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Empress Eugénie’s Chinese Museum 147
Notes
1 I am very grateful to Professor Greg Thomas for translating this text into English.
2 On Napoleon III’s and Eugénie’s visits to Fontainebleau, see Napoléon III et Eugénie
reçoivent à Fontainebleau: L’art de vivre sous le Second Empire, catalogue of an exhibition
at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Bordeaux, December 9, 2011 to March 5 2012,
Faton, Dijon, 2011.
3 Concerning the history of Fontainebleau’s Chinese museum and the content of its
collections, see especially C. Samoyault-Verlet, Jean-Paul Desroches, Gilles Béguin, and
Albert Le Bonheur, Le Musée chinois de l’impératrice Eugénie (Paris: Réunion des musées
nationaux, 1994). See also V. Droguet et X. Salmon, Château de Fontainebleau: Le Musée
chinois de l’impératrice Eugénie (Paris: Artlys, 2011).
4 G. Pauthier, “Des curiosités chinoises exposées aux Tuileries,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts,
vol. IX, March 15 (1861): 362–369.
5 Ludovic de Garnier des Garets, Lettres de Chine 1859–1861: Campagne de Chine et de
Cochinchine, eds. Geneviève Deschamps, Odile Bach, and Thierry des Garets (Gleize:
Editions du Poutan, 2013), 193–194.
6 The painting of Castiglione depicting the empress’s study is reproduced in G. Fonkenell,
Le Palais des Tuileries (Honoré Clair, 2010), 181, fig. 258.
7 On this embassy, see the catalogue of the exhibition held at Fontainebleau from November
5 , 2011 to February 27, 2012, Le Siam à Fontainebleau: L’ambassade du 27 juin 1861,
Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 2011.
8 See in this regard V. Droguet, “Les objets de l’ambassade de Siam à Fontainebleau: Un
siècle et demi de présence,” in Le Siam à Fontainebleau. L’ambassade du 27 juin 1861
(Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2011), 52–57.
9 Letter from La Fontinelle to Lamy, steward of the Palace of Fontainebleau, April 20,
1863 (Archives du château, no. 18599).
10 Excerpt from a letter from Octave Feuillet to his wife, published in Mrs. Octave Feuillet,
Quelques années de ma vie (Paris, 1894), 329.
11 The Yellow Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace had been decorated with furniture
and objects in an oriental style from the famous pavilion of the Prince Regent at Brighton.
The painting by James Roberts depicting this room is reproduced in Ch. Maxwell,
“Chinoiserie at Buckingham Palace in the Nineteenth Century,” The Burlington Magazine
CXLIX, June (2007): 383–392, repr. p. 391, fig. 20.
12 The painting by Charles Giraud is kept in the palace of Compiègne. It is reproduced
notably in the work of J. Feray, Architecture intérieure et décoration en France des origines
à 1875 (Paris: Berger-Levrault/CNMHS, 1988), 352–353.
13 The term “museum”, which to us usually signifies an institution of public status, was at
that time used as well in referring to the most notable private collections. Thus Balzac,
in Le Cousin Pons, published in 1847, speaks of the “Pons Museum” to refer to the
salon in which the collector’s collection is kept, displayed in an apartment of “petits
bourgeois”.
14 We find a notable example of this in the Berlin Château, before its destruction, where
the walls of the salon of King Friedrich I had been covered with lacquer panels from a
screen, c.1700–1710. See G. Peschken and H.-W. Klünner, Das Berliner Schloss (Frankfurt
am Main/Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1991), figs. 184 et 185.
15 Two of these paintings depicting Yongzheng’s concubines in a palace interior, with
furniture or shelves holding precious objects behind them, are reproduced in Palastmuseum
Peking. Schätze aus der Verbotenen Stadt, catalogue of the exhibition presented at the
Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna from October 2 to December 8, 1985, Insel Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main, 1985, pp. 232–233, nos. 111.1 and 111.2.
16 The Duc de Morny had mounted a collection of oriental objects in the Hôtel de Lassay
that he inhabited while serving as president of the Legislative Corps. After his death on
March 10, 1865, his collections were sold at public auction, where the imperial couple
purchased 15 oriental objects, mostly Japanese.
17 The architect Félix Duban, who visited the site probably in 1863, noted that “the empress
is so jealous of her museum that she orders it closed to visitors.” F. Boudon, La première