Page 143 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

128 John Finlay
versions of Chinese painting conventions. The farther the Bertin versions move from
the original Qianlong composition, the more fantastic they become.
The inventory lists of objects sent to Bertin from China also include details of
texts, prints, paintings and objects sent to others, including the Bibliothèque du Roi
(the royal library) as well as a number of private collectors (such as the two Ducs
de Chaulnes). These documents provide invaluable evidence of the networks through
which this material circulated. Listed among them are items destined to certain
“Mr. de la Tour,” occasionally described as the “Secrétaire du Roy” or Secretary to
the King. This is Louis-François Delatour (1727–1807), who was, among other
things, an author, printer and bookseller and indeed a secretary to Louis XVI after
1779. 27 Because of his official position, he was in contact with Henri Bertin, and the
two men shared a keen interest in China. Delatour himself apparently maintained a
direct correspondence with the French Jesuits in Beijing, sending them money for the
acquisition of objects, texts and books as well as to commission drawings and
paintings for his personal collection. 28 A detailed list of objects, prints and paintings
sent to Delatour in 1786 contains 18 entries, and two of these especially concern us
here:

No. 4. Twenty [frontal] views of the European buildings of the Yuanmingyuan,
the first copper engravings by the Chinese.

.. .
No. 6. Six painted buildings, or Palaces of the Emperor, with the six woodcuts
after which they were made in color. 29

Both of these sets of pictures are discussed in detail in Delatour’s 1803 publication
Essais sur l’architecture des Chinois (Essays on the architecture of the Chinese), 30
and we will start with no. 6, the paintings of “six buildings.” Like many of the images
of the Yuanmingyuan in the collection of Henri Bertin, these six paintings represent
six of the “40 Views.” Unlike Bertin, however, Delatour knew that these paintings
depicted the Yuanmingyuan. The Essais sur l’architecture des Chinois contains des -
criptions of all six paintings that were written for Delatour by Jean-Marie Morel
(1728–1810), himself an eminent writer on gardens, and the details in Morel’s
descriptions that allow us to identify the six images from the “40 Views.” 31 The first
painting is clearly the image of the three islands in the Fuhai eN or Sea of Good
Fortune, the Pengdao yaotai (fg瑤i, no. 32 of the “40 Views”). Delatour’s second
painting has all the elements as they appear in the Jiuzhou qingyan (jk;l, no. 3
of the “40 Views”). The description of the third painting is evidently that of the
Fanghu shengjing (m(n境, no. 29 of the “40 Views”). The fourth painting is also
easily identified; it is the Zhengda guangming (p大光 , no. 1 of the “40 Views”),
which includes the official reception hall at the entrance to the Yuanmingyuan.
In the fifth painting, Morel describes eight pavilions arranged in the form of two
interlaced letters “Z,” and this must be the swastika-shaped Wanfang anhe ( mrs,
no. 13 of the “40 Views”), one of the most distinctive constructions at the Yuan -
mingyuan. Morel’s description of the sixth painting is very brief, but his remarks
identify the subject as the Danpo ningjing (tuv=, no. 20 of the “40 Views”). If we
compare Morel’s observations to the “40 Views,” it is clear that the paintings in
Delatour’s possession remained close to their Qing imperial sources, and, as the entry