Page 158 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

Empress Eugénie’s Chinese Museum 143

Figure 9.3 View of the glass cabinet of ebony and gilt bronze by Fourdinois, 1863.
© Fontainebleau, Château.

Room, which was used by Napoleon III during his 1855 visit to London, is quite
revealing in this regard. 11
Still, the presence of Oriental objects in this room was already quite pronounced.
On the furniture French ceramics and bronzes stood next to Oriental porcelains, jades,
and enamels coming from the Yuanmingyuan or from the imperial store rooms.
Hanging on the walls, against a red cloth, were panels of lacquer and large framed
porcelain plaques. Finally, in a glass cabinet of ebony and gilt bronze, made in a
Louis XIV style by the furniture maker Fourdinois, were displayed a number of
especially valuable objects such as the enameled gold ewers and basin, which we have
seen depicted in Castiglione’s painting, and the famous gold vases that Napoleon III
gave to his wife (see Figure 9.3). Nevertheless, despite this marked presence of
Oriental objects in the salon, the atmosphere of this room was not very different
from that of other rooms belonging to the imperial family or high society of the era,
such as the salon of Princess Mathilde, the emperor’s cousin, in her mansion in the
rue de Courcelles, which was depicted by Charles Giraud in 1859. 12 One could just
as easily have imagined seeing archaeological artefacts or treasures from the Italian
Renaissance on these tables or in this display case without radically altering the spirit
of the place. In this room, in sum, the Chinese and Siamese objects played only an
incidental role.
It was completely different in the last room, located on the Fountain Courtyard,
which houses the Chinese Museum proper (see Figure 9.4). This certainly constitutes
the most original decorative ensemble in this suite of rooms installed for Eugénie.
Marked on the outside by the two huge stone guardian lions (Foo Dogs) that came