Page 160 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

Empress Eugénie’s Chinese Museum 145
moulding strips were acquired from the Parisian merchant Malinet; they were restored
and finished by Meyer, another merchant, under the direction of the designer of the
imperial furniture department, the architect Victor Ruprich-Robert.
It is also to Ruprich-Robert that we owe the design of the two low glass cabinets
placed between the windows as well as the large glass cabinet, all three made with
panels of carved huali wood acquired from Malinet. We don’t know what models
might have inspired Ruprich-Robert for imagining the design of this grand monu -
mental cabinet, in which the empress herself installed objects from the Yuanmingyuan
in an arrangement precisely recorded in a photograph taken in August 1863 by
Richebourg. Maybe the designer of the furniture department referred to engravings
depicting those large screens or folding screens traditionally placed behind the Chinese
emperor’s throne, whose general form are reflected somewhat by the cabinet.
As for the corner shelves, built in the Chinese manner, they are the work of the
furniture maker Fourdinois, who here worked in a style very far removed from his
usual work. Should we again imagine that the furniture maker had at his disposal
an image of a Chinese interior showing this kind of furniture, such as can be seen
in one of those paintings representing concubines of the Yongzheng emperor? 15 We
have no way to confirm this.
Lighting of the room was achieved notably by two Chinese lanterns purchased in
Paris from the merchant Chanton and by an extraordinary chandelier created by the
bronze maker Barbedienne using the lid of a Chinese cloisonné enamel incense burner
identical to that of the incense burner placed in the center of the room. Barbedienne
had also created candelabras from two large cloisonné enamel vases and two matching
candle holders all coming from the Yuanmingyuan, adding gilt bronze elements
decorated with Chinese characters. To these light sources were added lamps adapted
from bronze or cloisonné enamel vases that were positioned on 14 blackened wood
brackets all around the room. Some of these vases came from the loot sent by the
army; others had been acquired by the imperial couple from the estate sale of the
Duc de Morny, the emperor’s half-brother. 16
Thus it was in these cabinets, on these shelves, and along these walls decorated
with lacquer and silk that most of the objects from the Yuanmingyuan were installed,
mixed with some Siamese pieces. These Oriental objects normally belonged to the
emperor and empress, but the empress had entrusted their management to the steward
of the Château of Fontainebleau, who had a separate inventory drawn up, assisted
by the merchant Malinet, who acted as expert for the evaluation of the works. The
collection was to be enriched in subsequent years by gifts from the Vietnamese
embassy mission, by purchases made at the Duc de Morny’s estate sale, and by a
few Japanese objects. However, this collection and its display setting remained largely
inaccessible throughout the Second Empire, the rooms being open only to visitors
with special authorization that was hard to obtain. 17 Out of concern for con -
fidentiality, it seems the empress even refused to allow the photographs of her Chinese
Museum taken in 1863 to be disseminated and reproduced in the monograph on the
palace that the emperor had commissioned from Rodolphe Pfnor.
The fall of Napoleon III’s regime in 1870 could have led to the disappearance of
the Chinese Museum, but Fontainebleau knew how to preserve its treasure. Given
priority protection during the war with Prussia due to their value, the collections
were subsequently the object of litigation over their ownership, which was decided