The main body of the commission began in 1750 and it was completed in 1759. As many as twenty-seven court painters and calligraphers were working on the commission under five editors-in-chief, Yilu (1695-1767), Jiang Pu (1708-1761), Wang Youdun (1692-1758), Guanbao (?-1776) and He Guozong (?-1766). After editing and further expansion in the ensuing years, the manuscript was printed by the Palace Publications Office in the Wuying Palace in 1766, and it was finally included as part of the Four Treasures imperial library project in 1773. For that purpose seven versions in total were produced and stored in libraries across the empire. The museum's collection of the manuscript is incomplete. All its leaves, together with those in the British Library, in the National Museums of Scotland and in the National Museum of Ireland, may have been part of the version kept in the Wenyuan Pavilion library in the Yuanming yuan Summer Palace, Beijing. The current page belongs to the first of four groups of leaves from the manuscruipt acquired by the museum. The museum purchased this group from a certain Walter H. Harris, the son of a builder, a director of Schweppes, in 1895.