Page 146 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

Yuanmingyuan in Eighteenth-century France 131
mix of styles produced by someone better acquainted with Italian theatrical design
than the architecture of Palladio or Michelangelo. 42
The unfinished painting to which Bourgeois refers—the one in the Rylands Library
album—is only briefly described in Delatour’s book: “It represents the same palace
sketched for colors, but there is only a small part at the left where the illumination
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is sufficiently finished that one can distinguish the objects.” The unfinished painting
has two notes in pen and ink on it, one in the margin of the upper right of the painting,
which reads “2nd plate which had begun to be rendered in color,” and one in the
margin at the bottom center, “2nd plate sketched for colors.” 44 The numbering of
the plate here, however, brings up a question of the numbering and order of the
plates in the Rylands album, since the print labeled Plate I is actually the second
image in the suite of Chinese engravings, and the print labeled Plate II is actually the
first engraving. 45 This confusion is reflected in the inscriptions on the unfinished
painting, since in both cases the abbreviation for “2nd” is written over the French
abbreviation for “1st.” 46 It is not clear when this mistake was made or by whom,
but it probably begins with the fact that the first two prints show two different sides
of the same building, the Xieqiqu {奇}. The note on the painting in Delatour’s book
is correct in saying that only one small part of the painting is finished enough to see
the details, but the detail here is fascinating. It is the so-called “Perspective Bridge”
(Xianfa qiao ~€), which stood at the entrance to the European Palaces. The bridge
was effectively a high wall elaborately decorated to give the illusion of an arch through
which one saw a distant landscape, and that landscape is represented here as if it
were a real view. 47
Recent publications of the painting and album of engravings refer to their prov -
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enance before they entered the John Rylands Library, but the early history is equally
intriguing. Delatour writes with deep regret about the confiscation and dispersal of
his Chinese collection in the wake of the French Revolution. But he then goes on to
say that he still had the detailed description of the album, and indeed it is this
description that is published in his Essais sur l’architecture des chinois. And Delatour
also knew of another set of the “20 Engravings”—one held in the collection of Henri
Bertin—that almost surely met the same fate. 49
In late eighteenth–century France, Henri Bertin, the two Ducs de Chaulnes, Louis-
François Delatour and a number of others who shared similar interests actively
acquired objects, texts, prints, drawings and paintings from China. Texts and images
were considered the most important means of communicating information, and
pictures were believed to provide knowledge that texts could convey only imperfectly.
Archival documents and extant works give us some idea of the exchange of prints,
drawings and paintings that accompanied written texts sent from China, all of which
are key elements in an active engagement with the idea of China. Henri Bertin himself
hoped that access to his collection would provide true and useful knowledge of China
to those who might profit from it. A contemporary description of his collections
specifically states this goal:

Monsieur Bertin’s study [. . .] is especially rich in rarities from the Indies, and in
particular from China. An extensive correspondence which Bertin has maintained
for over 20 years with the French [Jesuits] resident in Beijing has provided him
the means to acquire that which this country produces that is most curious.
[. . .] But what makes this study all the more interesting is the considerable