Page 154 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

Empress Eugénie’s Chinese Museum 139
The objects considered war trophies were divided between the two armies, British
and French, and the French army staff decided to give the French army’s share to
the emperor and empress. From the beginning of November 1860, a first shipment
containing the most precious weapons and objects left China for France. It arrived
in Paris at the very beginning of 1861.
From February 23 to April 10, 1861, these objects were open to the Parisian public
in the context of an exhibition that took place in the Tuileries Palace, the usual home
of the rulers, on the ground floor of the Marsan Pavilion. This exhibition, which for
the first time displayed a significant number of Chinese objects of imperial provenance
in the French capital, sparked more curiosity than appreciation, as indicated by the
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review published by Guillaume Pauthier in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. An engraving
published in the Monde illustré (see Figure 9.1), as well as a certain number of photo -
graphs by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, which the Château of Fontainebleau was
able to acquire in 2007, allow us to imagine how the objects were displayed; while
the stupa and large pieces of cloisonné enamel were placed in the center of the room,
the walls were hung with an array of weapons and the kesi tapestries that Lieutenant
Des Garets described finding in a temple near the Summer Palace, inside an artificial
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cave. The items of smallest size, such as jades, crystals, porcelains, bronzes, and
lacquers, were arranged on some kind of tables with shelves, on which they were
systematically photographed by Disdéri.

Figure 9.1 Auguste Allongé and Emile Roch, “Exposition des curiosités chinoises offertes
e
à l’empereur par l’armée expéditionnaire,” Le Monde illustré, 5 année, n° 203,
March 2, 1861.