Page 164 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

10 Yuanmingyuan on Display

Ornamental Aesthetics at the
Musée Chinois

Greg M. Thomas

Introduction 1
One of many factors that made the Yuanmingyuan important was its holding of many
thousands of art objects, most of elite imperial manufacture, that were spread among
several temple complexes, dozens of residences and audience halls, and dozens more
buildings used for leisure, administration, and storage. With countless objects des -
troyed by looters or fire, and with most others scattered among hundreds of soldiers
and numerous Chinese opportunists, the Chinese Museum (Musée chinois) at the
Château de Fontainebleau became the largest single fragment of Yuanmingyuan’s
material culture (see Figures 10.1 and 9.4). Since the British army’s gifts to Queen
Victoria were interspersed among the Royal Collections, the French gifts to Empress
Eugénie constitute the only true collection of Yuanmingyuan art, composed into a
coherent display that reconstructs—partially and grotesquely—an echo of the
collective material life that inhabited the lost palace grounds. Offering a small glimpse
into a vast domain, the museum refracts that view through the overlapping lenses of
imperialism, politics, religion, collecting, craftsmanship, and imagination. Describing
and explaining this refractive representation of Yuanmingyuan is the central aim of
this chapter.
My core challenge is how to interpret a display. To some extent, displays invite
the same kind of art historical inquiry as paintings or sculptures; we can analyze
their composition and iconography, their visual and bodily effects, their reception by
viewers and critics. But two major differences stand out. First, the subject matter of
a display oscillates between the individual objects on view and the display as a
collective ensemble. While each object contributes to the ensemble, each is inevitably
altered by the ensemble as well. So interpretation of the Chinese Museum depends
on neither the Chinese works of art nor their new environment, but on the dialogue
between them. Second, the artistic agency of a display is split. Even following a
patron’s directives, a painter, sculptor, or architect generally controls the design,
execution, and content of his/her work. The Chinese Museum, in contrast, was the
product of collective thought and action by the Chinese artists and patrons who made
each object, the French officers who selected those to give Empress Eugénie, Eugénie
herself as patron, her chief designer Victor Ruprich-Robert (1820–1887), and his
team of craftsmen.
To capture this complexity of both content and creation, the first section of the
chapter examines the selection of objects at the Yuanmingyuan, the diverse meanings
and values attributed to them in Paris, Empress Eugénie’s interests in choosing the