Page 144 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

Yuanmingyuan in Eighteenth-century France 129
in the 1786 inventory list states, Delatour’s paintings were accompanied by the six
woodcuts that were the source for their compositions. 32 Unfortunately, Morel’s
contributions to Delatour’s Essais do not give an indication of the size of the paintings
or their format, although Delatour does mention their “fresh and charming color,”
something Morel also notes. 33 Morel’s descriptions of the many details of the
architecture indicate that the quality of Delatour’s paintings was similar to those still
extant from Bertin’s collection, but his opinion of the rendering of the landscape is
essentially a criticism of the failings of Chinese artists when compared to European
painters. 34
Item no. 4 on the list of objects, paintings and prints sent to Delatour in 1786,
the “twenty [frontal] views of the European buildings of the Yuanmingyuan,” is
one of the best documented sets of images sent from China to France by the Jesuit
missionaries in Beijing in the eighteenth century. 35 The views in question are con -
ventionally known as the “20 Engravings of the European Palaces of the Yuan -
mingyuan,” and they represent the hybrid Sino-European–style buildings, gardens
and fountains built for the Qianlong emperor beginning in 1747, with the last
addition made to the site in 1768 (see Figure 1.2). The Qianlong emperor ordered
that this separate section of his major extension of the Yuanmingyuan, part of the
adjacent Changchun yuan (長春園, the Garden of Lasting Springtime), be represented
in European-style copperplate prints. Begun in 1781 and completed in February 1787,
the engraving project was supervised by the Manchu court official and artist Ilantai
(xyz, act. ca. 1749–1793), one of the last surviving students of Giuseppe Castiglione
(1688–1766), himself the most famous of the Jesuit painters active at the Qing
imperial court earlier in the eighteenth century. 36 Delatour published the story of his
reception of a set of the “20 Engravings” in the Essais, and it is clear from what he
wrote that this is the set—one that includes an unfinished painting (see Figure 8.3)—
now in the John Rylands Library, which holds the Special Collections of the University
of Manchester Library. 37
In 1786, Father François Bourgeois (1723–1792), at that time the administrator
of the French mission in Beijing, wrote to Delatour:

It was three years ago, Sir, that the Emperor wished to have the picture of his
European buildings constructed at the Yuanmingyuan to put them together with
those of his Chinese palaces, which had been laid out according to his orders.
He called upon two or three disciples of Brother Castiglione; they worked, in
effect, under the eyes of this Prince who often corrected their views, then he had
them engraved on copper, and this is the first example of the Chinese talent for
engraving.
By way of the two painters who were students of Castiglione, I ended up
acquiring a copy of the plates that I am sending you. [. . . One] had begun to
render the first plate in color, but he fell ill and did not finish. I have put his
sketch, as unfinished as it is, into the case. 38

What Bourgeois’ letter has to say about the dates of the project to produce the “20
Engravings of the European Palaces” corresponds approximately to what we now
know from Qing archival documents. The fact that his letter is dated 1786 while the
39
prints were officially presented to the Qianlong emperor in 1787 is intriguing. What
it most likely implies is that the prints obtained by Bourgeois were proofs printed at