Page 167 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

152 Greg M. Thomas
vase. Gaildrau thus gives more weight to the religious objects than does Mariani, while
similarly excluding all ornamental objects. Both printmakers depict the same sinicized
man/mannequin, with nearly identical ornament on his armor. Both also misrepresent
the stupa’s actual arrangement of steps and divisions almost identically, suggesting a
common source for both. Gaildrau, however, more accurately depicts the stupa’s
proportions and bejeweled ornament, as well as the form and ornament of the dragons
and other objects. His discrete, detailed pictures create a more anthropological
impression of exotic cultural specimens, while the Illustrated London News conveys
a more trophy-like effect. Again, the Chinese Museum would present the collection
entirely differently.
Augmenting these material and visual representations of the Yuanmingyuan was
a diverse textual discourse. Between December 1860 and December 1862, French
people could read a range of published commentaries on the Yuanmingyuan’s cultural
identity, from the reporter Antoine Fauchery’s vitriolic, on-site denunciation of
the palace’s tasteless, incoherent displays of knick-knacks to French soldiers’
admiration for the palace’s artistic splendor and outrage at the British for burning
it all down. Whether admiring or critical, however, almost all authors characterized
the Yuanmingyuan’s art in typical Orientalist fashion as strange, irrational, and
child-like. Even Victor Hugo said this, with the difference that he lauded such an
alternative culture, famously calling the Yuanmingyuan the imaginative counterpart
to the Parthenon’s rationalist idealism. 8
Also common to all was a glaring omission—any mention of Buddhism. This seems
due to a combination of ignorance and distaste. Despite Jesuit writings of the
eighteenth century and numerous European illustrations of Buddhist temples and
statues in the 1840s and 1850s, popular knowledge about Buddhism remained close
to nothing. While General Montauban at least recognized the Yuanmingyuan’s statues
as Buddhas, the Monde illustré described the kesi tapestries as depicting three figures
9
surrounded by haloes with warriors below. Soldiers and travel writers still widely
referred to Buddhist figures as idols and claimed pagodas were watch towers, and
almost no one knew how stupas and altar utensils were actually used. Yet knowledge
of Buddhism was becoming available at just this time. Sutras were translated into
French from the 1830s and Eugène Burnouf’s pioneering history of Indian Buddhism
appeared in 1844. Closer to the moment, Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire published
Du Bouddhisme (On Buddhism) in 1855 and Le Bouddha et sa religion (Buddha
10
and His Religion) in 1860, 1862, and 1866. But Barthélemy, a philosophy professor
and Republican politician, deemed Buddhism an uncivilized horror based on the
twin principles of atheism and nothingness. Concluding his 248-page 1855 study, he
writes: “The only, but immense, benefit that Buddhism can bring us is, through its
sad contrast, to make us better appreciate the priceless value of our own beliefs.” 11
Not a very good book to spark curiosity about Chinese temple practices.
The key text that tried to blunt these aesthetic and religious prejudices was a long
review of the Tuileries exhibition published March 15 in the Gazette des beaux-arts
by Guillaume Pauthier, a scholar of Chinese philosophy and history. 12 It opens with
two pages likening the Yuanmingyuan’s imperial art production to France’s own royal
manufacturers and imagining how outraged people would be if France suffered
similar desecration. Another two pages describe the Yuanmingyuan’s extensive library
and claim its ancient bronzes are greater than Greek art. When he gets to the objects