Page 149 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

134 John Finlay
27 See the website of the BnF, biographical note on Delatour, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/servlet/
autorite?ID=12318716&idNoeud=1.1&host=catalogue; accessed June 18, 2015.
28 See the preface to the first posthumous sale of Delatour’s collections, Premier Catalogue
des Livres, la plupart précieux, du Cabinet de feu M.L.-F. Delatour (Paris: Tilliard Freres;
J.-G. Mérigot, 1808).
29 See Bib. Inst. Ms 1524 (see no. 11 above), fol. 192, for the 1786 inventory of objects
sent to Delatour, which has an added title at the top: “Envoi de 1786. A Mr. de la Tour.”
The list reads: “4o. Vingt plans des batimens Européens de yuen-ming-yuen premières
gravures des Chinois en cuivre. / . . . . / 6o. Six batimens peints, ou Palais de l’Empereur,
avec les six gravures en bois, d’apres lesquelles on les a mis en couleur.” The term plans
in no. 4 has the sense here not of a “plan” but of a plan relevé, the view or elevation of
a building; see the Dictionnaire Littré online, plan_[2], definition 6, http://littre.reverso.net/
dictionnaire-francais/definition/plan_%5B2%5D/57272; accessed July 13, 2015. All trans -
lations from the French, here and below, are my own.
30 Essais sur l’architecture des Chinois, sur leurs jardins, leurs principes de médecine, et
leurs moeurs et usages; avec des notes (Paris: Impr. de Clousier, 1803). Delatour’s name
does not appear on the book, which was printed in a very small edition. See Pelliot, “Les
‘Conquêtes de l’empereur de la Chine,’” 228.
31 Morel is the author of Théorie des Jardins (Paris: Pissot, 1776). For the descriptions
of the six paintings, see Delatour, Essais, 188–207. Delatour cites Morel’s Théorie on
p. 189.
32 Unlike the inventory list (see no. 29), Delatour’s published text does not mention the six
woodcuts, but in note (2) on p. 188 of the Essais he says that he has 25 woodblock
prints from Peking of these “pleasure palaces,” which provides further evidence of images
of the “40 Views” in Europe.
33 Delatour, Essais, 189, 191.
34 Ibid., 202; see also 203–204 for similar judgments.
35 Pelliot, in “Les ‘Conquêtes de l’empereur de la Chine’,” 234–235, provides the earliest
citation of the crucial passages from Delatour, Essais.
36 For a recent, concise discussion of the 20 engravings and Ilantai’s role in their production,
see Kleutghen, Imperial Illusions, Chap. 5, Staging Europe. See esp. pp. 194 ff., “Engraving
and viewing the Pictures of the European Palaces and Waterworks,” where Qing archival
documents are cited for the dates of the project.
37 See http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/Manchester~91~1~329739~122614;
accessed June 21, 2015, for the album, “Twenty views of the European Palaces in the
garden of Perfect Brightness.” The unique painting included in the album was discussed
by Prof. Yangwen Zheng of the University of Manchester in her presentation “The Social
Life of the Engraved Views of the Western Palaces in the Garden of Perfect Brightness”
for the Manchester workshop The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France; indeed, Prof.
Zheng was one of the co-organizers of the workshop. Prof. Zheng first published the
album and the painting in her book China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped
China (Leiden: Brill, 2012) in Chap. 5, Les Palais Européens. She published the painting
again in “An Unexplained Image from the Garden of Perfect Brightness” in the online
journal China Heritage Quarterly of the China Heritage Project, The Australian National
University, No. 29, March 2012, www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm
=029_zheng.inc&issue=029; accessed November 23, 2013. And she most recently
wrote about the engravings and the painting in “Chinese Collection 457: the Call for
Global History,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester) 91.1 (Spring 2015),
35–44.
38 Delatour, Essais, 170–171. “Il y a trois ans, Monsieur, que l’Empereur voulut avoir le
plan de ses maisons européennes bâties à Yuen-ming-yuen, pour les joindre à ceux des
palais Chinois qui avoient été levés sur ses ordres. Il appela deux ou trois disciples du
frère Castiglione; ils travaillèrent, pour ainsi dire, sous les yeux de ce Prince qui corrigea
souvent leurs plans, puis il les fit graver sur le cuivre, et c’est le premier Essai du talent
chinois pour la gravure en taille douce. / Par le moyen des deux peintres élèves de
Castiglione, je suis venu à bout d’avoir un exemplaire des planches que je vous envoie.
[. . . Un des deux] avait commencé à mettre en couleur la première planche, mais il