Kultura Historia Globalizacja - Culture History Globalization

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K ultur a — His to ria — Gl ob ali za cja Nr 22 IZABELA KOPANIA

SKILLFUL IMITATORS AND EXCELLENT CRAFTSMEN. EUROPEAN OPINIONS

ON CHINESE ART AND THE IMAGE OF CHINA IN EUROPE

FROM THE 17 TO THE 19 C.

espite Europe’s long-lasting acquaintance with Chinese material culture the category of Chinese art is rather a late invention dating back roughly to the last quarter of the 19th century. It is noteworthy that the term “art” did not enter the Chinese language itself before the end of 19th century (Clunas, 2017, 26). The first survey of Chinese art, L’art chinoise by Maurice Paléologue (1859–1944), a French diplomat and historian, was published only in 1887. Its British counterpart, Chinese Art by Stephen Wootton Bushell (1844–1908), an amateur Orientalist and physician to the British Legation in Beijing, come out in print in 1904. Both books, covered roughly the same ground: bronzes, sculpture, architecture, painting, carvings, ceramics, lacquer, enamels, glass and textiles. They offered insight into what was termed “Chinese art” at the turn of the 20th century and represented the first attempts at addressing an unrecognized field of art by classifying its objects in terms of material, chronology and use.

However, European reflections on Chinese art did not originate in the late 19th century. In his famous Description of the World, Marco Polo mentioned pictures on the walls of imperial palac-es reprpalac-esenting “dragons and birds and horsemen and various breeds of beasts and scenpalac-es of battle” as well as “portraits of all the kings who ruled over this province in former times” (Sullivan, 1989, 41). Yet, it was not until the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century that the European public received information on Chinese painting, architecture, sculpture and — what we would today call — decorative arts. No matter how scant this information was, it consti-tuted the very foundation of European knowledge on Chinese art encoded in set of aesthetic judgements and evaluative statements that reverberated in travel, encyclopedic and theoretical writings, well into the 19th century.

This paper explores statements made about Chinese art by Europeans spanning the 17 through 19 centuries. Fragments cited below constitute only a small part of both short and more

_{The research for this paper was carried out as a part of the National Science Center project “Historiography}

of Chinese Art in Europe, 1600-1950”, project no 2015/17/D/HS2/01289. I owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Eliza-beth Kosakowska who brought my article to a proper level of language accuracy. All the mistakes and misinterpreta-tions are my own.

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Iz ab ela K op an ia , Sk illfu l imi tat or s an d exc elle nt c ra fts me

n… detailed opinions related to Chinese art that can be found in extensive depositories containing

European descriptions of China. My sources are first and foremost letters and accounts sent to Europe by Jesuit missionaries residing in Beijing, commentaries from British, Dutch and Russian diplomatic and trade embassies to the imperial court, and encyclopedic compendia produced in Europe by prolific compilers who never crossed the borders of the Old Continent. Large vol-umes devoted to the Middle Kingdom, cyclopedias of universal knowledge touching upon a broad array of subjects from geography, history, government and military issues to flora, fauna, customs, ceremonies and religions of the Chinese provided early modern Europeans with an image of a faraway empire mostly associated with exotic luxury goods and wares of daily con-sumption such as tea and silk textiles. Remarks on government, trade and monetary system were interlaced with lists of ruling dynasties and fascinating notes on ginseng roots and tea plants that European readers were particularly hungry for. Information sent by missionaries, often reliable and detailed, at the same time, influenced by prejudice and the needs of Jesuit propaganda, trick-led into philosophical, historical end economic deliberations of enlightened thinkers as well as into popular consciousness, where it started to live the life of its own. Reproduced, distorted and misinterpreted they gained the status of stereotypes that contributed to a wide-spread and rather homogenous image of China.

The Middle Kingdom was perceived in the early modern Europe thus as an ancient and high-ly sophisticated empire, undisturbed by wars and revolutions, and ruled by an enlightened emper-or enjoying unlimited privileges. It was stressed that the emperemper-or’s rule was far from tyranny femper-or he was considered “the father of his people”. French philosophes, to mention only Voltaire, praised the ways in which the Chinese state was organized and the officials (mandarins) recruited and supervised. The French thinkers zealously repeated Jesuit accounts of tough examinations, that served as the only passage to secure success and gain entry to the mandarin milieu and imperial court. The idea of merit, virtue and Confucian ethos of state officials appealed to enlightened philosophes, who ferociously criticized the idea of “birth” as a basis for class distinctions in Eu-rope. (Davis, 1983; Demel, 1991; Clarke, 1998).

An idealized image of the Chinese empire that was often cited as “a model for Europe” co-existed with a contradictory and rather unfavorable image of the Chinese people (Demel, 1992; Porter, 2000). The inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom were perceived as sophisticated people, surpassing all Asian nations in their civilization and achievements in sciences, and in some areas of knowledge and inventions even outperforming Europeans. At the same time, the Chinese were characterized as effeminate and grotesque figures, greedy liars, dexterous copyists devoid

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K ultur a — His to ria — Gl ob ali za cja Nr 22

of the creative genius and desire to improve their arts and crafts, and as a proud nation pos-sessing some wisdom but lacking in astronomy, geometry and philosophy.

Judged against the artistic traditions of Greco-Roman antiquity and Italian Renaissance, Chi-nese art was relegated to an inferior position. I would argue it was not only perceptions of Euro-pean commentators but also the prevalent images of China and the Chinese that shaped Europe-an perception of Chinese art. The Europe-antiquity of Chinese civilization, the alleged inclination of the Chinese to copy mechanically, their lack of creativity, servile respect of traditions leading to cultural and technological backwardness, and greed stemming from their mercantile mentality determined the value of Chinese art.

In my discussion of statements on Chinese art made by Europeans, I will focus on porcelain, painting and architecture. These three branches of art were granted different positions in the European system of arts. Painting was held in the highest respect, architecture was seen on the threshold of fine and mechanical arts, and porcelain was considered as a form of decorative arts and was paid more attention to because of the quality of material rather than aesthetic con-siderations.

I have discussed elsewhere how China and the Chinese were stereotyped in early modern Eu-rope (Kopania, 2012a; Kopania 2012b). The present reading is inspired by Craig Clunas’ remarks on how the Hegelian “dynamic West/static East” division determined the way Chinese painting was interpreted by prominent European and American art historians and critics in the 20 century (Clunas, 1999, 133-137; Clunas, 2017, 21-23). East/West dichotomy built into art history dates back to early modern encounters between Europe and China. Perceptions on China and the Chi-nese were entrenched and lived on unchanged for centuries. My intent is to demonstrate how these hard-wired stereotypes influenced European thinking and writing on Chinese art.

CHINA AND THE IMAGINATION OF EARLY-MODERN EUROPEAN:TEXTS,

IMAGES AND THE IDEA OF CHINESE ART

In descriptions of the Celestial Empire remarks on art by no means dominate. Objects of painting, sculpture, ivory carvings as well as gardens, porcelain and lacquer are but one of multitude aspects constituting the image of the largest empire of Asia. The accounts of ornaments, floral and figural motives adorning objects or even plans and structural elements constituting temples and palaces seems so scant that their ability to appeal to the imagination is highly disputable. The on-the-spot observers, Jesuits as well embassy members traveling in China, provided the European public with information and descriptions of Chinese architecture. The most often mentioned sites — the Great Wall, the Great Canal, and the Porcelain Pagoda in

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n… Nanjing — were treated both as marvels of the world and great technological achievements.

The imperial palace bewildered visitors with its splendid decorations and the luxurious materials employed — marbles, porcelain, gildings, lacquer — that appealed to missionaries’ and traveler’s imagination and taste. Lengthy essays devoted to porcelain, lacquer (called japan or vernis de Chine) and gardens, based on Jesuit letters, circulated in eighteenth century publications. Those written on chinaware and lacquer concerned themselves with technological rather than aesthetic issues. Their authors provided recipes for both china clay and lacquer and discussed the ways in which porcelain dishes and lacquer decorations were produced. It was only the account of imperial gar-dens of Yuanmingyuan north from Beijing, written by a French missionary Jean-Denis Attiret, that made its way into European aesthetics and theoretical discussions on gardening.

Up to the late 19 century it was unusual that objects of Chinese painting, sculpture or deco-rative arts were discussed in the context of art. There were, however, some exceptions that paved the way to more meaningful deliberations on Chinese art in the 19 century. In the mid-1670s Joahim von Sandrart, a German painter and art theorist, included a passage devoted to Chinese painting in his dictionary of art and compilation of artists’ biographies titled Teutsche Akademie der Bau- Bild- und Mahlery Kunst (German Academy of the Arts of Architecture, Drawing and Paint-ing) (Sullivan 1948). Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius expressed his opinions on the arts and sciences of the Chinese in his Variarum observationum liber, published in London in 1685 (Weststeijn, 2012, 214-222). In his essay Vossius discusses questions regarding painting, sculpture, medicine and pharmacy. It is typical of early modern views on art that painting is not differentiated as a form of fine art but rather as a subgroup of human activity

To my knowledge, up to the 2 half of the 19 century there is only one article published in Europe that is devoted solely to Chinese art. Surprisingly, this study was not published on the soil of French or British colonizing powers who sent missionaries to and maintained direct trade with China , but in post-partitioned Poland. A 60 pages long essay On the art of the Chinese was com-piled and published in 1815 by a politician and avid collector — not only of Chinese objects — Stanisław Kostka Potocki (Potocki 1815). Potocki included this essay along with another of his work on the arts of India in his Polish translation of Johann Joachim Winkelmann’s book On the art of the Ancients. Potocki’s essay is preceded only by William Chambers’ preface to his Designs of Chinese Buildings published in 1757. First and foremost, the book was designed to serve as a collection of illustrations of projects for pavilions, pagodas, bridges, furniture and fancy vessels. Chambers added an introduction in which he explained his designs and commented on Chinese architecture, gardens, dresses and machines and, to lesser extent, on painting, sculpture and bronzes. Born in Sweden to a Scottish family, Chambers capitalized on his two voyages on

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the ship of the Swedish East India Company to China, which trips gave him the opportunity to observe Chinese architecture along the Pearl River delta and become an authority on the subject upon his return.

Some space should be devoted to a question of what Europeans writing on Chinese art were actually commenting on. Jesuit missionaries described palaces, temples, gardens and paintings they saw in China. Until mid-19 century, they were (with minor exceptions) the only Europeans who had the opportunity to encounter Chinese art produced for Chinese consumers. Authors residing in Europe relied on Jesuit writings and on objects of co-called Chinese export art. This category, invented in the 20th_{century, referred to paintings, carvings, ceramics and other}

decora-tive objects produced in Cantonese ateliers especially for European clients (Clunas 1987; Cross-man 2004). It was the establishment of East India Companies that introduced the craze for Chi-nese textiles, wallpapers and ceramics on the Old Continent. Even though luxury goods never made a significant part of imported wares as the bulk of trade consisted primarily in tea and tex-tiles, their presence on the European market contributed immensely to the Chinese vogue that governed European taste for nearly two centuries. Not only did the fashionable élite decorate their rooms in Chinese taste, erect Chinese pavilions in their gardens and collect oriental china and lacquer but the European courts felt also compelled to finance alchemists in search for the recipe of china clay, craftsmen imitating the technique of lacquerware and artists inventing the language of chinoiserie, the European interpretation of Far Eastern imaginarium. Dozens of artists capitalized on books of ready-to-use designs for chinoiserie scenes, motives and architec-ture. The most prolific of them, Jean Pillement, travelled around the whole continent, from one royal court to another, embarking in Warsaw, Vienna and Lisbon and popularizing the language of fantastic and deeply stereotyped ornaments (Gordon-Smith, 2006).

The European idea of how Chinese art and decoration looked like was shaped by purely Eu-ropean inventions, and the imported goods, which themselves were determined by EuEu-ropean taste. Importers actually dictated the forms and decorations of vessels and the flexible Chinese market, accustomed to produce for various Asian clients with different needs and tastes, was highly responsive to their expectations (Berg, 2003). It was common practice to bring samples of materials, pewter models of vessels and prints to be copied as decorations of porcelain and lacquer wares. What embodied China in the European eyes was first and foremost blue-and white porcelain, glittering lacquer boxes and cabinets (often of Japanese origin), meticulously carved ivory, soapstone figures representing Buddhist and Taoist deities, and watercolors depicting boats, plants, animals, planting tea, manufacturing porcelain, and Chinese interiors and professions.

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n… The situation did not change until the beginning of the Opium Wars that forced the Chinese

authorities to open China to European trade and diplomatic presence (Hevia, 2003). It was not until 1860, the year of the looting of Yuanmingyuan, the main residence of the Qing dynasty in the north of Beijing known among Europeans as the “Summer Palace”, by British and French troops, that the European public encountered Chinese art consumed by imperial court and élites. Large collections of objects were presented by troops and diplomats to Queen Victoria, Napole-on III and Empress Eugénie. Eugénie turned these “gifts” into “Musée chinois” in FNapole-ontainbleau, where they were available to visitors only by empress’ permission (McQueen, 2008). The looted objects brought back by returning soldiers were kept as war trophies or family keepsakes, or were auctioned off in England and France (Hill, 2013). The plunder of Yuanmingyuan introduced to Europeans items such as an imperial throne, Buddhist deities figures, rosaries, imperial robs and cloisonné vases (Tythacott, 2015).

The encounter with new objects attesting to the high quality of Chinese crafts elicited only one study dedicated to these items. When the French loot was exhibited in the Tuileries in 1861, Guillaume Pauthier, the erstwhile authority on China and an editor-in-chief of Gazette des beaux-arts, penned an essay discussing as the objects in the context of Chinese cultural heritage (Pauthier, 1861). What weights more, however is the fact that China’s loss of the Opium Wars opened its gates to European diplomatic relations and it is within these relations that the explora-tion of new fields and producexplora-tion of new knowledge begun. The two first syntheses of Chinese art mentioned at the beginning of this article were produced by members of the British and French embassies to China.

It is necessary to stress that samples of Sung porcelain, highly valued by the imperial court, reached Europe in the last years of the 19th_{century (Green 2002) and the first prominent}

collec-tion of archaic bronzes was brought to Paris by Henri Cernuschi in 1873 (Chang, 2002). First collections of Chinese classical painting did not appear in Britain before the second and in Ger-many before the first decade of the 20th century (Wood, 1996-1997; Ledderose 1995). A lot of new material, especially Buddhist sculpture, tomb sculptures and manuscripts appeared in Europe as a result of archeological missions organized by Sweden, Germany and, first and fore-most, France (Missions archéologiques, 2004; Fajcsák, 2007, 91-94; Trombert 2013).

Even though it was in the late 19th and beginnings of the 20th century that Europe became acquainted with Chinese art produced for the Chinese imperial and religious élite, some collectors seem to have been aware that most of the paintings in collections and on the market in Europe were not in fact representative of Chinese painting in general. This was true in case of Henri-Léonard-Jean-Baptiste Bertin, one of the five ministers of state at the courts of Louis XV and

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Louis XVI (de Sacy, 1970). Going beyond the superficial fascination with China, typical for all the élites of enlightened Europe, Bertin maintained constant correspondence with the French Jesuits at the court in Beijing, who provided him with material objects and translations of Chi-nese texts as well as knowledge on a broad range of issues (Bienaimé, 2013). A great number of Jesuit letters was published in the multi-volume Mémoires concernants les Chinois (1776-1814). Apart from being a passionate collector of Chinese objects, scientific specimens, illustrated books and prints, Bertin is also known to have owned a large collection of Chinese paintings (Finlay, 2015, 79-94). In a preface to the first volume of Mémoires, released in 1776, Bertin noted in what appears to be a direct reference to decorating fans, screens and objects produced in Guang-zhou,that “we know Chinese painting only through the grotesque figures badly rendered on pa-per, which do not have any other merit than vivacity of colors in rendering of clothing, (Mémoires, 1776, xi).

Stanisław Kostka Potocki’s opinions on Chinese painting were based on Cantonese glass paintings and watercolors for export in his collection. Indeed, he considered these two mediums as representatives of painting, in general. He mentioned, however, quoting William Chambers, that the Chinese hold antique landscapes, “usually drawn on white paper with Chinese ink”, in great veneration. Potocki also repeats Chambers’ unfavorable opinion of these two mediums as too trivial and imperfect to deserve attention. He concludes, nevertheless, by saying “it appears that the images about which Chambers speaks are rather drawings by old Chinese masters. But there is no doubt about one thing: that they [the Chinese] had and to these day have painters whom they value highly, and whose images decorate their dwellings” (Potocki 1815)1_{. Even if}

Chambers’ observations did not did not change Potocki’s conclusions regarding the painting he analyzed, they probably made him aware of the existence of a group of paintings unknown to the European public.

Accounts of the arts of China conveying inherent bias generally reflected prevalent Europe-an attitudes towards China Europe-and the Chinese (Lehner, 2011). Yet idealized images of the Middle Kingdom, accepted by the European élite, were often contradicted by merchants reporting on difficulties in trade relations and corruption of Chinese officials. Rules of exchange, dictated by the Chinese, made Europeans subordinate to the Chinese authorities. The image of sophisticated imperial government coexisted with that of the corrupt state where all are bent on benefiting by deceit. Moreover, not all thinkers were captivated by the idea of enlightened China. Denis Dide-rot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder, for example strongly opposed it, view-ing China as a despotic, backward rather than civilized state (Goebel, 1995). It was, however, only

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n… after the Opium Wars that China definitely lost its status as a great civilization. Enchantment gave

way to disgust, respect to disdain and faith in Chinese sophistication to the conviction of China’s primitivism.

This shift in the perception of the Middle Kingdom is clearly visible in accounts penned by soldiers and travelers of various backgrounds who visited the Middle Kingdom (Thomas, 2008; Tythacott, 2016). Similar feelings were shared by Théodore Duret who traveled in China with Henri Cernuschi. In his Voyage en Asie (1874) Duret asserted his readers that China was immersed in poverty and impotence and had nothing to offer Europe except tea and silk. The China he described was a China in ruins: dirty, backward and unable to stand comparison with any Euro-pean country. Contempt for the nation, however, did not always go hand in hand with the lack of appreciation of its arts. Even though Duret and Cernuschi disliked China, they were impressed by the bronzes which they found superior to what they had seen in Japan (Chang, 2002). As it was suggested by Catharina Pagani, Britain’s victory over China in the Opium Wars led to a shift in the British attitude towards the Chinese, but did not cease their admiration for Chinese art (Pagani, 1998).

NOTIONS OF ART

In missionary writings, travel accounts and encyclopedias the word “art” is primarily refer-enced as a “skill,” “technology” and/or “method for doing/producing something.” It was, there-fore, consistent with predominant definition of art as given, for example, in Dictionnaire de Trévoux (Dictionnaire, 1740, 609-611) or in Encyclopédie (Encyclopédie, 1751, vol. 1, 1751, 713-717). It was not uncommon that painting or architecture were being described along printing, engraving, mak-ing of porcelain, weavmak-ing of carpets and damasks or producmak-ing fans. Johann Nieuhof, in his ac-count describing the mission of the Dutch embassy to the Middle Kingdom makes references to Chinese music, shows, stage plays, comedians, jugglers and beggars, and concludes that the Chi-nese are “infinitely abound in all manner of Arts and Handicraft-Trades” (Nieuhof, 1673, 163). In Louis Le Comte’s Nouveaux mémoires sur l’etat présent de la Chine numerous remarks on architec-ture, painting, decorative arts and significant buildings are scattered throughout the first two vol-umes. Art, however, is mentioned only in passing in subsequent chapters (written in form of let-ters) to the Chinese character and noblesse of the nation, and to China’s antiquity, its economy and magnificence of its towns, buildings and art works (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 1, 2). Jean-Baptiste Du Halde in his monumental Description de la Chine hardly mentions painting and sculpture while including lengthy descriptions of how to produce porcelain, lacquer and silk in a section on Chi-nese trading wares (Du Halde, 1735, vol. 2, 169). John Barrow discusses painting, sculpture,

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archi-K ultur a — His to ria — Gl ob ali za cja Nr 22

tecture and music, deliberations on language, manufactures and medicine under one heading (Barrow, 1804, chapter 6). The first four he references as “fine arts”. Barrow’s system of catego-rizing Chinese art reflected the canon promulgated by Charles Batteux in his Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe (1746). Stanisław Kostka Potocki’s essay that begins with him addressing small-size carvings, temple sculpture and painting, is focused on fine arts. Interestingly, Potocki per-ceived the method for covering objects with lacquer as a form of painting, and the porcelain, that he called “a beautiful invention,” he regarded both under the arts of carving and painting. He offered his insights on architecture (discussing the most impressive achievements like the Great Wall and the Great Canal), silk production (which he counted among handicrafts), as well as on paper, printing, gunpowder and magnetic needle (which he curiously called not arts but inven-tions), and Chinese gardening.

The general attitude of Europeans towards the arts of China was not one of appreciation. There was only one known exception to this universal approach. Dutch scholar Isaac Vossius extolled Chinese painting for the same reasons the others criticized it for: for not using shadows and not rendering distance by means of perspective (Weststeijn, 2012). Vossius’ favorable ac-count of Chinese painting, sculpture and architecture was part of his utopian vision of China that played critical role in his search for universal language. The tone of disregard for China’s artistic contribution and conviction of Europe’s greater achievements in the arts, especially fine arts, is present in almost all narratives well into the 19th_century.

SOPHISTICATED CIVILIZATION,BACKWARD NATION

AND THE PERCEPTION OF CHINESE ART

“The Chinese, who are mediocre in the sciences, succeed much better in the arts; and though they did not bring them to the degree of perfection we achieved in Europe, they nevertheless, in this matter, not only know what is necessary for the ordinary use of life; but also of all that can contribute to convenience, propriety, commerce, and even to a well-proportioned magnificence” — wrote a French missionary, Louis Le Comte, in his Nouveaux mémoires (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 2, 382-383). A century and a half later, Owen Jones, British architect and theorist of ornament, assured that art in China is like its people: “peculiar, odd, unimaginative” (Jones, 1856, 86-87). Le Comte went on describing the Chinese as laborious craftsmen lacking in the genius of invention but eager to adapt and imitate achievements of the Europeans. He, as other commentators, found them skillful in copying and producing glass and clocks. Le Comte did not fail to notice that these two inventions Chinese owed the Europeans (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 2, 382).

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n… It was also a commonplace to stress the technological backwardness of the Chinese. It was

a standard observation that whatever the craftsmen manufactured, they did it using a very small number of simple, even primitive, tools (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 2, 401; Du Halde, 1735, vol. 2, 72). The commentators also noted that the Chinese were not capable of improving their arts and skills and usually attributed this inability and the resultant stagnation to the reluctance of the Chinese government to contact the outer world: namely, to forbidding the Chinese to travel abroad or foreigners to the inland empire. The authors of Encyclopédie attributed what they per-ceived as Chinese uniformity and constancy to the Oriental spirit which was said to have been more placid, lazy and faithful to the tradition than the lively and insatiable spirit of the Occident (Encyclopédie, 1753, vol. 3, 347). Arts, however, require strenuous search, more curiosity, perpet-ual dissatisfaction, features attributed to Europeans, which is why Europeans surpassed the Chi-nese even if the latter were a more ancient nation (Encyclopédie, 1753, vol. 3, 347). The pre-sumption that the Chinese were unwilling to change was echoed even in Owen Jones’ famous book on ornament, in which he noted that the Chinese “do not appear to have gone beyond that point which is reached by every people in an early stage of civilization: their art, such as it is, is fixed and is subject neither to progression nor retrogression” (Jones, 1856, 86–87).

The antiquity of China served two, contradictory purposes in the narratives on Chinese art. On the one hand, the respect for long-established rules was viewed as a reason for stagnation and backwardness. On the other hand the image of the Middle Kingdom considered the oldest em-pire of the world, the pre-diluvian state the history of which enabled early modern thinkers to undermine the chronology of the Bible (Van Kley, 1971) and elicited the highest appreciation among historians and philosophers. It was the antiquity of China that made Stanisław Kostka Potocki include a chapter on Chinese art in his translation of Winkelmann’s work even if noting in his preface that China lacks in ancient monuments as “their arts are not marked by durability and are more intended for current use than later resemblance” (Potocki 1815) However, the deep-rooted respect of principles, which does not permit the arts to develop to perfection, makes the art produced today be similar to the old laws and customs and makes it possible to present “the image of today’s art in China as the living image of antiquity”. Paradoxically, it was China’s perceived backwardness and adherence to rules that compelled the author to consider contemporary China and its arts among the cultural achievements of ancient civilization (Kopania, 2012c). It was the antiquity of the empire that prompted Potocki to describe Chinese achievements on par with those of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

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K ultur a — His to ria — Gl ob ali za cja Nr 22 PORCELAIN

Europeans routinely extolled Chinese products such as porcelain, lacquer, silk and ivory carv-ings (Du Halde, 1735, vol. 2, 72). They often discussed them in the context of the arts (of deco-rative arts) or, even more frequently, in connection with manufactures or trade goods. It was, however, not the form and decoration that captured their attention and aroused admiration but the material which, as in the case of china clay, was unknown to European craftsmen and, as in the case of lacquer, which is made from the resin of the tree Rhus vernicifera, was not available outside of Asia. The fascination with material and disregard for form and ornament was explicit-ly stated in Encyclopédie: “the Chinese have fairexplicit-ly good silks and porcelains, but what they master in matter, they lack in form and taste; in this matter, they will for a long time be uncivilized; they have beautiful colors, but bad pictures; in one word, they do not have this genius of invention and discoveries that is shining today in Europe” (Encyclopédie, 1753, vol. 3, 347). The conviction that the Chinese “lack in form and taste” was inspired by the fact that porcelain vessels ordered by East India Companies were produced according to patterns the officers and merchants pro-vided. So, indeed, it was the inventiveness of the Europeans, the flexibility of the Chinese market and the skills of the craftsmen that lead to the success of porcelain among European élites.

The history of porcelain in Europe is not only a history of sea-trade, consumption and de-sign, but also a history of writings devoted to chinaware circulating among European consumers. Several of these writings speak of the recipe of china clay which almost all European monarchs and alchemists were seeking after (West, 1977; Jones, 2013, 74-82). The pursuit for the porcelain recipe was successfully concluded when at the Dresden court of Augustus the Strong, a German alchemist, Johann Friedrich Böttger, discovered the secret of the hard-paste porcelain, and where, consequently, the first European factory of “proper” china was established in nearby Meissen in 1710. What Europeans imported from China was in fact only material — purely white, transpar-ent and thin — that nothing could equal with in Europe. And it was around and about the mate-rial that the mystery of porcelain and most stereotypical judgements aroused. Porcelain was said to have been the greatest secret of the Chinese and the search for the ingredients of the paste was compared to the discovery of a secret.

Well into the 18 century various authors exerted their imagination to find the ingredients of the mixture. Fairy-tale recipes date back at least to the 16 century Latin edition of Marco Po-lo’s manuscript (by Giovanni Baptista Ramusio in 1559) and to the writings of a Portuguese trav-eler, Duarte Barbosa, popularized in a mid-16 century edition. Marco Polo asserted that the paste consisted of mud and rotten earth which, for 30 or 40 years was exposed to wind and sun and, after that period, it was suitable for production of vessels. Barbosa enriched the recipe with egg

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n… and sea snail shells, which the Chinese were to thought grind into a powder, mixed with water

and other ingredients. This paste was to be buried under the earth 80-100 years so that it could mature.

The assumption that the ingredients of the porcelain paste was the most guarded secret of the Chinese was deeply-rooted in collective consciousness. Johann Nieuhof included quite a long and somehow de-mystifying description of how porcelain was manufactured into his re-port on the mission of the Dutch embassy to the Chinese Emperor. In his account, porcelain was presented as nothing out of the ordinary. Nieuhof ’s work was translated into many languages and lived through many editions. Interestingly, Jean-Baptiste Carpentier who translated Nieuhof ’s work into French (1665), observed that “it was easier to squeeze oil from an anvil, than a word from potters of Jingdezhen” (Nieuhof, 1665, 117). It is noteworthy that this remark is absent from both Dutch original and its English translation by John Ogilby (Nieuhof, 1673).

The story of porcelain as a secret and mysterious substance made of supernatural (yet unso-phisticated) components, coexisted with reliable accounts, an example of which was provided by a French missionary, François-Xavier d’Entrecolles (d’Entrecolles 1712). In his letter published for the first time in 1716 (and republished in 1735 in Du Halde’s Description…), d’Entrecolles meticulously described the ingredients and process of manufacturing of translucent vessels. He gave the names of substances used by the Chinese, described the kilns and subsequent stages of production from forming and baking pots to glazing and decorating. The description was treated seriously in Europe and was even used as a source by those working on the hard-porcelain paste like William Cookworthy in Cornwell (West, 1977) and August Moszyński in Warsaw, at the court of Stanislaus Augustus (Kopania 2012a, 236). Even before the publication of d’Entrecolles letter the “secret” was no mystery as the Wettin house of Saxony succeeded in producing its own “proper” porcelain. The latter recipe quickly leaked out and it was a factory in Vienna that subsequently produced a high quality chinaware.

The idea of porcelain as a secret was a long-lasting and stable one. Even though a multitude of authors repeated that porcelain was nothing more than a happy mixture of kaolin clay and silica (known as petuntse) and that the potters’ success resided only in suitable kilns and following of the process, entertaining convictions concerning the recipe of porcelain survived well into the 20 century. Alfred Searle wrote in his An Encyclopedia of the Ceramic Industries (published in 1930) that the Chinese “grounded their materials very fine, washed and levigated with extreme care, and after being made into a plastic paste, by treading, they were stored many years. […] It is stated that some of the best body pastes were kept in this way for thirteen generations.” (Searle, 1930) In 1857, during the second Opium War, Joseph Marryat in his History of Porcelain and Pottery

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stated that the whole story about secret recipes of porcelain must have been invented and propa-gated by the Chinese to increase income and keep the foreigners’ interest high (Marryat, 1857, 190). When porcelain ceased to be an unknown material, opinions on Chinese exports were de-termined by general attitudes towards the Chinese. Those following sinophobic sentiments praised European wares as exceeding Chinese achievements in both quality and invention.

PAINTING

The way that early modern Europeans understood Chinese painting is exemplified by the en-try “Chinese painting” in the Encyclopédie. An anonymous author explained that “Chinese paint-ing, it is this sort of pictures that the Chinese decorate fans and porcelain with, which represent flowers, animals, landscapes and figures with fine and glittering colors. The only merit their paint-ing presents is a certain propriety and a certain taste of servile imitation. One will find there, however, no genius, no drawing, no invention and no regularity” (Encyclopédie, 1765, vol. 12, 278).

Most European opinions of Chinese pictures expressed prior to the 20th century were formed based on artifacts produced for export depicting: decorative scenes on wallpapers, porce-lain pots, lacquer caskets or fans, and gouaches and watercolors showing various aspects of life in China, especially occupations, house interiors, Cantonese shops and ateliers (Clunas 1984). It was based on pictures of this kind that Stanisław Kostka Potocki formed his views. What is even more puzzling he chose as an object for his “case study” a painting on glass that represented a new genre of painting which emerged in the second half of the 18th century and reflected the influence of European objects brought to Canton. He found the painting on this object was of better quality than scenes painted on papers (by which he probably meant wallpapers). He argued that the object’s superiority was due to the way the surface of the painting was elaborated, in “exact finish”, with elegant, smooth and meticulous rendering of details, forms and shadows. Generally, Potocki’s opinion on Chinese painting is negative and in tune with prevailing judge-ments. “It is marked by the same [as in carvings] inexactitude in design, namely a total lack of perspective and gradation in shading, of which the Chinese have not even an inkling. […] All the comeliness of Chinese painting consists of their radiance, the liveliness and splendor of their colors, the beautiful materials with which nature generously endowed the eastern nations” (Potocki 1815).

In his essay, Potocki drew inspiration from Travels in China (1804) by James Barrow, a comp-troller to the household of Lord Macartney attached on the first British embassy to China from 1792 to 1794. “With regard to painting they can be considered in no other light than as miserable

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n… daubers, being unable to pencil out a correct outline of many objects, to give body to the same by

application of proper lights and shadows, and to lay on the nice shades of color, so as to resem-ble the tints of nature” (Barrow, 1804, 323). While deliberating on painting Barrow recounted several episodes that happened to him and others in China. One of the most popular anecdotes was that of a mandarin who having seen a shade of nose on a portrait of the British king, criti-cized the dirt which spoiled the face. Barrow also evoked a meeting with an official sent by the imperial court to prepare a collection of drawings depicting British royal gifts to the emperor. The Chinese envoy was unable to copy naked marble figures off the clock designed by Benjamin Vulliamy. His failure to render the anatomy of the human figure according to Barrow, was due to Chinese artist’s unfamiliarity with the body, which is usually concealed in loose robes.

Barrow considered pictures representing specimens of flora and fauna especially interesting and well done. He expressed his appreciation for the vivid colors and unparalleled skill in tracing nature. He attributed these qualities, nevertheless, to the scrupulous imitation of Chinese artists and their inability of exercising their own judgements. Given the fact that such pictures were the works of Cantonese painters, Barrow attributed their high quality to European influence. “Botanical” pictures in his view, owed their exactness and vivacity to Cantonese studio painters’ habit of copying prints and drawings and transferring them to porcelain wares. The only merit of Chinese painting Potocki was willing to admit was its splendor of colors and pleasing nature of the delicate, smooth silk paper. It was not due to skill, genius or invention but to the beautiful and extraordinary materials that nature endowed Asian nations with that Chinese painting de-served any merit. Everything that was worth admiring came from Europe or from nature, not from the Chinese.

Barrow possessed good knowledge of Chinese and likely had a chance to see objects of paintings in the imperial palace of Yuanmingyuan, yet his observations were, by no means, original. The remarks of Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit at the imperial court, were very similar. Ric-ci noted that the Chinese “in the making of statuary and cast images have not at all acquired the skill of Europeans. They know nothing of the art of painting in oil or the use of perspective in their pictures, with the result that their productions are lacking any vitality” (Sullivan, 1989, 43). Nieuhof in his An Authentic Account…, Le Comte in Nouveaux mémoires… and Du Halde in De-scription de la Chine pointed out the same mistakes. Du Halde, who only briefly commented on fine and decorative arts in various place of his encyclopedia, was only original when writing that “one should not judge the appearance and physiognomy of the Chinese by their portraits which one may see on their lacquered cabinets and porcelains; while they succeed in painting flowers, trees, animals and landscapes, they are very ignorant about painting themselves: they maim and

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disfig-K ultur a — His to ria — Gl ob ali za cja Nr 22

ure themselves to such an extent that they are unrecognizable and one can take them for truly grotesque figures” (Du Halde, 1735, vol. 2, 80).

ARCHITECTURE

It may rightfully be claimed that of all art forms, architecture was the least understood. Pure-ly decorative and somehow clumsy pavilions with curved roofs and many-storied pagodas were the architectural features most Europeans were familiar with from porcelain and lacquer decora-tions. It was not until Johann Nieuhof ’s report on the mission of the Dutch embassy that Eu-rope had chance to see representations of Chinese architecture. Rich in details and information Nieuhof ’s account abounded in illustrations of fish and animals, monks and representatives of Chinese society in every day attire, punishments and most significant buildings. Well-researched history of the publishing of An Account… bespeaks in detail the process of transfer-ring images from the stage of drawing to that of print (Odell, 2001). Even though the images are not realistic, and many of them are exoticized, these illustrations offered a new approach to the visual representation of China, including architecture. It was the first time that European public could see the imperial palace and famous pagodas without a fairytale-esque, decorative filter. The Porcelain Pagoda in Nanjing became the “iconic” Chinese building, a representation of China itself. Austrian architect Johann Fischer von Erlach included the image of the Pagoda into his Entwurff Einer Historischen Architectur (1721), which gesture marked the first time that a piece of architecture from a non-European culture was included into a survey of world history of architecture. It is worth pointing out that Europe had to wait until Ernst Börschmann’s re-search and his accounts of domestic and temple buildings in China before it could become famil-iar with the history of Chinese architecture (Kögel 2015).

Europeans writing on China usually extolled the most spectacular and renown buildings. The Great Wall and the Great Canal were discussed in terms of technological and “engineering” achievements. The Porcelain Pagoda was perceived as a marvelous edifice incomparable to any-thing else and it evoked in European observers the feelings of wonder, aesthetic delight and curi-osity about its construction. Nevertheless, every palace or temple that pleased the eye of a viewer was esteemed, first and foremost, because of its splendor, outstanding decoration and wealth. Chinese architecture was said to have possessed elements of nobility and magnificence, but what made it noteworthy was the exotic otherness and not the principles and taste the “architect” ob-served (Du Halde, 1735, vol. 2, 72, 83).Most authors were also of the opinion that Chinese archi-tecture would never sustain the comparison with that of Europeans (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 1, 104-105).

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n… Prevailing European attitudes towards Chinese architecture are best illustrated by the

above-mentioned description of the imperial palace penned by Louis Le Comte (Le Comte, 1697, vol. 1, 104-105). The Jesuit considered the palace as the only building deserving any notice. What cap-tured his attention was the splendor of the interior decoration; he was enchanted with its mar-bles, big columns, roofs glittering with gilded tiles, carvings, lacquer and paintings. He was im-pressed with the arrangement, finding it noble, magnificent and worthy of a princely residence. Le Comte concluded, however, that imperfect notions the Chinese possessed of every sort of art was betrayed by the unpardonable faults found in every part of the building. The ornaments were irregular, the arrangement was ill-contrived and lacking in harmonious combination of its parts, which made European palaces so pleasant and comfortable. Finally, he observed a degree of ir-regularity which he perceived as displeasing Europeans and offending to all with good taste in architecture.

The fact that Europeans had difficulty in understanding and relating to Chinese architecture is reflected in ways the buildings were described. In fact the Jesuits and other observers had to invent a language of description, find familiar names so that they could fit and render unknown forms and elements. Louis Le Comte in his extensive description of the imperial palace men-tioned arch-like gates leading to subsequent courtyards. He compared structures crowning the gate to pavilions of gothic architecture. He found the timber of the roof a bizarre kind of orna-ment. He noted that rafters were long enough to come out beyond the wall and had shorter piec-es of wood upon them. He recognized such a construction as a cornish and admitted that at a distance it looked very fine.

CONCLUSION

The critical tone of Jesuit publications accompanied straightforward observation. Their judgements are not surprising when taking into consideration that they were formulated during the times when cultural objectivism did not exist. Until the very late 19 century, or even during the first decades of the 20 century, there was no author in Europe who was able to judge Chinese art according to its rules, achievements, theories. European opinions were shaped mainly by Jesuit commentaries, which they often distorted. An exceedingly sinophobic article published in a Polish journal “Pamiętnik Historyczno-Polityczny” (Historical and Political Journal) proves how widespread and deeply rooted in collective consciousness such judgements were (Anonymous, 1786). Long deliberations in this article written by an anonymous author were aimed at discredit-ing the Chinese and challengdiscredit-ing sinophilic that almost all enlightened Europe was suffused with. The author questioned all positive aspects of the Chinese government, including the patriarchal

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relations between the emperor and his subjects and the wealth of the Empire. He also embarked discussing matters related to the fine arts quoting the most sever criticisms circulating in Jesuit writings and embassy accounts, dictionaries and encyclopedias, and shared European consumers of Chinese goods. The appetite for Chinese wallpapers, porcelain and lacquer did not clash with the distaste for Chinese methods of rendering space and human figures.

European opinions of Chinese art generally reflected the shifts in the Old Continent’s atti-tude towards the Middle Kingdom and its inhabitants. Common ideas of China and the Chinese circulating in collective consciousness influenced popular perceptions of art and determined its reception for decades. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the connection between the idea of the Empire and opinions of its arts was never straightforward. While, in the 17 and 18 centu-ries Europe admired Chinese, it did not refrain from criticizing Chinese arts for the lack of prin-ciples that Europeans themselves observed. Nevertheless, it appears that cataclysmic events, such as the Opium Wars, affected the perception of the Empire and its people and also of its arts, even though it did not cease the interest in. The splendor of imperial gardens, palaces and objets d’art was overshadowed by the image of a defeated, effeminate and subordinated nation that Chi-na became in the middle of 19 century. Chinese art and imagery gave up its role to newly discov-ered Japan which started to command European taste.

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