Diploma Lecture Series 2012 Absolutism to enlightenment: European art and culture 1665-1765

Chinoiserie Craig Judd 9 / 10 May 2012

Lecture summary: Chinoiserie c.1600 to today. Originally the term used to describe any object form or design influenced by an idea or model from or of India, China and Japan. Since the time of Marco Polo and Giovanni di Montecorvino the splendours of the courts of the Great Khans captivated European imaginations. Chinese goods trickled into Europe through Venice via Antioch and Cairo. Columbus was hoping to find the shores of fabled Cathay. From the early 16Cth when Portuguese had established trading colonies on the coast of China, exotic items still highly valued, became more available. In 1586 Juan Gonzles de Mendoza published the first history of China. The Inventories of Phillip II of Spain mention porcellanas de China, Shakespeare in Measure for Measure talks of China dishes. By 1620 English copies of Japanese and Chinese furniture and manufacturing techniques were being made. Various wars quelled the taste/trade momentarily but by 1660 rooms around Europe were being decorated in the Indian or Chinese taste. In 1671 at Versailles Louis XIV built the Trianon de porcelain (most probably in the much cheaper faience) in the shape of a pagoda. The visit of Embassies from the King of Siam to Louis XIV (1684,1690) could also have stimulated further interest in the exotic east. Chinoiserie is a style that is irrational, capricious, costly and easily copied. It is a design style coextensive with the Rococo, however less overtly sensual, a more whimsical and fantastic retreat into the imagination. What Europeans enjoyed about Chinese and Japanese artefacts were their clarity and colour (remember those woeful, awful shadows in the Baroque). Chinoiserie is the first non Mediterranean based style appropriated by Europeans since the Early Middle Ages when cool Classicism tussled with organic animated Celtic motifs. Interestingly, in Qing China one can trace a parallel style Europeanerie. Slide list:

* 1. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Korean Man black and red chalk 1617 drawing Getty
Museum Los Angeles * 2. Lang Shih-ning (Guiseppe de Castiglione)(1688-1766) Poppiesc.1720 * 3. Jean Henri Reisener (1734-1806) Secretary 1783 oak with veneered ebony marble gilt Metropolitan Museum of Art New York
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* 4. Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-1775) Figure group c1755 Meissen porcelain Victoria and
Albert Museum London * 5. Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-1775) Tureen c 1737 Meissen porcelain Victoria and Albert Museum London * 6. William Chambers (1723-1796) Pagoda Kew Gardens 1761 * 7. Louis-Denis Le Camus (dates unknown) Pagoda at Choiseul 1775

Reference: Chinoiserie (1999) Jacobson, Dawn. Phaidon Press. Panorama of the Enlightenment (2006) Outram, Dorinda. Thames & Hudson. Rococo to Revolution: Major Trends in 18th Century Painting (1974) Levey, Michael

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Korean Man black and red chalk 1617 drawing Getty Museum Los Angeles

Lang Shih-ning (Guiseppe de Castiglione)(1688-1766) Poppiesc.1720

Jean Henri Reisener (1734-1806) Secretary 1783 oak with veneered ebony marble gilt Metropolitan Museum of Art New York

Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-1775) Figure group c1755 Meissen porcelain Victoria and Albert Museum London

Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-1775) Tureen c 1737 Meissen porcelain Victoria and Albert Museum London

William Chambers (1723-1796) Pagoda Kew Gardens 1761

Louis-Denis Le Camus (dates unknown) Pagoda at Choiseul 1775

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