijing’s Southern City, the agenda of the artist intertwined with that of his patrons. The patrons’ preferences influenced how and what the artist painted, and the artist helped shape the patron’s interests. This complicated set of considerations affected who painted what subject matter in what style, as well as who wrote the inscriptions and how the paintings circulated. Matteini’s careful treatment of Luo’s artistic choices sheds light on the implicit and complex relationship between artist and patron. Since Luo Ping’s major patrons, Ingliyan (1707–1783) and Faššan (1753–1813), were from bannerman backgrounds (a Manchu elite military institution), perhaps the next logical question is to consider their cultural pursuits from a multiethnic perspective of art history of the Qing dynasty.

The Ghost in the City: Luo Ping and the Craft of Painting in Eighteenth-Century China is not just a monograph on Luo Ping. It is many things at once: a book about Luo Ping’s career in Beijing; a book about the art historical role of Luo Ping and Yangzhou experimentalisms; a book about the art world in Qianlong-era Southern City; and a book about how artists operated in an age when painting was highly professionalized. Through his study of Luo Ping’s late works, Matteini makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of painting in Qing dynasty China during the eighteenth century. Ultimately, he argues that art from the late eighteenth century was not in decline but reflects a “regained confidence in imagination and the potential of words and images to turn imagination into reality” (181).