Page 155 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

140 Vincent Droguet
Upon the closing of the exhibition, it is certain that the majority of objects were
put back in storage. The arms and armor—including the famous parade armor of
the Qianlong emperor—were sent to the Artillery Museum, located in the Hôtel
des Invalides, but the empress held on to several pieces that she deemed especially
remarkable, which she placed in the private section of her Tuileries apartments. The
objects are identifiable in two gouache drawings by Giuseppe Castiglione, probably
painted in 1861 or 1862 and kept in the collection of the Dukes of Alba in Madrid,
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which depict the empress’s study and painting studio in the Tuileries. In the study,
which is full of furniture and objects, one can observe the presence of the ewers and
basin in enameled gold on a console table. In the painting studio that the empress
had installed in the palace attic, the large stupa in gilt copper, the cloisonné enamel
chimera, the two gilt bronze bells, the enamel incense burner, and two more gilt
bronze chimeras were mixed with Renaissance objects and Gobelins tapestries. All
these objects coming from the Yuanmingyuan must have remained in the Tuileries
until the spring of 1863.
At about the same time that Empress Eugénie was installing these Chinese
“curiosities” in her Tuileries rooms, she and the emperor received the ambassadors
sent by the King of Siam, Rama IV Mongkut, in a grand ceremony at Fontainebleau. 7
The audience of June 27, 1861, which took place in the château’s ballroom, was
immortalized by Jean-Léon Gérôme in a large painting now kept at Versailles. The
painter took pains to represent in minute detail the most important gifts brought by
the ambassadors, especially the two large sedan chairs and enameled gold crown.
By order of the emperor and empress, these gifts were displayed to the château’s
visitors in two rooms of what was called the Pope’s Apartment, which could be visited
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under the supervision of guards. Unfortunately, we have no image of this exhibition
of Siamese objects.
In the summer of 1861, the French imperial couple thus found themselves
unexpectedly in charge of an exceptional collection of Asian objects, with nearly 500
pieces falling into their hands through two different means, one diplomatic and the
other military. The fate of these objects was to remain attached to the Château of
Fontainebleau.
Until the creation of the empress’s Chinese salons and museum, evening events of
the court at Fontainebleau took place in the rooms of the first floor of the oval
courtyard, located in the oldest part of the château dating back to the reign of Francis I.
These sumptuous halls, full of history, were located immediately next to the
imperial couple’s apartments. They recalled the antiquity of the site and its luxurious
past but opened onto a completely stone courtyard where the sun disappeared quickly
behind the high roofs. So the rulers turned their attention to the buildings located
close to the English garden and the carp pond, in particular the ground floor of the
“Large Pavilion,” which opened directly onto the Fountain Courtyard and the gardens.
Built in the mid-eighteenth century from plans of the architect Ange-Jacques
Gabriel, the Large Pavilion was so-named because of its massive size. The beautiful
ground-floor spaces of this building were occupied at the beginning of the Second
Empire by Marshal Vaillant, who held the title of Grand Marshal of the Palace. It
seems that in 1861, the Grand Marshal moved to lodging on the second floor of the
château, thereby vacating his apartment in the Large Pavilion, where it was soon
planned to install a smoking room, a billiards room, and a large salon intended to
bring together the entourage of the emperor and empress. This plan, known from