From Diplomacy to Diffusion: The Macartney Mission and its Impact on the Understanding of Chinese Art, Aesthetics, and Culture in Great Britain, 1793-1859

Kara Lindsey Blakley

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6304-2169

Thesis submitted to The University of Melbourne in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the Doctor of Philosophy degree.

February 2018

Art History School of Culture & Communication Faculty of Arts ABSTRACT

Recent art historical scholarship has begun to expand with studies in cross-cultural convergences and transferences garnering newfound attention. This dissertation, through a series of close readings, examines how the deterioration in the relationship between China and Britain manifests in art. In particular, I am concerned with the corollary concepts of depiction and diffusion: that is, how do British artists depict China and the Chinese, and then, how do these depictions diffuse into British visual and material culture more broadly? The primary temporal focus begins with the Macartney diplomatic embassy of 1793, and ends with Victoria’s accession. Through a semiotic interpretation, I demonstrate that the subtle changes in the British visual depiction of recurring Chinese signs (such as the pagoda or ladies of rank) reveal concomitant shifts in attitudes towards China. The concepts of depiction and diffusion comprise the first and second halves, respectively. Chapter Two examines the visual templates that the Jesuit missionaries based at the Beijing court created. Chapters Three and Four center on the imagery of William Alexander, who served as junior artist to the Macartney mission. His two illustrated travelogues (published 1805 and 1814) synthesized signifiers of China that had circulated in Britain for over a century, but his reinterpretation, in addition to his anthropological approach, anticipate an imperialistic turn. His images—which, notably, departed from the the fantastical chinoiserie which predated them— purported to demonstrate to armchair-travelers the way China ‘looked,’ but it is this very claim to authenticity which requires that the images be read anew through a postcolonial lens. Alexander’s images inform the work of Thomas Allom, who created entirely new Chinese scenes in the wake of the Opium Wars; this is taken up in Chapter Five. Chapters Six and Seven seeks to understand the diffusion of Chinese imagery in Britain, and what the cultural signification of that diffusion is. Chapter Six discusses the role of the anglo- chinois garden in eighteenth-century Britain. It also examines the role that William Chambers played in popularizing Chinese motifs, and how his legacy and contribution to an emerging Romantic aesthetic has been obscured in previous literature. Chapter Seven details the interior design scheme of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (decorated 1802-1823). In the Music Room, Alexander’s documentary imagery has been transformed into decorative spectacle, and pagodas were miniaturized, trivialized, and brought inside: in this regard, Britain sought to possess China by proxy. !ii By interpreting Britain’s Chinese imagery through a semiotic framework, I examine how artists and audiences negotiated increasing contact with China. Evocations of familiar signs belie a deteriorating relationship, which was hastened by Britain’s rapid industrialization and the unabating desire for Chinese goods. As art history embarks on an intercultural turn, connections between China and Britain in the early modern, proto-global world must be included in this field. This dissertation serves as one such point of departure.

!iii !iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the input and support of a number of individuals. It has been an honor and a privilege to be supervised by Christopher Marshall. His unwavering support, encouragement, and patience are much appreciated. He has read numerous drafts of this project and has always been available to offer guidance and feedback. I also thank my secondary supervisor, Alison Inglis, for her support throughout this process. I am grateful to the University of Melbourne for providing an International Research Scholarship and a Fee Remission Scholarship to support my doctoral studies. I have had the opportunity to attend several international conferences, and through these experiences, my nebulous ideas have been refined and improved beyond measure. I am especially grateful to Shun-liang Chao, Will Christie, Deirdre Coleman, Nikki Hessell, Hsu Li-hsin, Robert Markley, and Laurence Williams for offering their invaluable feedback in this capacity. Additional thanks are owed to Nikki Hessell. At the University of Melbourne, I am indebted to Gabrielle Grigg, Sister Delma Lamb, Mark Robinson, Jacqui Randall, Laura Liao, and Eliette Dupré-Husser. Anita Archer has been a wonderful sounding board and colleague during the completion of this degree, and Alejandra Gimenez-Berger has provided sage guidance. My best friend, Cilia Deloncre, has provided tremendous intellectual and emotional support. I am forever grateful for how much she has done for me while I have been on this journey. From my late grandma, Virginia Knox, I learned determination and resilience. My papaw, Ralph Blakley, has believed in me, and my mamaw, Gale Blakley, has provided spiritual guidance. My parents, Rich and Carol Blakley, taught me to be curious and diligent, and I thank them for their love and devotion. Chip Blakley, my brother, has had the difficult task of supplying the soundtrack to my dissertation-writing. He exceeded my hopes and expectations with every new playlist. I wish to thank the late Hannah and Luke Blakley for their love. Lastly, I thank Violet and June for their love, affection, and companionship.

!v CONTENTS

Abstract……ii Declaration Page……iv Acknowledgments……v List of Figures……viii

Introduction

I. Introduction & Literature Review……1 Introduction……1 Literature Review……6 Methodology……22

II. The Jesuits Missionaries in Beijing: Drawings & Descriptions……25 Matteo Ricci……26 Athanasius Kircher……28 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde……32 Matteo Ripa & Jean-Denis Attiret……38

Part One: Diplomacy

III. The Macartney Mission and William Alexander’s Costume of China……40 An Overview of the Macartney Mission……41 William Alexander and the Costume Series……44 The Seafaring Genre: Depictions of Vessels and a Bridge……48 Functional Vessels……49 Vessels in Action……54 Vessels and Class Hierarchy……56 View of a Bridge in the Environs of the City of Sou-tcheou……58 The Military Genre……60 Civilian Figures: Peasants, Merchants, and Elites……65 Peasants……65 Merchants and the Middle Class……68 Social Elites……68

IV. William Alexander’s Picturesque Representations……71 The Qianlong Emperor……74 The Two Mandarins……78 High-Ranking Ladies……81 Alexander’s Depictions of Other Women & His Commentary on Foot-Binding……83 Religious and Funerary Scenes……90

V. Thomas Allom’s Travelogue Illustrations……99 George Thomas Staunton……100 Thomas Allom, after William Alexander……102 The Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing……105 China from Within: Allom’s Domestic Scenes……108 Opium-Smokers……111 !vi Part Two: Diffusion

VI. China, Britain, and the Anglo-Chinois Garden……115 Garden History, Theory, and Inspiration in England, 1730s-1820s……117 Early- & Mid-Eighteenth Century Garden Theory: Shaftesbury, Addison, Pope, and Chambers……125 Mid-Eighteenth Century Garden Theory: Walpole and the Aesthetics of Nationalism……134 Gardens and Romanticism: Inspiration, Exoticism, Nationalism……139 The Romantic English Landscape……141 Constable and the Legacy of Anglo-Chinois Aesthetics in English Gardens and Landscape……144

VII. Domesticating Orientalism: Chinoiserie Interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton……151 George IV……153 The Building of the Royal Pavilion……159 Decorating the Pavilion and the Crace Family……162 Chinese Motifs in the Music Room……167 The Pagoda……169 The Wallpaper and Furniture of the Music Room……176 Chinese Motifs in the Stairwell, Banqueting Room, and Corridor……182 The Stairwell……182 The Banqueting Room and Corridor……185 Rococo vs. Post-Rococo Chinoiserie……186 Domesticating Orientalism……191

Conclusion……195 Figures……197 Bibliography……287

!vii LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

Chapter II

2.1 Cum Fu Çu sive Confucius (Kong fu zi or Confucius), from Prospero Intorcetta et al., trans. and ed., Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, 1687 197

2.2 The Mountain of Kiamsi Province, from Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata, 1667 198

2.3 Dress Series, from Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata, 1667 199

2.4 Ferdinand Verbiest, Jiao Bingzhen, Imperial Workshops, Guanxiangtai Tu (Image of the platform on which to observe celestial phenomenon), 1674 200

2.5 Antoine Humblot, Mandarins de Guerre (Chinois), from Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History, 1735 201

2.6 Antoine Humblot, Cortège d'un Viceroy toutes les fois qu'il sort de son Palais (Procession of a Viceroy whenever he leaves his Palace), from Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History, 1735 202

2.7 Antoine Humblot, Nòce Chinoise (Wedding Ceremony), from Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History, 1735 203

Chapter III

3.1 William Alexander, Portrait of a Trading Ship, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 204

3.2 William Alexander, A Fishing Boat, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 205

3.3 William Alexander, Three Vessels Lying at Anchor in the River of Ning-po, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 206

3.4 William Alexander, Portraits of Sea Vessels, generally called Junks, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 207

3.5 William Alexander, A Sea Vessel Under Sail, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 208

3.6 William Alexander, Front View of a Boat, passing over an inclined Plane or Glacis, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 209

!viii 3.7 William Alexander, Vessels Passing Through a Sluice, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 210

3.8 William Alexander, A Mandarin’s Traveling Boat, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 211

3.9 William Alexander, The Traveling Barge of Van-ta-zhin, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 212

3.10 William Alexander, View of a Bridge in the Environs of the City of Sou-tcheou, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 213

3.11 William Alexander, Portrait of Van-ta-zhin, a military Mandarine (or nobleman) of China, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 214

3.12 William Alexander, A Chinese Soldier of Infantry, Or Tiger of War, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 215

3.13 William Alexander, Portrait of a Soldier, in his full Uniform, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 216

3.14 William Alexander, A Soldier in His Common Dress, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 217

3.15 William Alexander, A Soldier of Chu-San, Armed with a Matchlock Gun, &c, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 218

3.16 William Alexander, A Ship of War, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 219

3.17 William Alexander, A Peasant, With his Wife and Family, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 220

3.18 William Alexander, A Group of Trackers, Of the Vessels, at Dinner, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 221

3.19 William Alexander, A Group of Peasantry, Watermen, &c., playing with Dice, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 222

3.20 William Alexander, Chinese Gamblers with Fighting Quails, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 223

3.21 William Alexander, Portrait of the Purveyor, For the Embassy, while the Embassador remained at Macao, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 224

3.22 William Alexander, A Tradesman, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 225

!ix 3.23 William Alexander, A Chinese Lady and her Son, attended by a Servant, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 226

3.24 William Alexander, Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin, In his Dress of Ceremony, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 227

3.25 William Alexander, A Mandarin, attended by a Domestic, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 228

Chapter IV

4.1 William Alexander, The Approach of the Emperor of China to His Tent in Tartary to Receive the British Ambassador, from George Leonard Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, 1797 229

4.2 William Alexander, Kien Lung, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 230

4.3 Unknown Maker, Throne, from the Tuanhe Travelling Palace in the Nan Haizi, c. 1736-1795 231

4.4 Unknown Maker, Throne of Qianlong, from the Hall of Imperial Supremacy (Huangji dian) in the Forbidden City, c. 1736-1795 232

4.5 Unknown Maker, Zitan ‘Dragon’ Throne, c. 1736-1795 233

4.6 William Alexander, The Sovereign, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English, 1813 234

4.7 William Alexander, A Mandarin in His Court Dress, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 235

4.8 William Alexander, A Lady, and her Son, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 236

4.9 Joshua Reynolds, Diana, Viscountess Crosbie, 1777 237

4.10 William Alexander, A Chinese Lady of Rank, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 238

4.11 William Alexander, A Nursery Maid and Two Children, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 239

4.12 William Alexander, Female Peasant, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 240

4.13 William Alexander, Woman Selling Chow-Chow, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 241 !x 4.14 William Alexander, A Boat Girl, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 242

4.15 William Alexander, A Female Comedian, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 243

4.16 William Alexander, A Sacrifice at the Temple, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 244

4.17 William Alexander, Portrait of a Lama, or Bonze, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 245

4.18 William Alexander, An Offering in the Temple, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 246

4.19 William Alexander, A Bonze, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 247

4.20 William Alexander, A Pagoda, Or Temple, For religious Worship, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 248

4.21 William Alexander, View of a Burying-Place, near Han-tcheou-fou, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 249

4.22 William Alexander, A Funeral Procession, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 250

4.23 William Alexander, Visit to the Grave of a Relation, from William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, 1814 251

Chapter V

5.1 Unknown Artist, Chinese, from Set of Twelve Paintings Representing The Growing and Manufacturing of Cotton, c. 1800 252

5.2 Thomas Allom, Canton Bargemen Fighting Quails, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 253

5.3 Thomas Allom, Junks Passing an Inclined Plane, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 254

5.4 Thomas Allom, The Bridge of Nanking, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 255

5.5 Thomas Allom, Nanking, from the Porcelain Tower, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 256

!xi 5.6 Thomas Allom, The Porcelain Tower, Nanking, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 257

5.7 Johan Nieuhof, Porcellyne Tooren [Porcelain Tower], from Johan Nieuhof, Het Gezandtschap der Neêrlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie [An Embassy from the East India Company], 1665 258

5.8 William Marlow (artist), William Chambers (architect), View of the Wilderness at Kew, 1763 259

5.9 William Alexander, A Pagoda (or Tower), Near the City of Sou-tcheou [Suzhou], from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 260

5.10 Thomas Allom, Pavilion and Gardens of a Mandarin, Near Pekin, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 261

5.11 Thomas Allom, Boudoir and Bed-Chamber of a Lady of Rank, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 262

5.12 Thomas Allom, Opium-Smokers, from Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire, 1858-59 263

Chapter VI

6.1 Lancelot “Capability” Brown, Bowood Gardens, from Bowood House, Wiltshire, England, c. 1760-69 264

6.2 John Constable, Hampstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond, 1828 265

6.3 Wu Li, Spring Comes to the Lake, 1676 266

6.4 Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them, 1645 267

6.5 John Constable, Water-meadows near Salisbury, 1820 268

6.6 Wang Hui and Wang Shimin, Landscapes After Ancient Masters, 1674-77 269

Chapter VII

7.1 Johan Joseph Zoffany, Queen Charlotte With her Two Oldest Sons, c. 1765 270

7.2 Henry Holland (architect), Unexecuted Design for a Chinese Exterior, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 1801 271

7.3 John Nash (architect), Façade, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 1815-22 272

7.4 Robert Seymour, The Great Joss and his Playthings, c. 1829 273

!xii 7.5 Johan Nieuhof, The Porcelain Pagoda at Nankin, from Johan Nieuhof, Het Gezandtschap der Neêrlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie [An Embassy from the East India Company], 1669 274

7.6 John Samuel Agar, James Stephanoff, and James Tingle, after Augustus Charles Pugin, Music Room, from John Nash (publisher), The Royal Pavilion at Brighton, 1821-26 275

7.7 Unknown Maker, Pagoda, c. 1800-1803, with English additions from c. 1817 276

7.8 Frederick Crace, Design for the South Wall, the Music Room, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, c. 1817 277

7.9 William Alexander, A Small Idol Temple, commonly called a Joss House, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 278

7.10 William Alexander, The South Gate of the City Ting-Hai, in the Harbour of Tchu-san from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 279

7.11 Frederick Crace and Robert Jones, Wallpaper Detail, from the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, c. 1817 280

7.12 Frederick Crace, Design for the West Wall, the Music Room, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, c. 1817 281

7.13 Frederick Crace (attributed), Stained Glass, Stairwell, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, c. 1815 282

7.14 William Alexander, A Chinese Comedian, from William Alexander, Costume of China, 1805 283

7.15 Frederick Crace, Design for the Entrance Hall, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 1815 284

7.16 Frederick Crace and Robert Jones, Banqueting Room, from the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, c. 1815-22 285

!xiii Chapter I Introduction & Literature Review

Introduction

In the 1741 preface to the English translation of Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s The General History of China, at the time one of the most comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedic reports of China, the translator writes, “As China is the most remarkable of all Countries yet known, the English Reader must be greatly pleas’d to find the exactest Account of it that has ever yet appear’d in our Language.”1 Yet, in the 1858 preface to his The Chinese Empire, Thomas Allom states that, “China has often been characterised as the largest empire in the world. Once it enjoyed that pre- eminence; but the empires of Great Britain and Russia are now more extensive than that of the

Emperor of China.”2 He further explains this point:

There is no doubt that, at a very early age of the world’s history, they had attained a high degree of civilisation; science flourished amongst them; and we have the most abundant proofs that they excelled in art. But for centuries, they have remained perfectly stationary, both in one and the other. … the discoveries of the mariner’s compass and of printing, made at a very remote period by the Chinese, have never been practically developed, to the advancement of knowledge, civilisation, and commerce, as they have been in Europe. In the nineteenth century of the Christian era, those great aids to the progress of mankind remain, in China, nearly in their primitive state. In fact, it is the boast of the Chinese to be unchangeable; and unchanged and stationary they have been.3

These two extremes in attitude—that China, in 1741, was characterized as the ‘most remarkable’ country in the world, and that in 1858, it was a static place that Europe was rapidly eclipsing in science, art, and technology4—exemplify the more general opinion that Britons held on China at the beginning and end of a century of transition.

1 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China: Containing a Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political and Physical Description of the Empire of China, trans. Richard Brookes. (London: J. Watts, 1741), no page. 2 Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire: Historical and Descriptive, Illustrating the Manners and Customs of the Chinese, vol. I. (London and New York: The London Printing and Publishing Company, Limited, 1858), i.

3 Ibid. p. ii. 4 Elizabeth Hope Chang writes: “Both the exhibition [such as the Great Exhibition of 1851] and the [opium] den insisted on Chinese spaces as a separate and static scene, whose inhabiting people and objects could only be looked at, not look themselves.” Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth Century Britain. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 114. Emphasis mine. Chang describes how China became frozen, in a sense, as it became available for public display in Victorian Britain. Similarly, Patrick Conner references the “general disillusion in regard to China, and ‘Chinese taste’, in Victorian Britain,” in David Beevers, Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930. (London: Royal Pavilion and Museums, 2008), 73. Page 1! of 300 This dissertation, through a series of close readings, seeks to examine how the deterioration in the relationship between China and Britain manifests itself in art. In particular, I am concerned with the corollary concepts of depiction and diffusion: that is, how do British artists5 depict China and the Chinese, and then, how do these depictions diffuse into British visual and material culture more broadly? Furthermore, how are Chinese aesthetics, as perceived by European conduits,6 understood in Britain? How does Britain’s rapid industrialization and the unabating desire for Chinese goods impact the depiction of China, and the deployment of Chinese signs? In order to address these questions, I have chosen several case studies to examine. Since depictions that strove to serve as documentary accounts greatly informed British audiences and artists alike, these must form a foundation to this dissertation. I begin with an analysis of a few representative works by Jesuit missionaries: Athanasius Kircher’s China Illustrata (1667) and Du Halde’s The General History (1735). Kircher and Du Halde assembled and published drawings and engravings that were produced by missionaries living at the Qing court in Beijing. These images formulated what became the basic visual vocabulary when later artists sought to evoke China.7 William Alexander, junior artist of the Macartney embassy of 1793, produced two books of engravings in 1805 and 1814, respectively, and the visual precedent set by Kircher and Du Halde, among others, greatly informed his own impressions and first-hand observations. Thomas Allom never traveled to China personally, and yet he published two editions of illustrated books on China between 1843 and 1859. Just as Alexander was indebted to his antecedents for the visual template they created, so too was Allom indebted to Alexander’s work. While many of the engravings, from 1735, 1805, and 1858, feature many of the same visual motifs—pagodas, mandarins, ladies of rank —the signification of these images are ever-changing during this period. William Chambers functions as a notable ‘in-between’ figure. He traveled to China with the Swedish East India Company three times between 1740 and 1749, and though he became known primarily as an architect, he also fashioned himself as a formidable figure among those with first-

5 This dissertation is primarily concerned with two British artists: William Alexander and Thomas Allom.

6 These ‘conduits’ are the Jesuits missionaries that produced written and illustrated accounts, merchant travelers such as William Chambers, and artists who accompanied diplomatic missions, such as William Alexander. 7 It must be noted that these were not the sole accounts circulating in Europe in the early eighteenth century; Dutch traveler Johan Nieuhof published the influential An Embassy from the East-India Company in 1665. His series of engravings features the likely first appearance of the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing in Europe, which appeared in European travelogues as late as Allom’s The Chinese Empire two centuries later. A detailed study of these very early books, such as Nieuhof’s, Kircher’s, and Du Halde’s, merit a lengthy analysis in their own right; for the purpose of investigating long-term trends, however, I have chosen to focus on how representative images from this period form a template for other, later artists to appropriate for their own purposes. Page 2! of 300 hand knowledge of China. His observations on the irregular gardening style of the Chinese, in addition to their architectural style, were published in three books between 1757 and 1772.8 He was also commissioned to design the grand pagoda in Kew Gardens in 1762. Because of the political climate of his time, his influence and authority have been doubted in recent scholarship. But regardless of the extent of his actual knowledge of China, his works were undeniably coincident with a rise in irregular gardening in Britain. The Chinese origins of anglo-chinois gardens—and why the British tastemakers were uncomfortable with the decidedly non-European source for a newly-national icon—forms the basis of Chapter Six. I explore how the diffusion of Chinese aesthetics was received in Britain. The diffusion of Chinese imagery can also be found at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, with many of Alexander’s prints copied literally onto wallpapers. I examine the processes of this diffusion and visual translation in Chapter Seven. I have alluded to the notion that this dissertation spans a century of transition, a century during which the relationship between China and Britain deteriorated. To that end, I will provide a cursory of summary of this relationship; the literature review includes numerous detailed sources on this particular topic. As I have described in Chapter Two, the modern relationship between the two states began in 1601, when the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci arrived in Beijing and established a Catholic mission. For the next two centuries, Jesuit missionaries served as the primary conduit between the two cultures as they sent letters, drawings, and personal accounts back to Europe. The eighteenth century witnessed countries such as England importing porcelain, silk, and tea, among other commodities, at increasing rates; in print, Du Halde’s The General History of China, first published in 1735, contained translations of Chinese texts, and descriptions of its geography, government, history, and religions, and remained an authoritative source for the next century. This was the same era, mid-eighteenth century, when French artists such as François Boucher and Antoine Watteau popularized the fantastical chinoiserie style, and their designs were imitated in Britain as well. During the same period, Voltaire was among the most famous of Europeans who found in Confucianism and China a model for his own society. Voltaire saw the emperor of China as the closest embodiment to Plato’s philospher-king that his world had to offer, and indeed, he wrote in 1764 that “One need not be obsessed with the merits of the Chinese … to

8 These were: Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils: to Which is Annexed a Description of their Temples, Houses, Gardens, &c. (London, 1757); Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey. (London, 1763); and A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening. (London, 1772). Page 3! of 300 recognize … that their empire is in truth the best that the world has ever seen.”9 By century’s close, the seeds of dissent had been sown: tastemakers such as Horace Walpole, as I describe in Chapter Six, had begun to assert the ‘purity’ of English cultural emblems like the irregular landscape gardens. The sentiment towards China began to change most fervently because of trade rather than aesthetic concerns. As David Porter has observed, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (before the Opium Wars), “The foreign trade in Canton was conducted entirely on Chinese terms, under conditions that the British found deeply humiliating but were in no position to change.”10 This was the Canton System. As demand for Chinese commodities increased, Europeans found this archaic method of trade to be restrictive and harsh. The Canton System functioned as China’s foreign trade system which restricted all trade to Canton (Guangzhou). It also restricted the spaces in which foreigners could access the foreign factories, or hongs, the time of year during which merchants could trade, and even denied the local populace permission to teach their language. At the same time, a rapidly industrializing Britain continued to seek out new markets for its own products, and its young empire was growing richer and more powerful. However, China, only interested in silver mined in South America, rebuffed Britain’s attempts to sell its own products. This imbalance of trade and what Britain perceived as an unfair system of trade is what led George III to send his diplomatic envoy, George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney, to the Qianlong Court in 1792. From an economic and diplomatic point of view, the mission was a failure, but culturally and artistically, it served as a turning point in the British understanding and imagining of China. Another attempt to negotiate more favorable trade conditions, the Amherst Mission of 1816, also failed. What all of this meant in practical terms is that the profit margins of the British East India Company were squeezed, markets for British exports in China were narrow and inflexible, and living conditions for foreign traders were poor. Furthermore, that the Chinese had all of the control in this scenario was surely a bruise to the ego of the growing British empire. Suspension of trade was considered, but was ultimately viewed as an unfavorable option—the large and growing Chinese market was too tantalizing, and could not be left open to other Europeans.11 Additionally, the sheer volume of trade made suspension all but impossible: Britain exported cotton, broadcloth,

9 Voltaire, quoted in “Chinese Ideas in the West.” Columbia University, East Asian Curriculum Project, accessed December 2016: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/song/readings/inventions_ideas.htm.

10 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 24. 11 Aubrey Singer, The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking, 1792-1794. (London: Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1992), 5. Page 4! of 300 beaver skins, glass, tin, lead, pepper, cloves, sandalwood, and rattans, and China exported, in Britain’s ships, raw silk, nankeen (a type of cotton), chinaware and decorative porcelain, rhubarb, alum, mercury, sugar, cassia, and tutenag (a type of Chinese zinc), and especially green and black tea.12 By the end of the eighteenth century, tea was an absolute necessity for all social classes. Despite these exports, however, trade was largely unilateral, with British silver draining out of the country and into China.13 The British, frustrated by the trade imbalance that an insatiable appetite for tea and other commodities created, finally found a ‘solution’: opium. China outlawed opium in 1729, but this did not deter British merchants from intensifying their smuggling operations in the 1790s. However, the greatest breakthrough came two decades later:

The drug (previously used in China as a medicine, but rarely as a narcotic) was initially a luxury … The consequences [of the opium trade] became more grave when in 1818 somebody developed a cheaper, more potent blend of opium. The results were as spectacular as those that the Medellín drug cartel would later achieve by turning expensive cocaine into cheap crack.14

At this point, Indian-grown opium imports surged in China, despite the government’s best efforts to deter them. Indeed, Chinese officials considered opium to be “harmful to China economically” while also creating poor social conditions.15 An aggressive new ban went into effect in 1839, and in order to enforce it, the Daoguang emperor sent an official to Canton to destroy a large shipment of British opium. This sparked the First Opium War (1839-1842): the Chinese could not compete with

Britain’s superior military technology, and they suffered a humiliating loss as a result.16 It is this loss from which present-day China envisions its current rise.

12 Ibid., p. 4.

13 Jan de Vries writes that: “The Asian market for ‘goods from the West’ was highly restricted, and until the late eighteenth century it was a distinctly minor factor.” Jan de Vries, “Understanding Eurasian Trade in the Era of the Trading Companies,” in Goods From the East, 1600-1800: Trading Eurasia, ed. Maxine Berg, with Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs, and Christ Nierstrasz. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 22. 14 Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven C. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, And the World Economy, 1400 to the Present. (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2006), 91. See also Keith Mahon, The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth Century China. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002).

15 Mahon, p. 38. 16 The Chinese were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking (the first of the ‘Unequal Treaties’), to open five treaty ports, and to cede Hong Kong to Britain. John M. Hobson details the ramifications of the Unequal Treaties: John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 260-261. Page 5! of 300 Literature Review

The last decade has witnessed a compelling academic phenomenon: perhaps owing to China’s rise, or reemergence, on the global stage—and indeed, the proliferation of the term ‘globalization’ in the media—there has been a robust increase in studies interested in Sino-Western relations. The interest in China and the West is palpable in disciplines across the spectrum, including history, political science, literature, linguistics, religion, and art history. While this dissertation is primarily concerned with art and visual culture, encompassing drawings, engravings, and interior and garden design, it is impossible to approach any of these subjects without considering the wider scholarly arena. This is because, in part, none of these objects or spaces were created outside of the socio-cultural domain which informs this dissertation. William Alexander, journeying to the court in Beijing, could not have been free of preconceived ideas of what China would ‘look’ like, nor could Frederick and John Crace, in decorating the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, have ignored the previous century’s manifestation of chinoiserie. Because of the reach of Sino-Western studies, this literature review will be representative rather than exhaustive. It will also reflect the range, and restrictions, of this dissertation. The literature with which I primarily engage falls into three categories: literature that directly addresses the contact between China and Europe as it pertains to art and visual culture, literature that addresses Sino-Western relations more broadly, and literature that has informed my theoretical framework. Regarding the third point, which I address in the section on methodology, I have chosen to interpret my images through a semiotic framework which has been informed by Said’s

Orientalism (see below).17 Despite the recent upsurge in publications about China and Europe’s cultural exchange and relationship, there is a relative dearth of purely art historical works in this field—an absence that I have sought to redress, in small part, in this dissertation. Indeed, much of the emerging scholarship in this area has come from literary studies. Stacey Sloboda’s work has been an indispensable exception to this trend. Her book, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in Eighteenth

17 Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). Page 6! of 300 Century Britain,18 is a departure from the more general surveys of chinoiserie which precede it.19 Sloboda is concerned with situating chinoiserie within themes of luxury, commerce, and an emerging consumer culture. She also analyzes the way in which chinoiserie was not merely an imitative endeavor in design or medium—British artists did not seek only to copy Chinese models of wallpaper or porcelain, for example. Rather, chinoiserie was as much a circular process of production as it was an aesthetic category. Sloboda writes, “The rapid pace of global trade and the fashions it spawned fueled the dissemination of technical knowledge about Chinese materials such as porcelain and lacquer ware, and the fluid transmission of designs, patterns, and forms.”20 This conclusion is based on the case studies that Sloboda focuses on, emphasizing porcelain and the decorative arts; she is, as the title suggests, primarily concerned with a critical examination of chinoiserie. The present study, by contrast, prioritizes works on paper, architecture, and gardens— these are media in which adaptions and translations of Chinese visual models manifested during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sloboda also published one journal article which particularly spoke to this dissertation, with its focus on William Alexander.21 She contends that “… Alexander’s works seemed to promise pictures of all aspects of Chinese culture to a British public eager for authentic Chinese imagery. In practice, however, he did so by emphasizing recognizable visual signs already associated with China through the language of chinoiserie… .”22 Although this is among the few and most recent

18 Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in Eighteenth-Century Britain. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2014).

19 Hugh Honour initiated the modern scholarly discussion on chinoiserie, but his argument is one that dwells on the imaginary and exotic elements of the style rather than its social, political, or even philosophical elements. He posits that chinoiserie was a European invention that gave a space on which Europeans could project their ideas of China, and that there was a lack of visual material on China during this period (eighteenth century). However, as Chapter One of this dissertation demonstrates, visual material created by Jesuit missionaries and merchant travelers was circulating in Europe already in the seventeenth century. Honour’s survey approach—detailing chinoiserie’s stylistic rise and fall, but largely ignoring the wider social and political dimensions, became the standard mode of interpretation in an already-small field. However, having been published in 1961, this was a groundbreaking text in its time. See Hugh Honour, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1961); Oliver Impey, Chinoiserie: The Impact of the Orient on Western Art and Decoration. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977); Patrick Conner, Oriental Architecture in the West. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979); Dawn Jacobson, Chinoiserie. (London: Phaidon, 1993); and David Beevers, Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930. (London: Royal Pavilion and Museums, 2008). 20 Sloboda, Chinoiserie, p. 3.

21 Stacey Sloboda, “Picturing China: William Alexander and the visual language of Chinoiserie,” The British Art Journal 9, no. 2 (2008): pp. 28-36. 22 Ibid., p. 29. Page 7! of 300 studies of Alexander’s works,23 it is limited in its assessment in that it presents a broad (and at times cursory) synthetic overview spanning the entirety of Alexander’s œuvre. My approach, in contrast, addresses distinct phases in Alexander’s career. In Chapters Three and Four, I separate his 1805 Costume of China from his 1814 Picturesque Representations because his depictions of these ‘recognizable visual signs’ actually shift in just a nine-year period. I argue that it is necessary to see each of his bodies of work as distinct entities, which as yet, no art historian has done. In addition to Sloboda’s work, another major publication on Sino-Western exchanges in art in the past decade has been an essential addition to the field: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding’s edited collection, Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West.24 While Sloboda’s work strictly considers the British perspective, ten-Doesschate Chu and Ding is truly cross-cultural in its scope, including Western and Chinese scholars who write on Western and

Chinese artists, artworks, concepts, and techniques.25 In the introduction, the editors note that their scope is the “… exchange of visual materials—from prints to plant specimens and from porcelains to textiles—and their reception. But it goes beyond that to focus on the mutual borrowing and adaptation of foreign forms, techniques, and modes of representation that followed the exchange of visual materials and to analyze the complex hybrid creations that were their result.”26 Unlike the literary/textual studies that have emerged in this field, Qing Encounters draws new attention to artistic exchanges rather than more theoretical or philosophical debates. The case studies include (but are not limited to) the exchange of linear perspective, silk manufacturing in Western and Chinese contexts, ideas about shadows and hatching, and the use of copperplate engraving. For my own purposes, the most significant essay in Qing Encounters is Greg M. Thomas’s “Chinoiserie and Intercultural Dialogue at Brighton Pavilion.”27 I engage with Thomas’s essay in Chapter Seven, but the crux of my argument asks to what degree this supposed ‘dialogue’ (between

23 See also Susan Legouix, Image of China: William Alexander. (London: Jupiter Books, 1980); William Alexander: An English Artist in Imperial China, eds. Patrick Connor and Susan Legouix. (Brighton: Brighton Borough Council, 1981); and Frances Wood, “Closely Observed China: From William Alexander’s Sketches to his Published Work,” The British Library Journal 24, no. 1 (1998): 98-121.

24 Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, eds., with Lidy Jane Chu, Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015). 25 While Europe more broadly is taken into consideration, the Western-focussed essays address Britain and France, mainly. Jennifer Milam contributes an essay on the oft-ignored Russian perspective in “Betwixt and Between: ‘Chinese Taste’ in Peter the Great’s Russia,” in Qing Encounters, pp. 264-286.

26 Qing Encounters, p. 2. 27 In Qing Encounters, pp. 232-247. Page 8! of 300 George, Prince of Wales and the Jiaqing emperor) was actually reciprocated in China.28 This influences my interpretation of the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, as I suggest that George IV’s designs were a new manifestation of Romantic-era chinoiserie, and not one of decorative reciprocity, as Thomas argues. Nonetheless, Thomas’s insights are invaluable, particularly his assertion that authentic Chinese objects were not meant for display as much as serving as an invitation for responsive artistic action.29 This influenced my own thinking of how Regency-era chinoiserie may be considered as a visual manifestation of Romanticism rather than as a mere, gaudy epilogue to Rococo chinoiserie.30 The last strictly art-historical book that has been published in the past decade that has been instrumental in shaping this dissertation is Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè’s China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century.31 Drawing on the resources of the Research Library of the Getty Research Institute, the book functions as a scholarly exhibition catalogue. The editors have grouped the drawings thematically, and approximately chronologically: they cover the concept of publishing the types of books that Alexander produced, Confucianism and Christianity, Jesuit science and astronomy, cartography, and intercultural landscapes. While the text covers art, culture, science, and religion as it pertains to the maps, prints, and illustrated books featured—replete with historical detail and analysis—the material is necessarily treated cursorily, as it functions as a catalogue. In that sense, there is a depth that is lacking that my dissertation aids in supplementing.

28 George IV (1762-1830), reigned as King of the United Kingdom and Ireland from 1820-1830; his regency commenced in 1811 when his father, George III, could no longer rule due to illness. The Jiaqing emperor (1760-1820) reigned 1796-1820. 29 Thomas, Qing Encounters, p. 241.

30 This is how it is essentialized in the books listed in Note 14. 31 Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè, China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. (Los Angeles, California: Getty Research Institute, 2007). Others in this area of research include: Donald F. Lach, Asia and the Making of Europe vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Patrick Conner, “China and the Landscape Garden: Reports, Engravings and Misconceptions,” Art History 2 (1979): 429-440; Craig Clunas, Chinese Export Watercolours. (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1984); Michael Snodin, ed., Sir William Chambers, exhibition catalogue. (London: V & A Publications, 1996); Craig Clunas, “China in Britain: The Imperial Collections,” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, eds. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn. (London: Routledge, 1998); Catherine Pagani, “Chinese Material Culture and British Perceptions of China in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, eds. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn. (London: Routledge, 1998); Colin Mackerras, Western Images of China, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Anna Jackson, “Art and Design: East Asia,” in The Victorian Vision: Inventing New Britain, ed. John M. MacKenzie. (London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2001); Robert Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds: Imagining the British Nation through China,” The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity Nussbaum. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Greg M. Thomas, “Yuanming Yuan / Versailles: Intercultural Interactions between Chinese and European Palace Cultures,” Art History 32, no. 1 (2009): 115-143. Page 9! of 300 Patrick Conner’s publications The China Trade and The Hongs of Canton function more as scholarly exhibition catalogues than academic monographs, and have been useful to consult and to ground my understanding of the art in this field.32 While The Hongs of Canton focuses on the works of art produced in China—and is therefore beyond the scope of the present study—The China Trade includes European botanical drawings, landscape drawings, and portraits (in additional to Chinese paintings). What is included, however, is heavily skewed towards what is available in the Martyn Gregory Gallery holdings, and therefore the images cannot present themselves as a representational survey. There are two authors whose work straddles the first two categories of my literature review: Elizabeth Hope Chang’s Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth Century Britain,33 and David Porter’s The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England.34 Chang and Porter are both literary scholars, so their approach does not particularly overlap with my own. While Chang and Porter address several aspects of visual and material culture, they do not examine the numerous prints, drawings, paintings, and interiors that I investigate in this dissertation. Chang’s foray into Victorian Britain is sprawling, as she analyzes the anglo-chinois garden, the blue and white willow pattern on porcelain, and photography of the Second Opium War, among other topics. She contends that, throughout the Victorian period, the image of China offered Britons a foil to their emerging modernist sensibility. Chang writes, “China’s visual disunity, exemplified especially in its gardens and decorative objects, was held to be antithetical to the selective scene-making exercised by the properly educated picturesque eye… .”35 While her analysis of far-ranging objects in an interdisciplinary framework is instructive, I question her implicit binary: she asserts that the backwards China served as a counterpoint to a modernizing, rational Britain. Throughout this dissertation, I assert instead that ‘China’s visual disunity’ influenced Britons’ own aesthetic preferences—that, indeed, the diffusion of Chinese aesthetics via conduits such as the Jesuits and William Chambers, informed the Picturesque, and even Romanticism. While Britons’ Victorian cultural consciousness may have positioned China as the antithesis to their own post-

32 Patrick Conner, The China Trade, 1600-1860. (Brighton: The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery and Museums, 1986); and ibid., The Hongs of Canton: Western Merchants in South China 1700-1900, as Seen in Chinese Export Paintings. (London: Martyn Gregory, 2009). 33 Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye.

34 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 35 Chang, p. 17. Page 10! of 300 Enlightenment, rational, modernist modes of visuality and materiality, it is crucial to pinpoint the Chinese undercurrents present in places such as the anglo-chinois garden and the Brighton Pavilion. Porter addresses many of the fundamental issues that Chang raises, albeit in the eighteenth- century context rather than the nineteenth.36 His nuanced methodology and the questions he puts forth also more closely align with my own, and I have been influenced by his approach. He writes: “Eighteenth-century consumers in England were … infatuated with Chinese and Chinese-styled goods, even as they were amused, perplexed, or troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence … figures centrally in the period’s experience of Chinese exoticism.”37 This ambivalence, as he calls it, anticipates the two sets of questions that underpin the book: he asks how a ‘foreign aesthetic’ that was often characterized in negative terms (“strange, monstrous, grotesque, repugnant, trifling”38) could be “so thoroughly and successfully assimilated within its host culture. What were the sources of an appeal that transformed curious emblems of otherness, in the space of little more than a century, into paradigmatic emblems of Englishness, and how did this transformation take place?”39 The key phrase that distinguishes Porter from previous literature in this field is ‘assimilated within its host culture.’ Rather than acting as a mere foil for a modernizing Britain (as Chang suggests was the case in Victorian England), the Chinese ‘foreign aesthetic’ actually informed the shifting preferences in Britain. Porter’s second set of questions asks:

How did the popularity of the Chinese taste inflect other important stylistic trends, such as classicism, Gothicism, and romanticism? What new meanings and values did Chinese objects make available to English consumers? […] My working hypothesis here is that the thorough-going domestication of the alien Chinese aesthetic involved not merely a superficial shift in British taste or a passing fad, but rather a profound transformation of underlying constructs of gender, nation, and desire.40

From this set of questions that Porter poses, I have come to understand what is meant by a ‘domestication of the alien Chinese aesthetic’ and have considered that especially in the context of anglo-chinois gardens and the interior design scheme at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. I am particularly interested in the entangling of the Chinese and Romantic aesthetic, which I address in

36 More specifically, Chang focuses primarily on the Victorian period. This gap between Chang’s Victorian study and Porter’s and Sloboda’s eighteenth-century focus is one which the present dissertation seeks to redress.

37 Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 4. 38 Ibid.

39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. Page !11 of 300 Chapter Six. I am also concerned with the way that British artists engage with Chinese aesthetics— the ‘new meanings and values’ that Chinese objects, and images of China, made available. That is to say, how do ‘ethnographic-’ or ‘documentary-’ style drawings, from the Jesuits to Alexander to Allom, figure in the way that Britons were thinking about China during a very momentous period of history between the two states? I must diverge from Porter, however, in the actual case studies that comprise my work. Porter has devoted much of his scholarly career to the topics that I have outlined above, and his numerous articles, in addition to The Chinese Taste, have been most edifying in my own work’s development.41 Nevertheless, his source material is not Chinese objects or chinoiserie per se, but rather the textual responses to those items.42 For this reason, his interpretation of Horace Walpole’s texts or William Chambers’ treatises is invaluable; nonetheless, his work does not directly examine the visual material with which I am concerned. This is precisely one of the shortfalls of the current field of inquiry: the literary scholars and historians have, in recent years, begun to entrench themselves in Sino-Western relations, and the artistic, material, and cultural products and ideas that resulted. Art historians, meanwhile, have been more reluctant to wade into this territory, clinging instead to national boundaries.43 When the transcultural perspective—or indeed, the ‘global’—is invoked, it is almost without exception in reference to contemporary art, museum exhibitions, the biennial, or any combination therein.44 This obscures the reality that transculturation, and globalization, are not phenomena unique to the present day, but instead, are processes that have been occurring in various manifestations for centuries.

41 David Porter, “Chinoiserie and the Aesthetics of Illegitimacy,” Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, vol. 28 (1999): 27-54; “From Chinese to Goth: Walpole and the Gothic Repudiation of Chinoiserie,” Eighteenth- Century Life 23, no. 1 (1999): 46-58.; Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); “Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of Chinese Taste,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35 no. 3 (2002): 395-411; “Beyond the Bounds of Truth: Cultural Translation and William Chambers’ Chinese Garden,” Mosaic 37, no. 2 (2004): 41-58; and “Sinicizing Early Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 3 (2010): 299-306. 42 It should be noted that Porter is a scholar of comparative literature, not art history.

43 Using College Art Association’s Recent Books in the Arts webpage as a litmus test, one finds numerous monographs of individual artists (Henry Moore, Theodore Waddell, Alfred Sisley), bounded geographic locales and genres (the festival of India, Dutch genre painting, traditional Chinese architecture, Australian Impressionists), and a few references to Greece and Rome (ancient to present). The most transcultural—if that would be the correct term here—are the Black figure in European painting, and the philosophy of Black British (contemporary) art. From College Art Association, retrieved August 2017 from: http:// www.caareviews.org/books_in_the_arts 44 From ibid, an unremarkable example is: John Zarobell, Art and the Global Economy. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017). Page 12! of 300 The scholarship in literature and history have implicitly understood this better, generally, than art historians, and the resulting publications have had a role in shaping this dissertation. Robert Markley’s The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730 set a precedent in how to examine the presence of China, Japan, and the Spice Islands in the European mind.45 While his book succeeded in throwing off the Eurocentric shackles that still dominate much humanities research, his scholarship is textual, analyzing the works of John Milton, John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift (among others). Among Markley’s key paradigm-shifting assertions is one to which I subscribe: that, prior to Europe’s industrial-economic upswing in the nineteenth century, the world was primarily centered in the East, if not China specifically; furthermore, any humanities studies must take this centeredness into account. This aligns with a growing perception of pre-twentieth century processes of globalization. Peter J. Kitson’s Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange, 1760-1840 was among the first books to actively incorporate Romanticism into these wider Sino-European textual analyses.46 Kitson “… argues that Qing China was a central, though problematic, referent in the culture and literature of what we know of as the British Romantic period… .”47 Kitson identifies the Macartney mission as a pivotal moment in Sino-European relations. He writes, “Brief though its acquaintance with China was, the Macartney embassy generated a mass of textual commentary that signaled a definitive move from the earlier, Jesuit-inspired writing on China to a new British or

45 Robert Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600-1730. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). I was also fortunate enough to speak with Markley during the 2017 Romanticism Studies Society of Australasia (RSAA) biennial conference. His talk, “The Amherst Embassy, Tambora, and Some Romantic Perceptions of China,” addressed some of the writings to result from the 1816 British diplomatic embassy to China.

46 Peter J. Kitson, Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760-1840. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Kitson has also published Romantic Literature, Race and Colonial Encounter, 1760-1840. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and with Tim Fulford, Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). More recently, Kitson and Markley have jointly edited Writing China: Essays on the Amherst Embassy (1816) and Sino-British Cultural Relations. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Boydell and Brewer, 2016). The latter contributes to our collective understand of Sino-Western relations, particularly at a point between the Macartney embassy (1793) and the eruption of the First Opium War (1839) that is often overlooked. The essays discuss poetry, translations, and the textual representations of the tea and opium trade, among other similar topics, but again, analyses of visual materials are lacking. As an edited collection, the essays in Writing China are connected, albeit tenuously. See also Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins, A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 47 Kitson, Forging Romantic China, p. 1. Page 13! of 300 ‘Romantic Sinology.’”48 The limitation of the book, for my purposes, is the centrality of this ‘textual commentary.’ The British knowledge of China and “… its cultures, products, and its peoples, were constructed or forged from the writings and translations of a diverse range of missionaries, diplomats, travelers, East India Company employees, and literary personalities… .”49 This knowledge of key texts (Kitson discusses Thomas Percy, William Jones, Robert Morrison, and George Thomas Staunton,50 among others) has helped shape my understanding of China in the British cultural consciousness during this period, but the depth of textual analysis is counterbalanced by the fact that no visual sources are included.51 Also, Kitson concedes that overt references to China in Romantic-era literature are scarce (as are overt visual references to China in the same period), but does not go on to discuss why European conceptions of Chinese aesthetics (literary or artistic), imported through treatises on the sharawadgi or irregularity in Chinese gardens

(as discussed in Chapter Six), may have diffused in more subtle ways by this time.52

48 Ibid., p. 7. Kitson extensively discusses what he means by ‘Romantic Sinology.’ He suggests that, according to the OED, the term dates to 1816, after the first professor of Chinese (Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat) was appointed at the Collège de France in 1814 (p. 6). In his view, ‘Romantic Sinology’ began at least as early as the 1760s, when Thomas Percy published on China and translated the first Chinese novel into English (or any European language). Romantic Sinology “…contains the establishment of the first institution dedicated to the study and teaching of the Chinese language, the Anglo-Chinese College, at Malacca in 1818, as well as the founding of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1823. The first English chairs in Chinese were established at the new University of London in 1837 (Samuel Kidd) and at King’s College London in 1845 (Samuel Turner Fearon). During this period key translations of Chinese writings appeared, including the first direct translations of Chinese writings appeared…” (p. 7). See also James Watt, “Thomas Percy, China, and the Gothic,” The Eighteenth Century 48, no. 2 (2007): 95-109.

49 Kitson, Forging Romantic China, p. 2. 50 Thomas Percy (1729-1811) produced the translation mentioned in Note 44: Hao Kiou Choaan, or The Pleasing History (1761). In 1762, he published a collection of essays, Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese. Previously, Chinese texts were translated into Latin (typically through the efforts of the Jesuits.) Sir William Jones (1746-1794) founded the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1783, which was the predecessor of the Royal Asiatic Society that Staunton established in 1823. Both societies encompassed the academic study of Chinese matters (Kitson, Forging Romantic China, p. 46). Robert Morrison (1782-1834) was a Protestant missionary who first translated the Bible into Chinese. Staunton accompanied the Macartney mission as a teenager, and later accompanied the Amherst mission (1816); he is discussed further in this dissertation.

51 This dearth of visual and material sources underscores the novelty of the present study. 52 Arthur O. Lovejoy’s foundational essay “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism” discusses the possibility of a Chinese seed in germinating European Romanticism, and this essay provided the theoretical backdrop to Chapter Six of this dissertation. I am inclined to agree with Lovejoy’s thesis, that the notion of ‘irregularity’ in Chinese gardens set in motion the paradigm shift in European stylist preferences from Neoclassicism to Romanticism (including its embrace of the Gothic Revival and all manners of non-classical and anti-classical expression). Kitson makes a brief obligatory reference to Lovejoy’s essay, but he is concerned more with Romantic-era writing about China than the actual influence of China in creating a Romantic aesthetic. See Arthur O. Lovejoy, “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism,” in Essays in the History of Ideas. (New York, NY: George Braziller, 1955), 99-135. The first part of this essay was originally published in The Journal of English and German Philology (January 1933). Page 14! of 300 While the issue of the means by which Chinese aesthetics (or European interpretations of them) influenced the emergence of the Romantic movement has garnered relatively little scholarly attention,53 the role of the Chinese garden in the European consciousness has recently been discussed in a number of texts, including Yu Liu’s Seeds of a Different Eden.54 Liu untangles the assumption that Westerners have inherited from Horace Walpole,55 that chinoiserie and Chinese gardens (and depictions of them in print) are one and the same. Liu attempts to correct a present- day Eurocentrism that relegates ‘outside’ influence in creating cultural icons such as the English garden by bringing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers such as William Temple, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, and the Earl of Shaftesbury back into the scholarly dialogue. These writers and philosophers, predating the fall of China from European estimation, embraced and encouraged the dissemination of Chinese garden principles. Walpole, blinded by zealous nationalism, “… stigmatized Chinese sharawadgi by lumping it together with chinoiserie garden structures.”56 Liu’s analysis of Walpole’s interpretation and ultimate rejection of Chinese influence is both timely and instructive for my own purposes. While Chang and Porter focus on various aspects of material and literary culture, Kitson on texts, and Liu on gardens and gardening texts, various historians have contributed volumes on the historical relationship between China and the West. These include David Mungello’s The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800,57 Stephen Haw’s A Traveller’s History of China,58

53 Kitson suggests why this is the case: “Issues of priority in such complicated discursive fields are notoriously difficult to establish and demonstrate conclusively; however, such issues are not central to my argument.” Kitson, Forging Romantic China, p. 183. 54 Yu Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal. (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008). See also Yu Liu, “The Inspiration for a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas in England in the Early Modern Period,” Comparative Civilizations Review 53 (2005): 86-106; Stephen Bending, “Re-Reading the Eighteenth Century English Landscape Garden,” Huntington Library Quarterly 55, no. 3, Symposium: “An English Arcadia: Landscape and Architecture in Britain and America” (1992): 379-399; David Porter, “‘Beyond the Bounds of Truth’: Cultural Translation and William Chambers’s Chinese Garden,” in Sinographies: Writing China, eds. Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Katherine Myer, “Shaftesbury, Pope, and Original Sacred Nature,” Garden History 38, no. 1 (2010): 3-19; and Yota Batsaki, Sarah Burke Cahalan, and Anatole Tchikine, eds., The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017).

55 Walpole, (1717-1797), the son of the first British prime minster, Sir Robert Walpole, was a novelist, politician, art historian, and arbiter of taste. He forms a central point of criticism in Chapter Six of this dissertation. 56 Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden, p. 12.

57 David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999). 58 Stephen G. Haw, A Traveller’s History of China. (Brooklyn, New York: Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., 1995). Page 15! of 300 John Gregory’s The West and China Since 1500,59 and James L. Hevia’s Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793.60 These books provide a compulsory foundation for my inquiry.61 What they have in common is that they survey and analyze the experience of European missionaries, traders, and diplomats seeking entry and access to China. They also explore the changing attitudes of Europeans towards China. While it is imperative to understand how Europeans navigated—geographically, politically, and philosophically—their increasing contact with China, the scope of these texts does not include an extensive intercultural approach, a proto-globalism, that a present-day study can no longer exclude.62 Within the wide range of publications in the discipline of history, those specifically that have informed this dissertation include texts that analyze topics in luxury and consumption,63

59 John S. Gregory, The West and China Since 1500. (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

60 James L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1995). 61 These texts formed the foundation of my own erudition, but it is far from a complete list. Other texts I have consulted include: P. J. Marshall, The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); David Martin Jones, The Image of China in Western Social and Political Thought. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2004); and Arthur Cotterell, Western Power in Asia: Its Slow Rise and Swift Fall, 1415-1999. (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd., 2009). Additionally, Colin Mackerras (see Note 27), Mungello, and Hevia in particular have published widely on topics pertaining to Sino-Western relations.

62 Several recent publications have employed an intercultural and interdisciplinary method in examining the West’s relationship with China. These include: Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao, eds., Sinographies: Writing China. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); Eric Hayot, The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Ashley Eva Millar, A Singular Case: Debating China’s Political Economy in the European Enlightenment. (Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). 63 Sources I have consulted on luxury, consumption, and culture as commodity include: Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); John Brewer and Roy Porter, Consumption and the World of Goods. (London: Routledge, 1993); John Brewer, “‘The most polite age and the most vicious’: Attitudes towards culture as a commodity, 1660-1800,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text, eds. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer. (London: Routledge, 1995); Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire. (London: Routledge, 2001); Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialist: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Maxine Berg, “Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Birth of Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of Jan de Vries, eds. Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr. (London: Brill, 2010), and Chi-ming Yang, Performing China: Virtue, Commerce, and Orientalism in Eighteenth-century England, 1660-1760. (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). Page 16! of 300 collections and design,64 and material culture studies of particular categories of objects, such as export porcelain.65 This dissertation does not include an analysis of the way in which Chinese export porcelain functioned in a burgeoning eighteenth-century marketplace for foreign or ‘exotic’ goods, nor does it examine the way that Chinese goods connoted luxuriousness and pleasure. For that reason, I have not dedicated a significant portion of this literature review to this scholarship, despite the parallels of the area of study to mine. Also, Sloboda’s Chinoiserie devotes much of its detailed analyses to these very topics. The work of Maxine Berg has made significant contributions to our understanding of early modern global trade. She has written on the emerging market for luxury consumer goods in Britain and the way it was facilitated by China, and the cultural significance of this source.66 Collecting and displaying Chinese-produced goods, such as porcelain, was also an act of conspicuous consumption. While this is not explored in this dissertation, it has informed my understanding of how the idea of China more generally evoked positive associations up until the pivotal Macartney and Amherst ambassadorial missions began to shift these perceptions. Furthermore, the reason for

64 Sources include: Susan M. Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. (London: Routledge, 1995); Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner, “Art, Authenticity, and the Baggage of Cultural Encounter,” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Post- Colonial Worlds, eds. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Anna Jackson, “Art and Design: East Asia,” in The Victorian Vision: Inventing New Britain, ed. John M. MacKenzie. (London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2001); Michael Snodin and John Styles, Design and the Decorative Arts: Britain 1500-1900. (London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 2001); Romita Ray, “Storm in a teacup? Visualizing tea consumption in the British Empire,” in Art of the British Empire, eds. Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley, and Douglas Fordham. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

65 Sources that I have consulted on export porcelain and other objects: Carl L. Crossman, The China Trade: Export Paintings, Furniture, Silver and other Objects. (Princeton, New Jersey: Pyne Press, 1972); Leanna Lee-Whitman, “The Silk Trade: Chinese Silks and the British East India Company,” Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (1982); Jessica Rawson, The British Museum Book of Chinese Art. (New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1992); Marie-Noëlle Pinot de Villechenon, Sèvres: Porcelain from the Sèvres Museum 1740 to the Present Day, trans. John Gilbert. (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 1997); Julie Emerson, Jennifer Chen, and Mimi Gardner Gates, Porcelain Stories from China to Europe. (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum in association with the University of Washington Press, 2000); Hilary Young, English Porcelain 1745-95: Its Makers, Design, Marketing and Consumption. (London: Victoria & Albert Publications, 1999); Verity Wilson, “Studio and Soiree: Chinese Textiles in Europe and America, 1850 to the Present,” in Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds, eds. Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Clare Le Corbeille and Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, “Chinese Export Porcelain,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 60, no. 3 (2003); Daniel Nadler, China to Order: Focusing on the XIXth Century and Surveying Polychrome Export Porcelain Produced During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1908). (Paris: Vilo International, 2001); Teresa Canepa, Luísa Vinhais, and Jorge Welsh, European Scenes on Chinese Art, exhibition catalogue. (London and Lisbon: Jorge Welsh Books, 2005); Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010); and Andrew D. Madsen and Carolyn L. White, Chinese Export Porcelain. (Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2011). 66 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Page 17! of 300 the British diplomatic missions in the first place was to ‘correct’ an imbalance of trade, with bullion draining out of the country in exchange for Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, and lacquerware, among other commodities. In that sense, it is crucial to read Berg’s works on the economic underpinnings of this early modern global trade in order to better understand the motivations behind the missions. The last category of literature that I have included in this review are those which have shaped my theoretical framework. While Said’s Orientalism and Barthes’ Mythologies (below) form a distinct foundation to my work, what is less overt are the theoretical propositions regarding globalization to which I subscribe. There are five individual books which have been invaluable in shaping my interpretation of Sino-Western relations: two on the early modern global economy, one on China as a source of Western modernity, and two on globalization in the early modern era. Andre Gunder Frank’s ReOrient67 and Kenneth Pommeranz’s The Great Divergence68 are economic histories that have helped me understand the mechanisms behind Europe’s emerging hegemony during the period coincident with the scope of this dissertation. In the background of these books is Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems analysis which posits that capitalism as the predominant economic system emerged around 1500 CE, and at this point, the world began to be divided into a core, periphery, and semi-periphery.69 Frank and Pommeranz expunge the modern, Eurocentric economic teleology which celebrates, mistakenly, the ‘miraculous’ rise of Europe from feudal backwater to international powerhouse, bringing the rest of the globe into the fold only insofar as various lands became ripe for colonization. Instead, they detail the shift of global

67 Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).

68 Kenneth Pommeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern Global Economy. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000). 69 The core produces capital-centric goods, while the periphery produces raw materials and labor-centric goods. This is pertinent to Britain’s ‘rise’ at the time of the Macartney mission, as the Crown wanted better trade conditions—i.e., growing markets—for their own British-produced (and capital-intensive) goods. See Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2004), and ibid., “World System Versus World-Systems: A Critique,” in The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? eds. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills. (London: Routledge, 1993). See also: Janet L. Abu-Lughod, “Discontinuities and Persistence: One World System or a Succession of Systems?”; Samir Amin, “The Ancient World-Systems Versus the Modern Capitalist World-System”; and Barry K. Gills, “Hegemonic Transitions in the World System,” in The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? eds. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills. (London: Routledge, 1993). Page 18! of 300 economic power from Asia to Europe, and the various catalysts behind this shift.70 Appreciating Britain’s economic motivations at the time this transition occurred has been imperative in understanding the frustrations of the failed Macartney and Amherst diplomatic embassies, which both sought to essentially hasten this shift. As these frustrations have the ability to potentially influence the way that the Chinese were depicted in print, and how their artistic wares were received, this necessitates an appreciation of the economic relationship between the two states. John Hobson’s The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization builds upon the theses put forth by Frank and Pommeranz.71 Hobson contends that much of that which underpins modernity in the West was, at the outset, derived from the East: this includes not only raw materials that imperial powers (including Britain) appropriated, but also Eastern inventions and technology. Parallel to this process was another: Europe sought to affirm Ancient Greece as the natural progenitor of Western modernity in a short period of time, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century.72 Though Hobson does not draw on David Porter’s scholarship, the latter observes, in England’s case, “Through its prodigious exports of porcelain, lacquerware, silk wall coverings, and the artistic models they embodied, China undermined the status of classical Western civilization as the sole original forebear of English aesthetic culture.”73 In that sense, Hobson helps explain how Europe responded to this uncomfortable reality (by asserting an ancestry to Ancient Greece) and why it was necessary to do this at the close of the eighteenth century. However, unlike the more nuanced approaches that Frank and Pommeranz employ, Hobson’s claims are fairly sweeping; whereas Frank and Pommeranz attempt to dismantle Eurocentric economic and cultural histories, Hobson produces an artificially Sinocentric one.

70 See also: Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000); Johann P. Arnason, “Contested divergence: Rethinking the ‘rise of the West,’” in Europe and Asia beyond East and West, ed. Gerard Delanty. (London: Routledge, 2006); Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven C. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, And the World Economy, 1400 to the Present. (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2006); and Gurminder K. Bhambra, Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination. (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2007). 71 Hobson, The Eastern Origins. Chapters Nine, Ten, and Eleven deal specifically with Britain and China. See also Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Hobsbawm details the necessity of creating nationalism (and national symbols) as European self-identity became inextricably linked to their imperial prowess and as modern racism emerged.

72 Hobson, The Eastern Origins, p. 277. 73 Porter, The Chinese Taste, p. 35. Page 19! of 300 Above, I wrote that art historians have been slow to embrace globalization as an early modern (or pre-modern) concept, and noted that the term was invoked most frequently in relation to contemporary art or biennial exhibitions. The two works that have most shaped my interpretation of globalization are Geoffrey Gunn’s First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-180074 and Osterhammel and Petersson’s Globalization: A Short History.75 Gunn’s work is comprehensive in scope: he details trade in plants and spices, Catholic missionaries, cartography, and European translations of Asian languages, to name just a few topics. His theme is one of hybridization; if one were to describe the present-day as the sole manifestation of globalization, one incorrectly disregards the early modern exchange of ideas and objects between the East and West. Similarly, Osterhammel and Petersson posit that (present-day) globalization could not have emerged without precedent, and that in particular, the period from 1750 to 1880 witnessed a profound iteration of globalization via long-distance trade and imperialism. This historical cosmopolitanism, to borrow David Porter’s terminology, informed British artists’ and audiences’ reception of Chinese art and objects, and as I assert later in this dissertation, influenced the emergence of the Picturesque and Romantic movements.

Lastly, Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism,76 and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies,77 in addition to Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics,78 form the theoretical framework underpinning the analysis of works of art that has been applied more specifically in this dissertation. Said’s Orientalism essentializes the West and the East, two opposites in a (supposed) cultural binary. He suggests that the ‘Orient’ is an imaginary nonspace created for the perpetuation and justification of the hegemonic West,79 and that “The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a

74 Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003). 75 Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History, trans. Dona Geyer. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009).

76 Said, Orientalism, and ibid., Culture and Imperialism. (New York: Vintage Books, 1993). 77 Roland Barthes, Mythologies [1957], trans. Annette Lavers. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972).

78 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics [1916], eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye with Albert Riedlinger, trans. Roy Harris. (Peru, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Co., 1986). 79 Said, Orientalism, p. 3. Page 20! of 300 complex hegemony….”80 Orientalism, according to Said, provided a distorted lens through which to view the non-Western world. This is a crucial point underscoring my thesis: as I analyze images and representations of China that strove, on some level, to be documentary accounts (particularly the work of the Jesuits, Chambers and Alexander), it is important to understand how those accounts could have been influenced by the West’s emerging urge to dominate. At the same time, this process of Orientalism developed rapidly at the beginning of the nineteenth century—this is the critical turning point in the political and economic relationship between Britain and China.81 This period’s rapid rate of change in Sino-Western relations can also be understood in relation to Saussure’s work on semiology (which later opened the field of semiotics), and also Barthes’ Mythologies, which was derived from Saussure. Saussure’s original work on semiotics stemmed from his research in the field of linguistics, but its application to art history (including this dissertation) is invaluable. I have embraced Saussure’s dualistic characteristic of the sign: that is, for example, a pagoda can be read as a sign, having both a signifier—its visual depiction in a travelogue—and its signified—the meaning with which that visual depiction is imbued. For Saussure, the relationship between the signifier and the signified is inherently arbitrary, which is essential in reading Chinese images as signs in British art. For a Chinese individual, the pagoda may carry an altogether different meaning, harkening to its Buddhist roots.82 In that sense, various Chinese signs—pagodas, mandarins, irregular gardens—entered into British works of art, collections, or interiors without the connotations (or significations) that they may have had in their homeland.83 One of my primary sources for applying a semiotic approach to art history is Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson’s Semiotics and Art History, in which the authors detail not only the advantages of a semiotic approach to art, but its limitations as well. They state, “Semiotic analysis of visual art does not set out in the first place to produce interpretations of works of art, but rather investigate

80 Ibid., p. 5. My critique of Said is that he insists that Orientalism is a “cultural and political fact” (Said, Orientalism, p. 13). I am inclined to agree with Dennis Porter’s assessment that it is more productive to think of hegemony (including the imperialism that Britain engaged in during the nineteenth century) as a process rather than a static ‘fact.’ See Dennis Porter, “Orientalism and its Problems,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, eds. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 81 Numerous scholars have elaborated upon Said’s original work. The most pertinent to the present work include: Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” [1983] in Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History, ed. Kimberly N. Pinder. (London: Routledge, 2002), and John M. MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

82 This is described at length in Chapter Seven. 83 David Porter describes this phenomenon in relation to Chinese export porcelain. See Porter, The Chinese Taste, p. 108. Page 21! of 300 how works of art are intelligible to those who view them, the processes by which viewers make sense of what they see.”84 Accordingly, my question regarding engravings that Alexander created following his time as the junior artist with the Macartney mission is not, ‘What does this image mean?’ but rather, ‘What would this image have meant to a British viewer at the time of publication in 1805, and what would it have meant in 1845, when the first Opium War had concluded?’ As I demonstrate throughout this dissertation, many of the individual signs remain unchanged from their earliest transmission via the Jesuits through to Allom’s series of books published as late as 1859. In that respect, an iconographical approach is insufficient; if many of the signs themselves are unchanging, then these must have had differing meanings for viewers and consumers as the relationship between Britain and China deteriorated. Barthes elaborates upon Saussure’s sign system; he proposes that the entire sign system (that is, the sign, such as the pagoda, and its signifier/signified) can be elevated to the status of ‘myth.’85 This is relevant to Britons’ view of China, and also Britons’ view of themselves. Regarding the former, Chinese products—tea, porcelain, silk, furniture, garden designs—flooded the European markets throughout the eighteenth century, continuing a flow that had begun to flourish in the sixteenth century. Through the absorption of all these products, and the creation of the chinoiserie style, and ultimately, the summation of all these disparate signs, the idea of ‘China’ became a myth in its own right. When Macartney sailed to the Qing court, he was traveling to a place that was simultaneously a geographical reality, and a fictionalized figment of the Western imagination. Inevitably, this shaped how Alexander (and the Jesuits and Chambers) observed the Chinese countryside and its inhabitants, as the reality could only be measured against the myth.

Methodology

As I have described in the literature review, I seek to interpret images of China through a semiotic framework. The first chapter of this dissertation begins with an overview of images of China that were brought into Europe through the publications of the (predominantly) Jesuit missionaries.86 While numerous examples exist, I have focused on the works of Athanasius Kircher

84 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (June 1991), p. 184. David Porter offers an instructive semiotic interpretation of Chinese export porcelain: The Chinese Taste, p. 135-153. See also Bill Brown, “Thing Theory,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 1-21.

85 Barthes, Mythologies. 86 The notable exception is Matteo Ripa, who belonged to The Propaganda Fide, or the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which was created by papal decree in 1622. Page 22! of 300 and Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, as their publications were translated and disseminated widely throughout Europe (first appearing in 1667 and 1735, respectively). Their imagery formed what would become a ‘template’ for later artists to copy, alter, or appropriate as befitted a new mode of representation. Thus, when William Chambers published treatises from 1757-1772, or when William Alexander published illustrated travelogues in 1805 and 1814, and the Crace firm decorated the interiors of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton from 1803-1822, they were drawing upon the model initially set forth by the Jesuits, and also by those that came immediately before themselves. George IV, for example, owned a copy of Alexander’s Costume of China, and the images therein form an integral part of the design scheme in spaces such as the Music Room at the Brighton Pavilion, with pagodas and joss temples often copied literally. The visual translation, though, of a documentary-style pagoda or temple within the pages of what purports to be a travelogue to an embellishment on a royally-commissioned wallpaper is a largely unexplored field of inquiry that warrants further scholarship; this dissertation investigates this visual translation. Alexander’s images are also taken as individual parts and assembled into new complete compositions in Allom’s works (1843-1859)—another visual translation that has thus far received little scholarly attention. Because the many assemblages of Chinese signs—mandarins, pagodas, willows, etc.—are often the shapeshifting elements rather than those Chinese signs themselves (e.g., Alexander’s pagoda appearing in his travelogue and again in the Royal Pavilion’s wallpaper), I have retained a semiotic interpretation throughout the dissertation. It is the various media and contexts in which the signs themselves are presented that are the key to understanding how Britain negotiated increasing contact with China. For that reason, my primary case studies focus on complementary media: in the first instance, I examine the aforementioned illustrated accounts of the Jesuits. It is instructive to ascertain which visual signifiers of ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness’ caught their attention and found expression in the published accounts. I also devote a substantial portion of the dissertation to Alexander’s illustrations; the subtle distinctions between signs that recur in both his published books (e.g., his depictions of upper-class women) reveal cracks in the previously well-guarded relationship between China and Britain. Alexander’s artistic descendant, Thomas Allom, never traveled to China personally, but published four volumes of Chinese travelogues. His illustrations, I posit, have been profoundly informed by Alexander, but he was no mere copyist; rather, he inherits

Page 23! of 300 Alexander’s signs, but creates entirely new compositions that allude to the recent Opium Wars.87 In this manner, rehearsed and reworked iterations of the same signs belie an upending in diplomatic and economic relations between China and Britain. Because these signs have been seen previously as mere signifiers of China in an iconographical sense, the diversity in their deployment has largely gone unnoticed. Moving beyond depictions of China on paper, the second set of media I examine include the diffusion of the signs found on paper into new environs. I investigate how William Chambers’ treatises on irregularity and asymmetry in gardening informed the emerging anglo-chinois garden style in Britain, and why Chinese influence in creating what has become a national icon has been largely erased. I also examine the interior designs found at the Brighton Pavilion: what does it mean that objects such as the pagoda have been miniaturized and brought inside, and why were Alexander’s images copied onto the wallpaper? I argue that this was an expression of Britain’s nascent imperial ambitions—that Britain sought to possess China, if only by visual proxy. This impulse would have been almost unthinkable even decades earlier, when Rococo chinoiserie motifs bedecked country houses across the country. Apart from distinguishing the Brighton Pavilion’s chinoiserie interiors from the movement’s Rococo antecedents, I have chosen to exclude any further investigation into chinoiserie as a style or movement, or its political connotations. Chinoiserie is a distinct style, a European invention of a fantastical China. As a distinct style, it is attended by its own aesthetic, political, and cultural implications. This differs markedly from the engravings that artists visiting China produced, which denoted a greater degree of ‘authority’ than any willow-adorned wallpapers could, or aspired to, claim. Furthermore, as my literature review demonstrates, Sloboda, Porter, and others have successfully begun to excavate the various layers of meaning inherent in chinoiserie, so my priority is the material I have described above.

87 Allom’s China, in a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits, of That Ancient Empire was a four-volume series first published between 1843 and 1847. The First Opium War, fought between China and Britain, lasted from 1839 to 1842. The second edition of his China series, titled The Chinese Empire: Historical and Descriptive, Illustrating the Manners and Customs of the Chinese, consolidated the four volumes of the first edition into two volumes, and was published between 1858 and 1859. The Second Opium War was fought between 1856 and 1860, meaning Allom’s second edition was published at the peak of warfare. Page 24! of 300 Chapter II The Jesuits Missionaries in Beijing: Drawings & Descriptions

The modern relationship between the West and China began in 1601, when the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci arrived in Beijing and established a Catholic mission. For the next two centuries, the presence of Jesuits in Beijing dominated the discourse and exchange between the two polities. The impact of the Jesuit written accounts within both China and the West has begun to be excavated, with several relatively recent books on the topic emerging.88 What unites much of the present scholarship, however, is that the focus has been on the political, scientific, religious, and philological exchanges. The imagery that emerged in this period has only very recently begun to attract scholarly attention, and this has focused on the individual prints and drawings to come from the missions (which will be discussed below). The long-term impact of this imagery, its association with eighteenth-century chinoiserie, and its lingering legacy in the nineteenth-century British cultural consciousness, however, has garnered little scholarship. This chapter seeks to address this lacuna. The purpose of this overview of the Jesuit-produced visual and artistic knowledge of China before the Macartney Mission is to contextualize the contributions of the embassy artist William Alexander—to better understand the genealogy of signs that Alexander inherited. Since my theoretical framework is to read signs of China (such as pagodas) semiotically, it is imperative to understand what Alexander understood of China before he embarked on the journey himself. Additionally, these are the signs of China that his audience would have understood, further creating a need to view them critically. Lastly, in the latter half of this dissertation, I examine the diffusion of embassy-derived imagery, from Alexander copyist Thomas Allom to the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, and Chambers’ influence on gardening and Romanticism. For that reason, it is also invaluable to understand the historical background to these later nineteenth-century iterations. During the Ming Dynasty (1338-1644), Europeans (including Jesuits) were limited in their access to China. The Jesuits, beginning with Ricci, were privy to the Chinese empire in a way that no other individual—merchant, trader, explorer—could have been previously. The role that the Jesuit missionaries played in helping to create and disseminate visual information about China to

88 See, for example, David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999), Stephen G. Haw, A Traveller’s History of China. (Brooklyn, New York: Interlink Publishing Groups, Inc., 1995), John S. Gregory, The West and China Since 1500. (New York: NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), James L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 1995, and Colin Mackerras, Western Images of China. (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press), 1991. See also Joanna Waley-Cohen, “China and Western Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century,” The American Historical Review 98, no. 5 (Dec. 1993): 1525-1544. Page 25! of 300 Europe in the early modern period is worthy of its own dissertation—and the role that they played in cross-cultural aesthetics could comprise an entire chapter of that work. In this section, I have chosen five missionaries to discuss in order to provide a general overview of the contributions to art and Chinese signs that the Jesuits made. Matteo Ricci, Matteo Ripa, and Jean-Denis Attiret all traveled to China, and they offer compelling case studies. Athanasius Kircher and Jean-Baptise Du Halde did not travel to China themselves, but their contributions to this field were invaluable and must be considered. I have chosen to examine Du Halde’s The General History of China (1735) in closest detail; his work endured for over a century as the preeminent source for every aspect of life in China.89 There are many instances when comparisons to William Alexander’s works can be made, as Alexander almost certainly was aware of Du Halde’s work. Du Halde was among the earliest to publish illustrations along with written accounts, and in that sense, is among the creators of a genealogy of Chinese signs that proliferated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (and beyond).

Matteo Ricci

The earliest of the early modern travelers to visually depict China, however, was Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci, S. J. (1552-1610). Ricci was successful in gaining a position at the Ming court in Beijing for two complementary reasons: first, as Reed and Demattè write, “Troubled by the disarray of the Beijing court and other signs of dynastic decay, members of the educated upper class seized the opportunity afforded by imperial neglect to learn about the world beyond China.”90 and also, Ricci and his peers “… successfully introduced themselves not as missionaries but as intellectuals and scientists.”91 This was especially important because many Chinese scholars and potential (and actual) converts were drawn to the Jesuits’ knowledge of science and mathematics, astronomy in particular.92 Ricci had spent nearly twenty years in the Portuguese trading colony of Macao (having arrived in 1582), and it was here that he learned the language of China and mastered

89 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China: Containing a Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political and Physical Description of the Empire of China, trans. Richard Brookes. (London: J. Watts, 1741). This English translation dates to 1741; the original French version was published in 1735. 90 Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè, China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. (Los Angeles, California: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 4.

91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. Page 26! of 300 the etiquette expected at court.93 He also studied Confucian philosophy (with an aim to engage locals in Jesuitical discussions) and his translations of Confucius’s texts were disseminated by the Society of Jesus; these translations were the West’s first introduction to that philosopher.94 The visual information that accompanied the philosophical would lay the groundwork for centuries in Europe. Ricci’s translations were refined by his Jesuit successors in Beijing, which finally culminated in a master volume, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus; this was published in Paris in 1687. The editors, Prospero Intorcetta, Christian Herdricht, François de Rougemont, and Philippe

Couplet, inherited Ricci’s reconciliatory approach to the Chinese elites and Confucianism.95 They, in keeping with Jesuit teachings, found in Confucius a figure worthy of reverence, and in Confucianism “… a philosophy that was very appealing to the cultural needs of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. … [I]t was [perceived as] complementary to Christianity and could be used to elaborate and enrich the teachings of Christianity in the way that Greek philosophy had been used by the early Church.”96 This negotiation of religious difference is evident in the portrait of Confucius first published in Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (fig. 2.1). This became the standard portrait of the philosopher, and its inclusion in Du Halde’s The General History (below) propelled its reach even more. The depiction of Confucius features the philosopher as a large and central figure (employing a hierarchy of scale, and thereby betraying naturalism), with a European-style library scene in the background. The architectural style depicted merges the European library with a Chinese temple.97 The artist has also chosen to adhere to the Chinese iconographical tradition of portraying Confucius with certain physical attributes, which require him to be “… bearded, wear[ing] a lotus-bud headdress and a long flowing robe, and hold[ing] a tablet.”98 Reed and Demattè explain that “The pediment-like roof element is embellished with dragons and the Chinese characters guo xue (imperial academy) along with an old romanization (qúě hiǒ) and the Latin translation Gymnasium Imperii [academy of

93 Jacobson, Dawn. Chinoiserie. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1993), 16. 94 Ibid.

95 Recent scholarship has examined the affinity the Jesuits had for Confucius. See Mungello, p. 15-47, David Morgan, “Sources of Enlightenment: The Idealizing of China in the Jesuits’ ‘Lettres Édifiantes’ and Voltaire’s ‘Siècle de Louis XIV,” Romance Notes 37, no. 3 (1997): 263-272, and Yue Zhuang, “Hatchings in the Void: Ritual and Order in Bishu Shanzhuang Shi and Matteo Ripa’s Views of Jehol” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 142-157. 96 Mungello, p. 83.

97 Reed and Demattè, p. 37. 98 Ibid. Page 27! of 300 the empire].”99 The former, the dragon-adorned roof, established a semiotic motif which would be maintained in Europe for the coming centuries, finding its most elaborate expression in the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (decorated 1802-1823). The latter conflated Confucius with the value of learning espoused by the literati of the court in Beijing.100 On the back wall are six characters that identify the figure as Confucius, “the first teacher of the empire.”101 The interior conforms perfectly to Western one-point perspective, and the students shown in various stages of contemplation reflect the influence of Confucius on the intellectual elite (such as those whom the Jesuits would encounter at Court). In its totalizing effect, this depiction of Confucius “epitomized the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century positive view of the Chinese.”102 This intersection between revering Confucian belief with European artistic devices mirrors the Jesuits’ attempt at reconciling Catholicism with Chinese culture. It is also among the earliest demonstrations of an amalgamation of European and Chinese aesthetic preferences for European audiences, which flourished in the eighteenth century with the rise of the taste for chinoiserie. However, although this image of Confucius—along with his cult-following in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European salons—experienced a period of popularity, it is noteworthy that the travelogue illustrators of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as George Henry Mason, William Alexander and his ‘copyist’ Thomas Allom omitted images of Confucius from their work entirely. In Alexander’s two publications, for example, there is only one cursory mention of Confucius at all; idolatry, small idol houses (joss houses), and Buddhist rituals (the sect of Fo, in its contemporary nomenclature) are present instead. For a spectator like Alexander, these types of scenes would have been more readily available for direct observation. It also demonstrates a changing understanding of religion and philosophy in China, and betrays Britons’ skepticism about Catholic missionaries’ purpose and activity in China.103

Athanasius Kircher

Not all of the Jesuit missionaries who contributed to early modern visual knowledge of China actually travelled there themselves. Athanasius Kircher, S. J. (1602-1680) was a German

99 Ibid.

100 At the time of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, this was the Qing court. 101 Reed and Demattè, p. 37.

102 Mungello, p. 12. 103 This will be further examined in Chapters Three, Four, and Five. Page 28! of 300 Jesuit scholar who published prodigiously, primarily in fields such as comparative religion, philology, and geology. His China Illustrata (1667) drew on the accounts of several contemporary missionaries, particularly Michael Boym and Martino Martini. He also credits Ricci, among others, with clarifying what is meant by Cathay. The aims of China Illustrata are encyclopedic, like Du Halde’s The General History, but it nonetheless also exhibits a premodern understanding of China, both theologically (he frequently references Noah and the Deluge in relation to the Chinese), and artistically (he is uncertain of the existence of dragons). He also suggests that the Chinese writing system and the people themselves are the living descendants of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and the ancient Egyptian people respectively. Many of Kircher’s engravings are “based on Chinese paintings and woodcuts brought from Beijing by Father Johann Grueber.”104 Grueber was the first European painter to work at the imperial court, which was made possible after the fall of the Ming dynasty and the concomitant Manchu invasion (1644).105 He traveled to China in 1656 and was recalled to Rome in 1661.106 During his time at the Beijing court, he served as a professor of mathematics and was an assistant to Adam Schall von Bell,107 in addition to his artistic endeavors. Because the Dutch led a blockade against Macao during the time that Grueber and his peer, Albert d’Orville, were meant to return to Rome, the priests devised an unconventional plan to travel by land instead of by sea.108 This caused the men to travel through Tibet, Nepal, and India,109 which explains the myriad Tibetan Buddhist motifs found in Kircher’s own volume. Kircher also seems to conflate Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese imagery, which was not an uncommon occurrence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The images found within the pages of China Illustrata are extremely diverse in subject matter and multifaceted in execution. These include the portrait of Schall von Bell, reproduced in Du Halde (see below), the emperor (called ‘the supreme monarch’), two full-page Chinese ladies, individually set in interiors,110 farmers, Indian temples, vines, fruits, plants, papaya and pineapple, tea and rhubbarb (favorites of Du Halde), various lake scenes, and the so-called dragon and tiger

104 Mungello., p. 99.

105 Ibid., p. 60. 106 New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia [online resource.] Accessed August 2017 from: http:// www.newadvent.org/cathen/07041a.htm

107 Ibid. 108 Ibid.

109 Ibid. 110 See Mungello, p. 98-105. Page 29! of 300 mountain of Kiamsi province. Of The Mountain of Kiamsi Province (fig. 2.2), Kircher writes, “In Kiamsi [Kiangxi] Province is a mountain with two peaks. The larger peak looks like a dragon about to spring onto the smaller, which they call a tiger. Therefore, the mountain is called Dragon and

Tiger. The priests have made many laughable laws of divination for it.”111 The engraving depicts a literal embodiment of the dragon and tiger; the dragon is as large as the entire top third of the mountaintop, and it fends off the tiger, which is equal in scale. However, an essay provided by the Ritman Library (Amsterdam) clarifies that this scene actually refers to Chinese mythology: “…in which the two beasts symbolize cosmic duality: the dragon is the mediator between heaven and earth, while the tiger is the earth’s negative force.”112 This demonstrates Kircher’s prematurity in understanding China; he has not yet grasped the empiricism found in Du Halde or others later. Du Halde and his successors, by contrast, observed China with the type of documentary detachment found in Alexander’s nineteenth-century prints. While misunderstanding and misrepresenting scenes of Chinese mythology, he also makes little mention of Confucius, and when he does, it is only to find parallels to Egyptian, and at times, Greek mythology.113 In this sense, Kircher only ascertains from the Jesuits’ reports that which supports his own scholarly endeavors—that is, to support his view that the Chinese are descendants of Ancient Egyptians. Although Kircher did not understand spirituality in China the way that others did, he portrays human subjects in a manner which anticipates Alexander’s two books of engravings. For example, there is one page which is neatly divided into three rows of two columns of images; in each horizontal row, the two figures correspond with one another (fig. 2.3). In the top row is “The Dress of a Father of Our Society” and “The Dress of a Scholar of Nankin Province.” The priest and the scholar are both portrayed individually, standing upright, and in an interior setting. The interior of the scholar’s room features an archway open to the outside, where there is a tree in the distance. They each hold a book, though the priest holds his open with a pen. Attention has been paid to the clothing that each wears, the folds of the men’s robes rendered in such a way that suggests both weight and the potential for movement.

111 Athanasius Kircher, China Illustrata. Translated by Charles D. Van Tuyl from the 1667 original Latin edition. (Muskogee, OK: Indian University Press, 1987), 166.

112 The Ritman Library (Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica), “Dragon and Tiger Mountain,” [Online Resource: Pinterest Post]. Retrieved August 2017: from https://au.pinterest.com/pin/479281585326047282/ 113 Kircher writes, “The most ancient and indigenous Chinese sect is the literati, which rules this kingdom, has many books, and is more praised than the others. They acknowledge Confucius as the author or chief of philosophers, just as the Egyptians do Thoyt [Thoth], whom the Greeks call Hermes Trismegistos. The Egyptian wise men worshipped one God called Hemepht, and likewise the Chinese literati do not worship idols, but as Confucius taught them, the one deity they call King of Heavens.” China Illustrata, p. 122. Page 30! of 300 Two women are featured in the middle row: “The Dress of Women of Chekiang114 Province,” and “The Dress of a Woman of Fokien [Fujian] Province.” Each woman is shown outside, a convention that Alexander maintains in Costume of China (1805) but not Picturesque Representations (1814). Later, Allom almost exclusively portrays women inside. (This shift is addressed in Chapters Four, Five, and Six.) Each woman is portrayed in a dignified and noble fashion, although they are engaged in activity. They are not shown with headdresses, an accessory which became the topic of preoccupation by the late eighteenth century, but their robes are voluminous. The idyllic countryside featured in the background is stylized and reminiscent more of European portraiture conventions than anything native to China. It is difficult to determine if the woman at left has bound feet, since she appears to be wearing a type of nondescript shoe. However, the woman at right does not have bound feet, and she is shown barefoot. While Kircher does not directly address the depiction of these two particular women, in his text he does comment on foot- binding more generally; the juxtaposition of two styles of feet/footwear could implicitly illustrate the differences to the audience. The text is the first (or among the earliest) descriptions of foot- binding in the West, which bears reproducing in full. Kircher writes:

The Chinese think a woman is beautiful because of short stature and small feet. What seems twisted, ugly, and monstrous to us seems beautiful to them. They bind the feet of new-born daughters tightly with cloth bands, so that they cannot walk without the greatest pain as long as they live. If one asks the reason for this, they can only say that it has been the custom for 2,800 years, and that it derives from the example of Tacha, the wife of the emperor Chei. She was so beautiful they thought her a goddess, and indeed she used to be called the Chinese Venus. The cause of her beauty was her tiny feet, which was due to their having been bound. Others say this custom of foot-binding was begun by the wise men to make sure the women sat at home and didn’t go out in public. If they wouldn’t stay home voluntarily, the bound feet would keep them there.115

If, indeed, Kircher believed the latter reason for foot-binding, it is ironic then that he should depict both women out of the house. It is unclear from whom exactly Kircher has received this information, but his own influence on the subject was longstanding. Foot-binding proved to be a topic of enduring curiosity for Europeans. The soldiers that Kircher portrays in the last row of this image set, “The Dress of Soldiers of Quamsi Province,” and “The Dress of a Soldier of Quicheu Province,” are nearly identical. They are depicted in simplified robes and headwear, holding a type of sword or machete and with a quiver strapped to their backs. They are presented in a frontal manner with mirroring contrapposto poses. They are placed in the center, though there is a fictionalized landscape that occupies the middle

114 This province was abolished in 1955, but is part of what is now Zhejiang Province. 115 Kircher, trans. Van Tuyl, p. 102-3. Page 31! of 300 ground and continues to recede into the background. Behind the man on the left there is a military garrison; the style of this garrison—a squat square base with thick, stony walls—is echoed in Alexander’s Costume. Each of these three pairs of images serves as a precursor to Alexander’s depiction of human figures. Kircher’s figures have been engraved in a heavy-handed manner, with thick lines and dark shadows. This engraving style may be inspired, in part, by the Chinese woodcut prints that Grueber brought back to Europe, which Kircher used as a visual resource.116 The foreground which the figures occupy is also rather cramped in composition. Alexander, by contrast, executes his engravings with a litheness possibly acquired in his training as a watercolorist, and the foreground is open with ample space for the figures to move and breathe, so to speak. Despite these differences, however, there is a similarity in ambition. Both artists aim to represent many types of people, from emperors to farm laborers, and they portray those of every station with a uniform template. There is no hierarchy of scale, no grandiosity or diminution. Each figure is essentially a scientific specimen, visually recorded for the appreciation and edification of contemporary audiences. While Alexander does not directly credit Kircher, it is more than plausible—based on the popularity of China Illustrata—that he drew inspiration from these images and their style.

Jean-Baptiste Du Halde

Kircher’s China Illustrata was among the earliest of these textual compilations featuring numerous illustrations, but it drew heavily from the rumors and hearsay that enshrouded China in secrecy. Indeed, although the book depended upon Jesuits’ personal accounts, it seemed to cater more to European tastes—what Europeans ‘wanted’ China to be like—rather than what the country actually was. However, the missionaries’ prolonged and intergenerational exposure to China, or at least the Qing court in Beijing, led to greater understanding. Not all contributions to Europe’s knowledge of China, though, came from those Jesuits with direct, first-hand connections to the Far East, as noted above. Indeed, among the most influential writers was Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743). A French Jesuit historian, he specialized in the history of China. His most celebrated work, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise (known in English as The General History of China) was published in four

116 This topic is taken up in Dawn Odell’s essay, “Creaturely Invented Letters and Dead Chinese Idols,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, eds. Michael W. Cole and Rebecca Zorach. (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2016 [2009]), 267-288. Page 32! of 300 volumes in 1735, and shortly thereafter it appeared in English, among several European languages. Du Halde compiled numerous previously unpublished missionary reports, letters, and notes that had been sent from the Jesuits at the Beijing court back to Paris. Seventeen missionaries, named at the end of the preface, provided the basis for the text.117 The General History quickly became “… the standard source for eighteenth-century sinophiles in both France and England.”118 His work was encyclopedic in scope, publishing translations of Chinese texts and every manner of life (or perceived life) in China. As the title indicates, cartography occupied a central position in the original French edition. It contained forty-three maps, drawn by French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville.119 The geographer based his maps on a China-wide survey that the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) commissioned; this survey “was conducted using triangulation methods by nine missionaries and their Chinese assistants between 1708 and 1717. The results were compiled in Beijing by the French Jesuit Pierre Jartoux in an atlas featuring maps printed from copperplates engraved by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ripa.”120 This survey of the entirety of the Qing empire and its resulting maps underscore the scientific dialogue occurring between the Chinese and the Jesuit missionaries at court. Privileging the position of the maps lent an air of authenticity to Du Halde’s volumes, and created a knowable China out of a fantastical Cathay. Indeed, The General History offered its readership a font of knowledge about the Middle Kingdom. Paralleling the burgeoning chinoiserie style in France, there is an account of how the

Chinese used wallpaper in decorating, for example.121 Would-be European gardeners sought information about the Chinese style of landscape design from it. Additionally, its numerous illustrations offered Europeans the first glimpses of what China ‘looked’ like, preceded only by images published by Dutch explorer Johan Nieuhof. The first three of the four volumes include rich and vivid illustrations, which are believed to be primarily engraved by Antoine Humblot (c.

117 Reed and Demattè., p. 154.

118 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 120. 119 Reed and Demattè, p. 20.

120 Ibid. Ripa is here erroneously categorized as a Jesuit, though he did not belong to that order. He belonged to The Propaganda Fide, or the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which was created by papal decree in 1622 as a unit distinct from the Jesuits. Ripa assumed a Jesuit identity to gain access to the imperial court. See Zhuang, p. 156 n. 30, and p. 148-9. 121 Jacobson, p. 134. Page 33! of 300 1700-58).122 Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè attribute the engravings to Humblot; they note that Du Halde provided original Chinese works for him to study and imitate, and that some of these original works had been given to Du Halde by a Monsieur de Velaer who had lived for many years in

Canton in the capacity of the French East India Company Director.123 However, it is unclear if all the illustrations are Humblot’s own. For example, in Volume 3, in a section entitled De leur astronomie, Du Halde has included a copy of Flemish Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest’s 1674 Image of the platform on which to observe celestial phenomenon124 (fig. 2.4). Anna Grasskamp notes that Verbiest was responsible for the creation of both the actual astronomical instruments and their depiction in the print. The instruments were modeled after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe’s examples, and had been commissioned by the Kangxi emperor.125 Grasskamp also explains that the actual scientific equipment is very much the same, but that their mounting and display is culturally defined. Du Halde references Verbiest numerous times, and credits him with correcting the Chinese calendar (vol. 3, p. 355). It is noteworthy that Du Halde credited his sources for their contribution, despite the obscurity of the illustrator. The numerous city plans show cities from an imagined aerial view, with walls, waterways, shrubbery, and pagodas dotting those plans. It is possible that Du Halde inherited the city wall and pagoda motif from Nieuhof, who depicted these icons of Nanjing in his own work (discussed below). Du Halde also includes a plan of the Great Wall, making among the Wall’s first appearances in the West. There are also tactical maps of cities near the Great Wall, as well as topographical maps.126 Of the miscellaneous imagery, The General History featured illustrations of an abacus, porcelain and silk production and textile weaving, numismatic images, and sheet music for Chinese tunes. In keeping with its encyclopedic aspirations, the work also included a complete history of Chinese dynasties (with notes on each individual emperor within those dynasties), an abridged dictionary of Chinese words, and a few translated theatrical works, including The Orphan of China, which Voltaire would revise for a contemporary French audience in 1755.

122 Reed and Demattè, p. 154.

123 Ibid. 124 This image has recently been analyzed in Anna Grasskamp, “Frames of Appropriation: Foreign Artifacts on Display in Early Modern Europe and China,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 32-38.

125 Ibid., p. 32. 126 For a detailed analysis of maps of this period, see Laura Hostetler, “Global or Local? Exploring Connections between Chinese and European Geographical Knowledge During the Early Modern Period,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine no. 26 (2007): 117-135. Page 34! of 300 Besides the multitudinous maps and the curious astronomical engraving, the illustrations of The General History, while largely uniform in artistic style, are diverse in their subject matter. While space does not allow a detailed analysis of every category, one must note the types of figures, objects, and plans that are included. Du Halde has carefully chosen several figures to portray, including Confucius (volume three), the emperor of China in ceremonial and non-ceremonial robes, a mandarin of letters in summer and winter attire, mandarins of war (one Chinese and one Manchurian), Chinese ladies, male and female bonzes, male and female villagers (all volume two), and portraits of Verbiest, Ricci, and Adam Schall von Bell (volume three). In the portraits of the Jesuits, Schall von Bell is depicted as a mandarin of letters, and Verbiest is shown with a globe and sextant—those astronomical instruments (and by extension, knowledge) that endeared him to the Kangxi emperor. This image of Confucius, like the view of the observatory, was also not original to Du Halde, having been published in Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), as noted above. The other figures are uniformly depicted in pairs, and while they are rendered with clarity and depth, their environs are vacant, or nearly so, apart from the odd plant, bench, or dog. Each pair, however, is framed on three sides with a stylized accent which is meant to “express the reputed luxury and elegance of all things Chinese.”127 With the exception of the framing device, the depictions of the figures foreground the work of William a nearly a century later. The absence of the ornate frame in Alexander’s Costume of China and Picturesque Representations figures suggest that China’s reputation as a source of luxury and refinement had begun to wane by the early nineteenth century, as I discuss in Chapters Two and Three. Some of the figures themselves, however, retain similar qualities from one century to the next. The way that Du Halde (and Humblot) depicts his subjects anticipates Alexander. For example, Mandarins de Guerre (Chinois) (fig. 2.5) depicts a soldier in heavy, full-length ensemble resembling European mail. His position and uniform greatly resemble that of Alexander’s Portrait of a Solider in his full Uniform. Du Halde does not provide his soldier with a quiver and bows, and his sword swings in front of his lap. The soldier also meets the viewer’s gaze. Alexander’s soldier, however, firmly grasps his sword and does not meet the viewer’s gaze—in this manner, he is a soldier filled with the kinetic energy of war, awaiting his time to serve. Du Halde, unlike his follower Alexander, imbues his figures with a sense of egalitarianism. They are all depicted as the same size, regardless of social class. He does not hesitate to pair a villager with a bonze (a lama) within the same space, and he includes four ladies and two female

127 Reed and Demattè, p. 154. Page 35! of 300 household servants—this is a significant proportion of women relative to the depictions of later artists. While Alexander hints at some background to contextualize his would-be anthropological prints, Du Halde omits it entirely, lending the prints the anthropological style sought after in later decades. Du Halde was also aiming to create an encyclopedia, and these illustrations bolster his text; he is not, like Alexander and his peers, striving to create an illustrated travelogue—a genre which was only popularized in the West after the Jesuits’ time of peak activity in Beijing. In addition to the figures, Du Halde’s The General History includes several botanical illustrations—tea and betel leaves, medicinal rhubarb, bamboo stalks—which, in the presentation of composition, resemble those of the human subjects. Their assemblage, often saturating one page with several plants, suggest that the Chinese land is fertile. There is abundance and providence to be found in this land. There are also several full-scale compositions, more akin to what would be found in watercolors or an oil on canvas than within the pages of an encyclopedic text. These include landscapes that feature fish, rivers, and a pagoda, and numerous scenes with ships and boats (one of Alexander’s preferred subjects). I will only detail two examples, however, in this chapter, since they offer the most compelling analysis of this type of illustration. Cortège d'un Viceroy toutes les fois qu'il sort de son Palais (Procession of a Viceroy whenever he leaves his Palace,) (fig. 2.6) and Nòce Chinoise (Wedding Ceremony,) (fig. 2.7, both in volume two) depict two scenes in their entirety, activities that unfold during a certain period of time. They are not static, scientific specimens, but rather dynamic and engaging depictions of activities. Du Halde (or Humblot) merges European artistic conventions with Chinese designs. In each of these two prints, there is some use of one- point perspective, and the figures are well-proportioned, three-dimensional, and naturalistic. In “Nòce,” there is great attention to detail, with leaves, musical instruments, a sedan, and a horse all depicted with the realism found in contemporary European engravings. However, there is an element of Chinese aesthetic influence, as well, particularly in the story-telling technique and the organization of space. In her essay, “War and Empire: Images of Battle during the Qianlong Reign,” Ya-Chen Ma analyzes several Qianlong-commissioned prints of his so-called East Turkestan Campaign. In this suite of sixteen copperplate engravings on paper, collectively titled Les conquêtes de l’empereur de la Chine, Ma finds a reconciliation between European and Chinese artistic techniques.128 Though these are dated to 1774—several decades after

128 Ya-Chen Ma, “War and Empire: Images of Battle during the Qianlong Reign,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 158-172. Page 36! of 300 The General History illustrations—it is possible that Humblot approached these two scenes with the same reconciliatory method as the Les conquêtes artists. First, European missionaries in Beijing (Giuseppe Castiglione, Jean-Denis Attiret, Ignatius Sichelbart, and Giovanni Damasceno Sallusti) produced ink drawings at the Qianlong court, and these were sent back to France to be engraved and printed.129 Two-hundred prints of each drawing, along with the copper plates, were sent back to Beijing, at the insistence of the Qianlong emperor.130 Ma observes that, stylistically, the engravings employ European modeling and perspective, but also that the horizon line is much higher than would be found in contemporary European prints, and this enables the artists to fit more information in the middle ground, which is essential to the narrative. There is also the Chinese time- space system, which in Ma’s opinion, means that, “This placement of warfare motifs to represent different phases in the battle and the deployment of forces in the foreground, middle ground, and background according to their chronological order displays a clear, progressive sequence.”131 In Du Halde’s case, the same time-space system is employed: in the Cortège scene, the Viceroy leaves his palace in the bottom-right corner, in the foreground, and the procession unfurls from this point, upwards and outwards towards a background that is further away in both space and time. In Nòce, a bride departs from a doorway in the bottom left corner, in the foreground, and again, the scene transpires in time as it moves away in visual space. Notably, many of the visual motifs found in Nòce, such as the large, dome-like umbrella, are to be found in many Rococo chinoiserie designs that came a decade later—including, specifically, the Beauvais tapestry. It is possible that Du Halde sought to lend a Chinese air to his engravings, and strategically borrowed Chinese visual-narrative devices in order to do so. Ma suggests that the Qianlong commissioned his Les conquêtes series to “incorporate elements of both Western and early Qing representations of war to construct a comprehensive account of warfare,” and it is possible that Du Halde sought a ‘comprehensive’ view of these Chinese scenes. The merger of stylistic devices may have been seen as a way to best communicate the information to his audience. Du Halde helped to disseminate images of China throughout Europe, and his The General History boasted an enduring longevity. However, there were several other European artists working

129 Ibid., p. 158. The team of engravers included Charles-Nicolas Cochin II (the director), Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, Augustin de Saint-Aubin, Benoît-Louis Prévost, and Jacques Aliamet. Ma notes that the original prints no longer exist, but an album of ink-and-color paintings in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing contains their likely reproductions.

130 Ibid. 131 Ibid., p. 165. Emphasis mine. Page 37! of 300 in Beijing at this time who must be acknowledged.132 The influence of European artists on Chinese court artists is indeed a complex intercultural exchange, though beyond the scope of the present work.133 A cursory summary must suffice.

Matteo Ripa & Jean-Denis Attiret

Matteo Ripa (1682-1746) of Naples was among the artists to enjoy the patronage of the Kangxi emperor. Though trained as a portraitist, and not in the much-in-demand linear perspective, Ripa obliged the emperor by ultimately accepting his commissions. In 1712, the emperor employed Ripa in drawing thirty-six views of the imperial summer mountain retreat near Jehol and then in creating copper engravings from those drawings; these were the first copperplate engravings produced in China, with woodcut prints previously used as the predominant print medium.134 The success of this endeavor led the Kangxi emperor to commission from Ripa the copperplate engravings of Jesuits’ maps of China, Manchuria, and Korea that were reproduced in Du Halde’s The General History.135 Yue Zhuang details Ripa’s Thirty-six View of Jehol, comparing his work to an anonymous Chinese court artist’s woodcut of one similar scene.136 Jean-Denis Attiret, S. J. (1702-1768), Giuseppe Castiglione, S. J. (1688-1766), and Ignatius Sichelbart, S. J. (1708-1788) were among the most predominant painters at court, with Attiret earning the title Painter to the Emperor (to the Qianlong emperor). These individuals merged European techniques with Chinese, creating a visual hybridity that was more authentic than the European chinoiserie style (see below). This court-derived hybridity found its greatest manifestation in portraiture: these three Jesuit artists would paint faces and employ techniques such

132 For the purposes of this dissertation, I am unable to devote a lengthy study to these individuals, deserving as they are. I am primarily interested in works on paper that circulated in Europe and informed the artists who accompanied the British diplomatic embassies.

133 Mungello provides a survey of the European artists working at the Beijing court during the Qing dynasty. See Mungello, p. 59-65. 134 Mungello, p. 61.

135 Ibid. 136 Zhuang’s study demonstrates the ways in which Chinese and European artists exchanged not only techniques and media, but also meanings in voids and landscapes. See Zhuang, p. 143-157. Page 38! of 300 as perspective and chiaroscuro, and Chinese artists would paint costumes and backgrounds.137 Attiret, Castiglione, and Sichelbart also played a major role in constructing and decorating the European Pavilions in Beijing,138 and Castiglione helped to design Yuanmingyuan (the Summer

Palace) outside Beijing.139 During his fifty-one year tenure, serving three emperors (the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors), Castiglione also tutored numerous Chinese artists in linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and realism.140 The presence of Jesuit missionaries in Beijing laid the modern foundations for the artistic and cultural exchanges between China and the West. Later travelers are indebted to their ability to communicate not only through written accounts, but also through imagery. Furthermore, missionaries such as Du Halde guided the West’s understanding of China from abstract Medieval tropes to an increasingly modern world view.

137 Mungello, p. 62. For an in-depth analysis of linear perspective at the Qing court, see Kristina Kleutghen, “From Science to Art: The Evolution of Linear Perspective in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Art,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 173-189. Mei Mei Rado provides an in-depth analysis of some of Castiglione’s hybrid portraits of the Qianlong emperor in “Encountering Magnificence: European Silks at the Qing Court during the Eighteenth Century,” in Qing Encounters, p. 59- 75. 138 Che-Bing Chiu, “Vegetal Travel: Western European Plants in the Garden of the Emperor of China,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 96-97.

139 Mungello, p. 62. 140 Ibid., and Kleutghen, p. 174-179. Page 39! of 300 Chapter III The Macartney Mission and William Alexander’s ‘Costume of China’

The Macartney Mission is chiefly remembered, as a historical event, for its catastrophic results, and for Macartney’s infamous, and caricatured, refusal to kowtow to the Emperor of China. The last quarter of the eighteenth century was a transformative period during which a rapidly industrializing Britain felt emboldened to seek more favorable terms of trade with the Chinese Empire. In this chapter, I wish to delineate some key examples from the Macartney Mission in order to contextualize the art and visual material that resulted immediately from it, and also to contextualize the art and visual material that resulted from the influence and adoption of these earlier examples. I will then analyze several categories of William Alexander’s 1805 engravings from Costume of China—his more anthropological publication—and explain the way he attempted to describe China to his armchair-traveler audience. This will anticipate the next chapter, which examines his 1814 Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese and the emerging Picturesque movement in Britain. Hitherto, his two publications have been treated as two parts of one whole, but a more detailed examination reveals that, on the contrary, the two mirror the stages of the rapid deterioration of the Chinese-British relationship. By separating these two publications, the changing signs of China can be better understood. It is important to note that some of his engravings had appeared initially in Sir George Staunton’s and John Barrow’s respective accounts of the Mission, connecting his artwork and authority to that embassy before his own books were even published. As I have discussed, the existing scholarship on Alexander’s engravings does not consider the two books as individual entities, but rather conflates them. Stacey Sloboda’s article, “Picturing China: William Alexander and the visual language of Chinoiserie,”1 analyzes several of Alexander’s watercolors and engravings in relation to his preliminary sketches. While her insights are instructive, particularly as she highlights Alexander’s role during the events of the Macartney mission, his career is nonetheless homogenized. Similarly, Eric Hayot, in The Hypothetical Mandarin, analyzes Alexander’s Costume in relation to contemporary works in the “Costumes and Customs” genre.2 His later work, however, is referenced only in a footnote: “… Alexander also published a volume entitled Picturesque Representations … which contains some of the same

1 Stacey Sloboda, “Picturing China: William Alexander and the visual language of Chinoiserie,” The British Art Journal 9, no. 2 (2008): 28-36. 2 Eric Hayot, The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 60-66. Page 40! of 300 illustrations as his Costume of China.”3 The subject matter is indeed largely unchanging, but it is the variation in the details that is significant. I will return to this issue below. Before elaborating upon Costume of China’s images and its place among other Costume books, I will briefly examine the Macartney mission and the artist himself to better contextualize these points.

An Overview of the Macartney Mission

British demand for Chinese goods was reciprocated primarily by Chinese demand for silver

(which was mined in Peru and Mexico)4 but the relative lack of demand for British industrial wares proved frustrating.5 It is important to emphasize how dramatic the imbalance of trade was: Stephen G. Haw explains that, before it could force a cheap variety of opium into China, Europe had few, if any, trade goods to offer in return for the massively popular tea, porcelain, silk, sugar, spices, and lacquerware that China exported.6 Indeed, by 1800, the import duty on Chinese tea represented ten- percent of the British government’s annual revenue.7 In order to ‘correct’ the terms of trade, the British government, with funding from the East India Company, determined to send its first diplomatic embassy to China. The first attempt was in 1788, but the chosen ambassador, Lieutenant-Colonel Cathcart, died at sea with no successor. Henry Dundas, friend of Prime Minister William Pitt, had chosen Cathcart, and as both a member of the board of control of the East India Company and Home Secretary, Dundas deemed it his mission once again in 1791 to send an embassy to the Qianlong Court.8 Lord George Macartney of Lissanoure was a trusted friend of Dundas; his already outstanding career had taken him around the world before ever setting off for China. A career diplomat, he served as Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Catherine the Great of Russia, and he was appointed governor of the British West Indies

3 Ibid., p. 63, n. 3. 4 Jan de Vries analyzes China’s import of silver in “Understanding Eurasian Trade in the Era of the Trading Companies,” in Goods From the East, 1600-1800: Trading Eurasia, ed. Maxine Berg, with Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs, and Christ Nierstrasz. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 24, 7-43.

5 Andre Gunder Frank observes that “… China’s perennial export surplus (until the mid-nineteenth century) was settled primarily through foreigners’ payment in silver. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 111. 6 Stephen G. Haw, A Traveller’s History of China. (Brooklyn, New York: Interlink Publishing Groups, Inc., 1995), 146.

7 Ibid., p. 147. 8 Aubrey Singer, The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking, 1792-1794. (London: Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1992), 4. Page 41! of 300 (1775) , governor of Grenada (1776-79), and finally governor of Madras (presently Chennai, 1781-85).9 Having such a global political pedigree was deemed essential for negotiating better terms of trade with the Qianlong Emperor, especially considering the dismal precedent set by similar embassies. Between 1656 and 1753, six embassies (two Dutch, two Russian, and two Portuguese) arrived in China’s court; five of them sought—and failed to secure—trading concessions.10 As to the specifics of Macartney’s embassy, there were six distinct aims of the mission, all of them primarily economically motivated. The first, of course, was to negotiate a treaty of commerce which would be ‘mutually’ satisfactory. The second would be to establish a permanent British ambassador at the imperial Court in Beijing, and the third aim sought to improve trade conditions in Canton. The fourth objective was to open new ports,11 while similarly, the fifth was “to persuade the Chinese to cede an island base to Britain—this was to be further north, probably on the Zhoushan archipelago, closer to the tea-growing and silk-producing areas, thus reducing transport costs and provincial taxes.”12 Lastly, the sixth aim of the mission was for the British to create new markets in China13—after all, the Industrial Revolution unfolding in Britain required ever-expanding markets. One must keep in mind, additionally, that the East India Company provided funding for the endeavor.14 Several participants in the Macartney diplomatic mission documented the trip; these included Lord George Macartney himself (the ambassador); Sir George Leonard Staunton, Secretary and Minister Plenipotentiary in the absence of the ambassador; Dr. James Dinwiddie, Machinest; John Barrow, Comptroller; William Alexander, the draughtsman with whom this chapter is particularly concerned; Aeneas Anderson, valet to the ambassador; and a J.C. Hunter, tutor to Master Staunton. The aforementioned Staunton was responsible for writing the official account,

9 Ibid., p. 2. 10 Ibid., p. 3.

11 Ibid., p. 5. 12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 5. 14 It is important to note that, although the Macartney Mission was unsuccessful in these aims in 1793, the Opium Wars’ Unequal Treaties saw the opening of five new trade ports. Ultimately, the British took by force that which they could not acquire through diplomatic channels. See John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 260-261. Page 42! of 300 published in 1797 as An Authentic Account of an Embassy. Barrow also spent much of his later career in the public eye as a spokesperson for matters relating to the East.15 Considering how the century following the Embassy would evolve, it is especially important to interrogate this particular event, and its resulting imagery. I wish to consider in particular how the new availability of “authentic” accounts and images affected the British public consciousness regarding China. The grandiosity of the embassy could not have been lost on either party: there were 95 British men involved directly with the mission, and 600 British men who boarded the flotilla (including ships the HMS Lion, Hindostan, Jackall, and Clarence), and these 600 individuals were under strict orders not to engage in any private trading while abroad.16 Macartney circulated a proclamation announcing that no one could offer for sale or propose to purchase even the “smallest article of merchandise of any kind under any pretense whatsoever”17; this was to ensure that no covert East India Company trade was carried out.18 The dissatisfaction of an individual captain demonstrates just how significant the China trade was: Captain Mackinstosh, Master of the HMS Hindostan, was deprived of his right to private trade, a right afforded to all commanders of East-

Indiamen.19 This personal loss led to a tense relationship with the Ambassador. Upon arrival in China, there was already the expectation of subordination hanging in the air. The first Chinese official that the Embassy met was the Governor of Dengzhou, who presented golden cylinders.20 Singer notes that these cylinders contained scrolls of about five feet in length, and which were “made of orange paper embossed with the Imperial dragon: they were rescripts [official edicts] from Emperor Qianlong addressed to the Ambassador and to Mackintosh of the Hindostan.”21 Upon these scrolls was written:

15 The most complete contemporary compilation is Aubrey Singer’s romantically-tinged The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking, 1792-1794, published as a bicentenary commemoration of the event. Singer’s compilation is thorough and detailed, though lacking in scholarly commentary as Singer was actually a BBC executive rather than an academic. See, “Aubrey Singer Obituary.” The Daily Telegraph (UK), accessed July 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/obituaries/1552798/Aubrey-Singer.html.

16 Singer, p. 6-11. 17 Ibid., p. 14.

18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p. 16-17. 21 Ibid. Page 43! of 300 To Macartney and others of England, country of the red hairs, newly appointed Minister of State. You have been blown by the wind and billows and moored on our shores, suffering from shortage of food and seeking safety and provisions. The Court extends to all merchant ships of all countries that come to the southern shores from far across the sea, protection of life and well being and permission to provision themselves. Conscious of your circumstances of shortage, the Heavenly Court has made a special order of three thousand pecks of grain for your journey’s needs and trading purposes and, moreover, bestows on the Ambassador a pair of ivory tusks and five loads of black pepper as a token of our good faith.22

As China viewed trade with Europe as a favor, and not as a deed which was of any advantage to their own Empire, the tone of this passage is accordingly vaguely condescending. The next two Chinese officials that the members of the Macartney mission met were mandarins, one civil and one military, who were instructed to accompany the party throughout their journey; they were Cho-ta- gin (Qiao Renjie) and Van-ta-gin (Wang Wenxiong), who were to become loyal friends to Macartney.23 The latter, Van-ta-gin, was the subject of one of Alexander’s rare personal portraits, which I describe below. In many ways, the Macartney Mission functioned as a ‘fulcrum’ in Sino-British relations. It marked the end of the period when the British were passive importers and consumers of Chinese goods, a time when China could be imagined and idealized. And, it marked the beginning of Britain’s increasing aggression in China, a period mired with warfare, drug smuggling, and looting.

William Alexander and the ‘Costume’ Series

One of my aims is to restore Alexander, a cultural conduit and a historically-overlooked artist, to his proper place in this period of art history. His images depart from the chinoiserie that preceded him, and they became markers of China in their own right, diffusing to places such as the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. In his choice of subject matter and composition, Alexander borrowed from the templates created by the Jesuit missionaries and other travel accounts. William Alexander (1767-1816) will be vaguely familiar to historians of a pre-imperial Britain since his The Reception of Lord Macartney by the Qianlong Emperor at Jehol in 1793 can be found among the selected illustrations of innumerable books on British-Chinese diplomatic relations, British imperialism, the Opium Wars, et cetera. Alexander is most notable today as having accompanied the Macartney embassy of 1793, sometimes listed as a junior artist (with Thomas Hickey employed as senior artist), and at other times as the mission’s draughtsman. In either case,

22 Ibid., p. 17. 23 Ibid. Page 44! of 300 Alexander has not garnered much scholarly interest, because, I assert, he has been dismissed as a ‘mere’ illustrator—as though producing 900 sketches of one of the most important diplomatic exchanges of modern British and Chinese history was politically inconsequential. Works such as The Reception of Lord Macartney are presented as a ‘snapshot’ of an event (in this case, Macartney’s meeting with Qianlong) while neglecting the fact that Alexander was excluded from high-level events such as this monumental meeting.24 Alexander came to the Macartney embassy by way of Julius Caesar Ibbetson, his instructor who had turned down the opportunity for himself.25 Alexander had enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 1784, and Ibbetson’s proclivity for watercolors and the picturesque became evident in Alexander’s own later works. Besides the 900 sketches he produced in China, Alexander produced two books of engravings based upon the sketches completed during the mission years earlier: in 1805, The Costume of China (issued by publisher William Miller) and in 1814, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese (issued by publisher John Murray, who had bought out Miller’s holdings in 1812).26 While diverse sources such as Bauman Rare Books and Sloboda all list the latter as a second edition of the first, I will argue in Chapter Four, which addresses the Picturesque movement, that the two works must be seen and studied as distinct from one another.27 This section will only consider the 1805 The Costume of China, as Alexander’s 1814 edition deserves its own focus. Hayot, in his analysis of ‘costumes and customs,’ conflates Alexander’s Costume with

George Henry Mason’s volume of the same name which was published five years earlier.28 He is primarily concerned not with Alexander’s career, but with the Costume series that William Miller printed; this series was London publisher Miller’s project, which commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The books included the Costumes of Russia, Austria, Turkey, and Great

24 Singer., p. 49.

25 Patrick Conner. “Alexander, William.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed July 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/subscriber/article/grove/art/ T001712. 26 “(China) Alexander, William.” Bauman Rare Books, accessed January 2014, http:// www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/alexander-william/picturesque-representations-of-the-dress-and- manners-of-the-chinese-costume-of-china-/82847.aspx/.

27 Bauman Rare Books cite Colas and Hiler, who describe the 1814 Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese as a ‘second edition’ to the 1805, but this is a dismissal of the independence with which each book—each set of engravings—deserves to be studied. 28 Hayot, p. 60-66. Page 45! of 300 Britain itself;29 as referenced above, even Alexander’s book was not the only Costume of China. George Henry Mason, a lieutenant based in India who convalesced in Guangzhou, published his own version in 1800.30 The publisher’s preface to The Costume of Great Britain summarizes the aims of the series:

By presenting to the eye a series of judiciously selected and well executed pictorial representations, forming striking portraits of a single subject, accurately finished in the colours of the original, and aided by short descriptive essays, [these books] give more pleasing and definite ideas of the external character, style of dress, and peculiarity of occupation, than can be acquired by any other method, except actual personal observation.31

The publisher knew that visual representation was key in the burgeoning field of travel writing. It is implied that the series is as close to personal observation as one could get; that is to say, the images are a proxy for personal observation and therefore offer themselves as documentary accounts. Alexander also seems to strive to break away from the fantastical chinoiserie of the eighteenth century. Hayot posits that the series “… delight[s] and instruct[s] armchair travelers by giving them the visual material of culture and the interpretive means to decode it, working from the external character, dress, and occupational habits visible on the surface of these color images toward an entire field of cultural representation.”32 This demonstrates that Alexander’s work was not isolated or exclusive, but that it instead contributed to the larger understanding of ‘exotic’ cultures during this period. As to its readership and circulation, Hayot reports that the book’s original price was £733, a price “quite high for the time.”33 Miller originally produced 250 copies, and the list of subscribers was published in this 1805 edition as well. Besides this list, it is not known to what extent Costume was circulated or who purchased it; however, it was reprinted in 1806, 1811, and 1821, suggesting its degree of popularity.34

29 However, as Hayot points out, each nation is only described as having a Costume, which is an “attempt to produce a singular national character out of a diverse group of images and habits….” See Hayot, p. 61. 30 Hayot analyzes Mason’s work in depth in his Hypothetical Mandarin, Chapter Two.

31 W. H. Pyne, The Costume of Great Britain, in a series of coloured engravings. (London: W. Miller, 1808), no page. 32 Hayot, p. 61.

33 Ibid., p. 62. 34 Ibid. Page 46! of 300 The anthropological and documentary approach which Alexander takes in The Costume of China not only provides a visual account of how the British saw the Chinese, but also how the British saw themselves. In analyzing the engravings in Costume, I will refer to the thesis of

David Cannadine’s Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (2001).35 I have chosen to refer to Ornamentalism because Cannadine’s thesis—that the British prioritized and emphasized a class-based hierarchy rather than a racial one in the periphery as at home—provides a fruitful starting point in situating Alexander’s otherwise uncategorized engravings. Much of the current scholarship on nineteenth-century Britain and the British Empire has excluded China, so the benefit of putting Alexander and Cannadine—who incidentally neglects China himself—in dialogue is to investigate whether Cannadine’s theory of class hierarchy applies to earlier British images of China as well. One disadvantage of this approach is that Cannadine’s focus is on the high point of Empire, that is to say, approximately 1850-1950, while Alexander predates this by nearly 60 years. However, Cannadine writes largely in response to Edward Said, who essentially writes about two- thousand years of European hegemony. In that sense, I borrow Cannadine’s line of argumentation but not his particular case studies. Following the publication index of The Costume of China, there is an advertisement for the next publication in the series, The Costume of Great Britain:

The Work will be composed of Characters, most of whom are peculiar to this Country, forming a selection of Persons whose Habits, Customs, Employments, and Dress, distinguish them from the great mass of the people. Within the last half century a striking change has taken place in this Kingdom, by blending almost all external distinctions in the different orders of Society.36

While the ‘external distinctions,’ by way of dress, accessories, and appearance, were perceived to be diminishing in Britain leading up to the nineteenth century, the characters featured in The Costume of China may have provided a reassuring depiction of a clear class structure, discernible in the titular costume: in this way, it is plausible that later Imperial Britain did not solely impose their class hierarchy on its colonies as a means of attaining a political vehicle, as Cannadine suggests, but also clung to and exploited pre-existing class hierarchies in the colonies and other countries in a time of disappearing class demarcations in the metropole. While Alexander approaches the Chinese with an anthropological eye and an attempt at journalistic neutrality, he demonstrates a preoccupation—perhaps unsurprisingly—with boats and

35 David Cannadine. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. (London: Allen Lane, 2001). 36 William Alexander, The Costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight colour engravings. (London: W. Miller, 1805), no page. Page 47! of 300 military figures. There are also numerous bridges, fortifications, and ‘action’ scenes (e.g., of people praying in a temple as opposed to standing still), while only half of the engravings are of non- military human figures. It is worth noting that the 1814 Picturesque Representations is comprised nearly exclusively of human figures, suggesting perhaps that depicting differences in personhood and class had become more important than scenes of daily life. It is also possible that there was a greater demand for these types of depictions. The next chapter will take up these issues. In the following sections, I will maintain the categories I have described: firstly, non-human subjects, then military subjects, and then finally, the various human figure types grouped by social class.

The Seafaring Genre: Depictions of Vessels and a Bridge

Scenes of the Chinese at sea would have been familiar to Alexander’s audience thanks to images such as Johan Nieuhof’s 1665 Mandarins Having a Feast in a Boat, an engraving which features a vessel strikingly similar to Alexander’s Mandarin’s Boats. Nieuhof’s boats found their way into various other media, including contemporary lacquered furniture.37 Alexander’s seafaring scenes offer a renewed authentication of the genre, validating and reinforcing well-known signifiers of China. It is all the more curious then, that in the 1814 Picturesque Representations, Alexander has noticeably shifted his focus to human types: the soldier, the diplomat, the peasant. But scenes of miscellany are still plentiful in the 1805 work. He demonstrates an eager interest in all that surrounds him. Indeed, his seascapes and landscapes clearly inform Thomas Allom’s own ‘Chinese’ scenes in his 1845 publication China Illustrated, which I discuss in Chapter Five. One of Alexander’s greatest non-figural preoccupations, however, was with images of vessels of every kind. Nearly one-fifth of Costume is made up of vessels: perhaps this comes as no surprise considering the the importance of seafaring to the British nation. A Ship of War will be described in the next section on military scenes, but there were several other functions for vessels to fulfill, including trade and transportation. Indeed, Alexander is meticulous in being as exhaustive as possible—even bordering on encyclopedic—in his engravings of vessels. Far from merely communicating visual information to his viewers, his vessels echo personal experience as well as transmitting details both banal and grandiose to a public hungry for comprehensive accounts. Transcending the question of what China looks like, it is the vessels which truly reveal to Europe how the Chinese lived, and in some cases, how the ‘celestial’ empire functioned. In this spirit, I will

37 Dawn Jacobson, Chinoiserie. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1993), 41. Page 48! of 300 divide this section into several parts; categorizing Alexander’s vessels emphasizes my argument that this object is the one which captures the artist’s interests as well as the supposed curiosity of contemporary Britons.

Functional Vessels Given the aims of the Macartney mission—the entire reason for Alexander’s voyage in the first place—it stands to reason that trade would be of the utmost priority. Portrait of a Trading Ship (fig. 3.1) depicts a moderately-sized ship out to sea with no evidence of the shore nearby. Alexander wavers ambivalently in tone: first, he informs the reader that these types of ships travel to Manilla, Japan, and Batavia (the furthest point), and that many are eight hundred to a thousand tons burthen. He notes (not for the first time in Costume) as well that although the Chinese can use the compass, they prefer to keep near the coast. Alexander reports this with indifference, but Barrow’s account augments this description:

The Chinese … are equally unskilled in naval architecture, as in the art of navigation … they have no means whatsoever of ascertaining the latitude or longitude of any place, either by estimation from the distance sailed, or by observation of the heavenly bodies … . Yet they pretend to say, that many of their early navigators made long voyages, in which they were guided by charts of the route, sometimes drawn on paper, and sometimes on the convex surface of large gourds or pumpkins. … but this would be to suppose a degree of knowledge to which, it does not appear, the Chinese had at any time attained, it being among them … an universally received opinion, that the earth is a square, and that the kingdom of China is placed in the very center of its flat surface.38

For his part, Alexander writes on the stagnation of Chinese shipbuilding and seafaring generally:

No alteration has been made in the naval architecture of China for many centuries past. The Chinese are so averse to innovation, and so attached to ancient prejudices, that although Canton is annually frequented by the ships of various European nations, whose superiority of construction they must acknowledge, yet they reject any improvement in their vessels.39

The assumption here is that in regards to ‘naval architecture,’ the Chinese have no excuse to be backwards or stagnant. Alexander understood that China had for centuries been self-sufficient and therefore isolated from other cultures, nations, and ideas. Their stagnation in other areas, therefore, could be rationalized and even understood. But Alexander cannot fathom, in this instance, why prolonged and pervasive trade with the West, whose traders arrived and departed regularly in their

38 John Barrow, Travels in China. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1804), 38-39. 39 Alexander, Costume, no page. Emphasis mine. Page 49! of 300 ‘superior’ ships, has not advanced China’s own fleet. Barrow dispels any claim that his Chinese contemporaries may have made about past dynasties’ superior maritime technology. These accounts and the imagery also anticipate the characterization of China as backwards as Britain moves ever forward. It is the beginning of China’s being described as a sort of ‘negative space’ against which to measure and compare Britain: an empire in ruins, a gauge of an emerging empire. Barrow, for example, in his 1804 account, writes that: “The Chinese … were civilized, fully to the same extent they now are, more than two thousand years ago … but … they have since made little progress in any thing, and been retrograde in many things.”40 This idea of stagnation characterizes Alexander’s and later artists’ imagery. Alexander concludes his entry by describing the composition of the ship, its ports which serve as windows, and notes that there is a painted eye on each bow, owing to the “… superstitious notion, that the ship may thus see before her, and avoid danger.”41 The ship has been depicted with its sails retracted, perhaps signifying that the Chinese are too timid to take the long journeys that the Europeans do. It is otherwise shown to be a sturdy and capable ship; the scale is also impressive, nearly dwarfing the dinghy next to it. Alexander’s A Fishing Boat (fig. 3.2) is noteworthy for three reasons: first, he praises the use of bamboo, which has no native species in Europe. The frame of the fishing net is “composed of that most useful plant the bamboo, which, uniting strength with lightness, is made use of on almost every occasion.” Bamboo would certainly have been a novelty material to Europeans; even near the close of the nineteenth century, “nothing in Europe approaches the light, grace and airy beauty”42 of fashionable bamboo furniture, and the interiors which they adorn “can be matched only by the palaces of the Orient, and it is from the Orient that the inspirations for them is largely drawn.”43 While Chinese furniture, including that of bamboo, had been a staple in the ‘Oriental’ rooms of the nobility for at least a century, its full utility as a food, medicine, construction material, and textile had yet to be realized in the West. That the material of the fishing net frame is detailed and praised lends an anthropological air to Alexander’s account. The fascination with bamboo continued well into the nineteenth century: the future King George IV incorporated a great deal of faux-bamboo in

40 Barrow, p. 238. I have borrowed Elizabeth Hope Chang’s abridgment of this quotation. See Chang, p. 7. Chang also traces the parallel shift in attitudes in British literature. See Chang, Chapters Three and Four. 41 Alexander, Costume, no page.

42 Ada Cone, “Bamboo and Rattan Furniture in Paris,” The Decorator and Furnisher 22, no. 6 (1893): 217-18. 43 Ibid. Page 50! of 300 the Royal Pavilion, perhaps inspired by its enduring presence in Costume. (He and his decorators owned a copy.) Second, A Fishing Boat is set in a real rather than vague place: he notes that in the distance is Lake Poo-yang [Poyang]. The waters are clear-blue and calm. One might presume that Alexander witnessed similar scenes along his journey; indeed, the horizontal composition (unusual for this tome) is teeming with activity. No fewer than nine figures are aboard this fishing boat, and Alexander even describes some of their individual tasks. There is a lever which helps to raise and lower the net into the water, and sometimes two men are needed to move it. Another man lowers a basket, and still others are responsible for steering and other activities. Alexander must have been fascinated with the bamboo plant because poles of it are used for the lever, for holding up a lantern, and others are affixed to the side of the boat for an unspecified purpose. Lastly, Alexander typically offers his series of illustrations as a self-contained guide for the people and customs of China, but in A Fishing Boat, he instructs his readers to consult the elder Sir George Staunton’s The Account of the British Embassy for its report on another method of fishing involving a species of pelican. It is unusual for him to go beyond the boundaries of his own book, but this is a reminder to the audience of where he has attained his information and why he is an authority on the topic of China. The next four vessels convey Alexander’s characteristic ambivalence: he at times admires the Chinese, and at other times writes with disdain. However, his engravings maintain the appearance of a detached authority and clarity. It is compelling to recognize, additionally, that his ship scenes often lend Alexander the greatest chance to convey his personal experience; it is possible that this over-familiarity with ships is the reason for the mixed feelings rather than the documentary style found in other motifs. Three Vessels Lying at Anchor in the River of Ning-po [Ningbo] (fig. 3.3) relays all the pertinent construction information to a sea-curious British public; moreover, the members of the Macartney Embassy used these particular ships themselves. The small vessel transported baggage, while a larger one “conveyed a part of the Embassy from Ning- po, to Tchu-san, where they embarked on board the Hindostan, for Can-ton.”44 Additionally, Alexander observes that the Chinese characters over the rudder denote the name of the vessel, but in descriptions of other vessels, any apparent excessive embellishment is met with disapproval. In Three Vessels, all the ships are facing forward, with the stern in view. The sails are also retracted. In this regard, Alexander wishes to portray Chinese ships from a variety of angles so that his readers may better picture what they actually look like. This is also a clear departure from the earlier images

44 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 51! of 300 of the chinoiserie era, during which time accuracy and realistic resemblances were simply not expected or even desirable. The last two images in this section demonstrate a mixture of visual information, personal experience, and critical commentary. Portraits of Sea Vessels, generally called Junks (fig. 3.4) is among Alexander’s most disparaging textual narratives, but the visual representation is consistent with his practice. The text reveals that “On the 5th of August, 1793, the Embassador [sic] and his suite left the Lion and Hindostan, and embarked on board the brigs Clarence, Jackall, and Endeavor, when they immediately sailed for the Pay-ho, or White River, in the Gulph of Pe-tchi-li: the other persons attached to the Embassy followed in Junks engaged for that purpose.”45 One must speculate whether Alexander begrudged having been routinely relegated to non-essential personnel, and his view of the ‘junks’ was accordingly demoted. He mentions that these vessels also carried the gifts for the Qianlong Emperor and the crew members’ baggage: in this regard, the secondary and tertiary members of the Macartney party, including Alexander, were grouped together with what was essentially cargo. Notably, in his depiction, there are no members of the Macartney mission visible aboard the ship, which is instead populated with local Chinese. The locals are all stereotyped, wearing queues and straw hats, which suggests that these are anonymous individuals rather than men the crew members knew personally. With a casual detachment, he describes the structure of the ships, but he does not compare them to anything that the Britons would know. In his typical presentation, the vessel is portrayed at a three-quarter angle to best convey the ship’s appearance, but there is another seemingly identical ‘junk’ just behind it, sails raised. The water is only barely hinted at; in this manner, the makeup of the ship is best accentuated. He says that the rudders “are rudely formed, and cannot be worked with dexterity,”46 which is a dismissal that parallels his opinions of the Chinese military. As the Opium Wars primarily transpired at sea, Alexander anticipates the potential weakness of the Chinese naval force. Lastly, he observes that “[t]he anchor of four points is of iron, the other of wood; at the quarters are stowed some bamboo spars,” (again highlighting the varied use of bamboo) and that

“these junks are gaudily adorned with ensigns, vanes, &c. agreeably to the Chinese taste.”47 This last statement is heavy in meaning, and the sentiment is underscored in the image; ensigns and

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. Page 52! of 300 banners fly from almost every place imaginable, although if it were not for the accompanying text, one could easily suppose that the banners fly happily and triumphantly. Additionally, the phrase ‘agreeably to the Chinese taste’ requires reflection. In this instance, Alexander means the authentic Chinese taste. But throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century, as David Porter notes in The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth Century England, ‘the Chinese taste’ indicated an adoration for European-invented chinoiserie and was shorthand for high-class taste. When Alexander took part in the Macartney mission, though, chinoiserie had become hopelessly unfashionable, only to be revived when George IV requested chinoiserie elements for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton in its redecoration from 1802 to 1822.48 In this regard, Alexander’s unfavorable impression of ‘the Chinese taste’ is just as much a statement of contemporary British perceptions and taste as it is one of contemporary China. Furthermore, this category of sea vessel—the so-called ‘junk’—endured as one of the most emblematic of Chinese water vehicles. Alexander’s A Sea Vessel Under Sail (fig. 3.5) demonstrates that the ‘objectionable’ Chinese taste could be an anomaly unique to Portraits of Sea Vessels. This vessel is depicted similarly to, if perhaps a bit more abstractly, than Portraits. The banners are as abundant and ‘gaudy’ in both images, but in Under Sail, he writes simply that “The several flags and ensigns are characteristic of the taste of the Chinese.”49 This remark is completely lacking in the judgment and criticism of the parallel image. The entire textual accompaniment is indeed devoid of the heavy-handed evaluation which the counterpart received. The ship’s construction, composition, materials, and use are all described in detail. Alexander succinctly writes that “Ships of this construction are employed by the merchants, in conveying the produce of the several provinces to the different ports of the empire,” and even seems to praise the fact that “The hold for the stowage of the various commodities, is divided into several partitions, which are so well caulked, with a composition called chu-nam, as to be water-proof; by this contrivance, in the event of a leak, the greater part of the cargo is preserved from injury, and the danger of foundering considerably removed.”50 Although this may not seem like a noteworthy feature to modern viewers, the artist strives to encompass the form and function of the vessels he encountered; vessels like Under Sail, for example, supplied the entirety of the Chinese empire with its supplies, which is something that contemporary Britons, as an island-

48 Incidentally, Costume of China was among the sources of inspiration for the Royal Pavilion’s Chinese- style interiors. Alexandra Loske, “Inspiration, Appropriation, Creation: Sources of Chinoiserie Imagery, Colour Schemes and Designs in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (1802-1823), in The Dimension of Civilization, ed. Lu Peng. Paper for the conference The Dimension of Civilisation (MOCA) in Yinchuan, China, p. 338.

49 Alexander, Costume, no page. 50 Ibid. Page 53! of 300 nation, could have related to. Additionally, he comments once again upon the use of bamboo, still an exotic commodity in the West. None of this addresses, however, why Under Sail is spared the scathing remarks that Portraits is subjected to. The most conspicuous difference between the two images is that Alexander and company would have had personal familiarity with the vessels in Portraits, while Under Sail is anonymous. It is possible, as I have mentioned, that Alexander was peeved at having been relegated to one of the junks rather than being considered among the more esteemed members of the party.51 Another explanation is that the artist finds personal perceptions to be more appropriate for scenes which he had experienced, but when depicting types, he wished to remain true to his characteristic encyclopedic tone.

Vessels in Action While cataloguing vessels by function is communicative to some degree, Alexander’s active ships inform the audience about how the Chinese empire actually got along in its daily existence. It is also easy for a modern viewer to take the difference in technologies between 1793 China and Great Britain for granted, but Alexander’s contemporaries would have gleaned such information from his engravings. After all, the apparent stagnation in Chinese technology would have been one of the most fascinating concerns to the British public. Front View of a Boat, passing over an inclined Plane or Glacis (fig. 3.6) is unusual in its context. Typically, Alexander depicts his subject matter devoid of much scenery or sociological context. However, Front View is again drawn from his lived experiences, which may account for the atypical attention to detail. He specifies the date for the event, which is 16th November, 1793. Alexander writes about the moment he depicts; he explains that “the face of the country is mountainous; therefore the communication of the canals is continued by means of this sort of lock.”52 Considerable textual detail is allocated to describing exactly how the locks work; the image itself depicts an abundance of men—an endless supply of labor, or soldiers. There are several men on the boat itself, but there are nearly a dozen men operating either side of the lock. He concludes by noting that “On the left hand stands a mutilated triumphal arch, and a small temple inclosing an idol, to which sacrifices are frequently made for the preservation of the vessels

51 Sloboda considered Alexander’s relegated role within the Embassy at greater length. See Stacey Loughrey Sloboda, “Making China: Design, Empire, and Aesthetics in Britain, 1745-1851” PhD Diss., University of Southern California, 2004, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (3145290), p. 243-244. 52 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 54! of 300 passing over.”53 Several men attend the small temple, illustrating his statement that this is an active ritual. In the far-off distance to the left, one can spot a peasant with two baskets hanging from a bamboo pole, which is not the singular topic of any of Alexander’s images, but a semiotic icon that frequently shows up in similar images of China. In the background of the far-righthand-side, a visual reference to A Peasant, With his Wife and Family is made. What appears to be a man, woman, and child (accompanied by a dog) stop to watch the boat passing through the lock. Perhaps this a subtle statement on the quaint pastime activities of the peasantry. Similarly, the vessel in the righthand foreground resembles A Trading Vessel and its accompanying dinghies. In this manner, Front View of a Boat is an unusual addition to Alexander’s repertoire. The scene is a dynamic and energetic portrayal of a relatively banal event which the artist personally witnessed. While his later Picturesque Representations and the many other national Costume books of the era were preoccupied with depicting encyclopedic types, Front View is a world unto itself. One observes Vessels Passing Through a Sluice (fig. 3.7) to compare the dynamism of the aforementioned Front View of a Boat. The former exemplifies the types which Alexander usually aimed to produce for his audience. The textual description explains that the ‘grand canal’ of China extends all the way from Canton [Guangzhou] to Pekin [Beijing]. Although Alexander does not mention it, this was the primary route that the Macartney embassy followed (except that they bypassed Canton for fear of bureaucratic delay). He does indicate, however, the complexity of the canal system throughout China: “From this main trunk issue many branches, which pass through innumerable cities, towns, and villages, as roads through European countries; and by this means a communication is kept up with the utmost limits of the Empire… ”54 which explains to the average Briton how exactly a vast Chinese empire could function as one entity. It also indicates Alexander’s tendency to relate Chinese customs and scenes to European ones, so as to make them more familiar. This one-to-one comparison also demonstrates Alexander’s general notion that the Chinese were not inferior (or superior) to Europeans. The image exudes a watercolor-like quality, perhaps because of its maritime setting, or to give it an air of generality rather than the specificity of Front View. The main vessel is uncharacteristically small in scale relative to the overall composition, and is depicted in a three- quarter angle; the angle amplifies the visual information available to the reader. Another vessel, shown almost as a wispy afterthought, passes through the lock; however, perhaps because of the

53 Ibid. I will discuss the religious motifs such as the temples and idols, and British understanding of Chinese religion, in the next chapter. 54 Ibid. Page 55! of 300 proximity to the viewer, it is not as active as a scene as Front View. The small one-man boats in the foreground are juxtaposed with the larger vessels, which together demonstrate the numerous functions performed by the grand canal. Additional larger vessels are suggested in the far-off distance, indicating how busy this canal is. A paltry triumphal arch near the middle-ground footpath expresses Alexander’s interest in Chinese architectural signs. The shelter for workers showcases the iconic upturned roof, already made famous in the chinoiserie of the previous century; the workers themselves lift the lock, which doubles as a footpath.

Vessels and Class Hierarchy The last two vessels that I will analyze convey the British class consciousness to which I referred earlier in this chapter. A Mandarin’s Travelling Boat (fig. 3.8) and The Travelling Barge of Van-ta-zhin (fig. 3.9) relay China’s rigid social hierarchy. Typically, some form of personal association leads Alexander to forming more complex descriptions of his subject matter, but the opposite is true when these two vessels are seen as a thematic pair. In A Mandarin’s Travelling Boat, the boat is depicted from the side and up-close, allowing the viewer an intimate look inside. The Travelling Barge of Van-ta-zhin, belonging to a mandarin with whom the embassy party was closely associated, is depicted at a slightly further distance and is not opened up for viewing. The former, more anonymous, vessel is accompanied by a thorough descriptive text which clearly communicates class distinctions. Firstly, Alexander makes a one-to-one comparison between England and China when he writes, “Mandarins, who are employed in travelling from place to place on the public service, keep barges for that purpose, as carriages are kept in England.”55 Immediately, the curious British public understands the mandarin’s rank and the use of his maritime vehicle. He notes the decoration and that the part occupied by the Mandarin is kept closed with shutters during the night or rain. The scale of the vessel is also outlined: he notes that the gunwale of mandarins’ boats, like most Chinese boats, is broad enough for the workers and other occupants to pass over without disturbing those in the main apartments. The ritual and iconicity associated with these barges bears repeating in Alexander’s words. He observes that:

The Mandarin is seen attended by soldier and servants, who are bringing his dinner; the double umbrella, or ensign of his authority, is conspicuously placed to demand respect; the flag and board at the stern, with Chinese characters on them, exhibit his rank and employment; these insignia of power also serve as a signal for other vessels to make clear

55 Ibid. Page 56! of 300 passage for him, in consequence of which, such boats are seldom obstructed in their progress through the immense number of vessels constantly employed on the canals.56

Although Alexander does not mention it explicitly, one could compare the insignia of power broadcast on the banners to coats of arms in Europe. Additionally, the artist’s contemporaries would instantly comprehend the multilayered social hierarchy which places servants below masters, and merchant vessels below those belonging to governmental bureaucrats. In this regard, Costume of China exhibits a class consciousness one would expect of a British artist of the early nineteenth century. The traveling barge is depicted as teeming with activity, with laborers in every corner. There are just as many attendants on the mandarin as there are workers operating the boat. At the stern of the ship are a few men dressed in peasant clothing who smoke what is presumably tobacco in long pipes. One wears the expected queue, and the other the stereotypical straw hat. On the bow-end of the hull, there is what can be interpreted as a dragon relief. Alexander depicts this embellishment but it is noticeably absent in the textual account. Furthermore, the banners’ insignia do not show any actual Chinese characters, but are Alexander’s own approximation. Despite a desire for anthropological accuracy, this was apparently one detail which could be forfeited as exceedingly few people in Europe would know any Chinese characters themselves. The last detail about Travelling Boat is one which ties in with George Henry Mason’s own Costume of China of 1800. Alexander writes, in a detached tone, that “The master of any vessel who, by mismanagement, or even accident, should impede officers in the exercise of their duty, would most likely receive the instant punishment of a certain number of blows from the bamboo, at the discretion of the Mandarin.”57 Hayot provides a detailed interpretation of Mason’s and

Alexander’s scenes of crime and punishment.58 Alexander’s Punishment of the Cangue, The Punishment of the Bastinado, and Examination of a Culprit fit within this genre, though he presents the fact of this on-the-spot style corporal punishment (referenced in Travelling Boat) in a neutral way, neither condoning nor condemning the practice. Like foot binding, the humiliating practice of hitting an errant subservient person with a bamboo stick would would seem to invite judgment, but Alexander rejects it.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid. 58 See Hayot, Chapter Two, especially section two. Page 57! of 300 View of a Bridge in the Environs of the City of Sou-tcheou Bridges may seem to be a banal preoccupation for an artist-traveler such as William Alexander, but Stacey Sloboda eloquently explains why Chinese-inspired bridges are of considerable importance in Sino-British studies. Sloboda writes that in the eighteenth century, “… chinoiserie garden structures were the primary signifiers of ‘China’ in the garden. They acted much in the same ways that chinoiserie did inside the house: as signs of commerce, cosmopolitanism, artifice, and novelty.”59 Furthermore, “[a]ssociated more with goods than with nature, Chinese temples, pavilions, and bridges added a touch of artifice that mediated between wilderness and civilization, nature and culture.”60 Indeed, bridges—perfectly marrying nature (water) and humanity (architecture)—were among the most popular chinoiserie additions to gardens and landscapes at the peak of the style in the 1740s and 1750s. Bridges also inspired the imagination, evoking the romanticized voyages that merchants would undertake to the Far East.61 Also, in contrast to cabinets full of porcelain or full-scale pagodas in the garden, she observes that “… because of their modest size and humble materials, Chinese bridges were a relatively easy way to add a dash of variety, lightness, and imagination to a landscape.”62 In this spirit, design books proliferated; among the most famous is William Halfpenny’s New designs for Chinese temples, triumphal arches, garden seats, palings &c., of 1750. It is against this backdrop, this cultural awareness, that Alexander observed Chinese bridges during his journey. However, his View of a Bridge (fig. 3.10) could not appear more different from the popular chinoiserie garden bridges of the previous generation. During the eighteenth century, chinoiserie bridges were typified by a latticework design: “The latticework patterns that were characteristic of chinoiserie garden designs were useful for wooden bridges and pavilions because as pieces of lumber broke or rotted in the damp English air, they could be replaced individually.”63 But Alexander’s bridge, if we attribute authenticity to it, is built for Chinese practicalities, not English ones. Alexander concedes that: “The Bridges of China are variously constructed. There are many of three arches, some of which are very light, and elegant; others are simply pyramidal piers, with

59 Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in Eighteenth-Century Britain. (Manchester and New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 2014), 166.

60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 167.

62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 169. Page 58! of 300 timbers and flooring laid horizontally across them.”64 In this manner, it is possible for followers of a more ‘authentic’ Chinese style to find any number of bridge designs which may have suited their personal tastes. Indeed, bridges were among the most popular Chinese-derived objects in early nineteenth-century Britain. Barrow also observes that “Some of their bridges, of three, five, and seven arches, that cross the canal, are extremely light and beautiful to the eye, but the plan on which they are usually constructed does not imply much strength.”65 “Barrow’s lack of enthusiasm results from the bridges’ perceived technical inadequacy. Alexander describes this bridge as having a horseshoe outline, which was very common for bridges found along the route to Beijing. He notes the unifying characteristic of bridges in China: “Like most of the Chinese bridges, it is of quick ascent, making an angle of full twenty degrees with the horizon, and is ascended by steps. The carriage of merchandize by land, is therefore, inconsiderable; the rivers and canals being the high roads of China.”66 Once again, Alexander is aware that his audience will likely be interested in the way business is conducted in China, considering that that was one of the most substantial, tangible manifestations of the China-Britain relationship. The materials, the artist notes, are a mixture of coarse marble and stones, which is another difference to the chinoiserie bridges in Europe. The final note about View of a Bridge is that the ornamentation—the upright poles with streamers and the lanterns—were put in place to ‘compliment’ the Ambassador; the six soldiers from a nearby military post were similarly put in place to salute Macartney. The soldiers are depicted in a line on one side of the group, with bystanders watching on the other side. It is possible to imagine these onlookers gazing back at Alexander while he sketches this bridge aboard one of the traveling barges. Alexander is sure to include a medium-sized vessel nearing the passage under the bridge, demonstrating the reason why the latter is constructed at such an abrupt angle. Another vessel is vaguely sketched in the background, emphasizing the bustling waterways. Several small buildings with uniform upturned roofs are shown on either side of the bridge, and a city wall is hinted at in the right-hand background. What is intriguing is that in the left-hand background, Alexander has sketched a pagoda, enshrouded in atmospheric mist. While he does include two individual pagodas in Costume, it is extremely rare that he includes one as part of a wider landscape or context. I posit that he ordinarily excludes them so as to not make a caricature of

64 Alexander, Costume, no page.

65 Barrow, p. 337-338. Barrow also includes an illustration of a bridge, which he notes “was drawn with great accuracy by Mr. Alexander.” 66 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 59! of 300 his engravings, but he includes this one in View of a Bridge because he names the city; he is actually on the outskirts of Suzhou (Sou-tcheou). Suzhou boasts two famous pagodas, the Yunyan Pagoda and the Beisi Pagoda, both of which would have been standing at the time of the Macartney mission, and are presently still tourist attractions. It is entirely possible that Alexander depicted one of these in the background because this was the view of the bridge that he experienced personally. These pagodas are among the numerous signs that George IV incorporated into the interiors of the Royal Pavilion. The pagoda was one of the Chinese signifiers which was readily diffused into new manifestations in the West.

The Military Genre

While the peasants, merchants, and elites in Costume could find counterparts in contemporary England, the multitude of military figures Alexander draws are distinctly Chinese in their presentation and description. Of the forty-eight colored engravings included in Costume of China, six of these are of soldiers; a seventh is a ‘Ship of War,’ and an eighth is a military station. Thus, the military genre is the largest single genre of the entire book. Portrait of Van-ta-zhin (fig. 3.11) is the lone depiction of a military officer—a singularity which highlights the perceived inefficacy of the Chinese army. (One needs only to compare the imbalance between officers and infantry to a rather balanced representation of peasants and elites.) Van-ta-zhin is upright, forward-facing, and engages the viewer with eye-contact and a presentation of his bow. Alexander writes:

This officer … was appointed by the Emperor to attend the British Embassy … Van-ta-zhin was a man of a bold, general, and amiable character, and possessed of qualifications eminently suited to his profession … For services performed in the wars of Thibet, he wore appeneded from his cap, a peacock’s feather, as an extraordinary mark of favour from his sovereign… .67

As this is an individual with whom Alexander became acquainted, and not a type, there are no disparaging remarks; however, the infantrymen contradict this approving description of the officer. Alexander depicts Van-ta-zhin with artistic dignity, but in copying his likeness for a depiction of a generic mandarin in Picturesque Representations, there are numerous departures from this elegance. I will take up this case study in the next chapter.

67 Ibid. Page 60! of 300 Hayot briefly draws attention to the mandarin by remarking that, “In portraits of specific individuals, like the one of ‘Van-Ta-Zhin,’ for instance, Alexander shows us a figure whose presence in published narratives of the Embassy’s failures meant that he could not be mistaken for just any Chinese person… .”68 However, Van-ta-zhin is one of only two individuals that Alexander portrays in particular, and also one of the few who is named specifically in either Staunton’s Official Account or Barrow’s Travels. Furthermore, these accounts unanimously portray Van-ta-zhin favorably: Staunton describes him as a man of “… good nature [who was] conspicuous in his countenance … He was cheerful and pleasant in his conversation, banishing all reserve, and treating his new friends with the familiarity of old acquaintance.”69 Barrow corroborates this assessment, confirming both Van-ta-zhin’s existence as “a real Chinese”70 and also as a “good-natured companion.”71 This echoes Alexander’s textual and visual descriptions. Hayot suggests that named individuals such as Van-ta-zhin would become metonymic figures for the embassy’s failure to negotiate terms of trade with the Qianlong emperor. Instead, I posit that the complimentary view of such figures encouraged the British to attempt another diplomatic voyage—that, perhaps, this initial failure could be rectified. Indeed, in 1816, the Amherst embassy set out to do just that. In that sense, in 1805, Alexander maintains his dignified portrayal of the Van-ta-zhin, and only abandons his favorable depiction in the later Picturesque Representations. Despite the dignified presentation of Van-ta-zhin, both in Costume’s imagery and in the aforementioned contemporary texts, Alexander’s depiction of infantrymen is generally less flattering than that of their officer. The first soldier, A Chinese Soldier of Infantry, Or Tiger of War, (fig. 3.12) is visually respectable: upright but averting eye contact. He is shown in his full uniform with a military post in the background to affirm his status. Of the uniform, Alexander writes that “The general uniform of the Chinese troops is cumbrous and inconvenient; this of the Tiger of War, is much better adapted for military action,” while his scimitar is described as “of rude workmanship.”72 The Tiger of War is shown with his shield, which depicts a mythological monster;

68 Hayot, p. 64.

69 George Leonard Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China, Volume I. (London: G. Nicol, 1797), 488. 70 Barrow, p. 184.

71 Ibid., p. 524. 72 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 61! of 300 this provides the only connection to something analogous to Europe as Alexander likens the monster to Medusa: both supposed to “possess the power to petrify … the beholder.”73 With the exception of A Standard Bearer, who is treated more neutrally in a description of his dress and function, the remaining soldiers are all embodiments of the overriding impression of the feebleness of the Qing military. The first, Portrait of a Soldier, in his full Uniform, (fig. 3.13) is accompanied by a lengthy description full of pity for and scorn of the Chinese army. Visually, this soldier is shown frontally and averting eye contact, but his uniform is portrayed as a bulky and clumsy ensemble. Even his helmet and neck guard seem to squeeze his face in a comically contorted manner. Alexander begins the text by offering a vague explanation for his perception that the Chinese military was inferior to its European counterparts, based on the fact that, excepting “partial insurrections,” China had enjoyed peace since the Yuan (Mongolian) Dynasty (1271-1368). Importantly, Alexander does not merely dismiss the Chinese military, but rather dismisses its weakness relative to European armies: “… the Chinese army are become enervated, and want the courage, as well as the discipline, of European troops… .”74 Alexander further laments that “The situation of the soldiery is even envied by the lower classes, as they regularly receive their pay, though their services are seldom required,” and that their primary responsibility lies in “keep[ing] their arms and accoutrements bright and in good order, ready for the inspection of the officers… .”75 Besides criticizing their apparent indolence and redundancy, Alexander also chastises the soldiers’ uniforms as “clumsy, inconvenient, and inimical to the performance of military exercises,” and also cautions the reader not to misinterpret the appearance of the uniform since “… a battalion thus equipped has, at some distance, a splendid and even warlike appearance; but on closer inspection these coats of mail are found to be nothing more than quilted nankeen… .”76 Finally, he points out that the crown of the helmet is the only iron component. Alexander notes that the characters on the breast-plate indicate which corps he belongs to, and he provides a cursory description of the figure’s trinkets and weapons. This commentary and the disheveled way that Alexander portrays the soldier can be read as a metaphor for China’s military, or even empire, more generally. From the outside, with untrained eyes, it appears strong, formidable, intimidating. But upon closer inspection—when one can get

73 Ibid. 74 Ibid.

75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. Nankeen in this example is a type of cotton, the fabric of the lower classes. Page 62! of 300 close enough to inspect the Chinese Empire from within—its weaknesses become more apparent. There is no threatening substance beneath a fierce façade. However, the perceived weakness of the Qing military is curious, and may only be partially explained by the Britons’ own grandiose estimation of their own burgeoning military prowess. The Qianlong emperor had overseen the successful Ten Great Campaigns, which saw the expansion of Qing territory.77 The members of the Macartney mission may have mistaken these claims of military victories as falsifications; Barrow explains that:

This army, in the midst of a profound peace, was stated by Van-ta-gin to consist of eighteen hundred thousand men, one million of which were said to be infantry, and eight hundred thousand cavaliery. As this government, however, is supposed to be much given to exaggeration in all matters relating to the aggrandisement of the country, and to deal liberally in hyperboles, wherever numbers are concerend, the authenticity of the above statement of their military force may perhaps be called in question.78

The other two engravings of soldiers, A Soldier in His Common Dress (fig. 3.14) and A Soldier of Chu-San, Armed with a Matchlock Gun, &c. (fig. 3.15) highlight a supposed two-pronged deficiency in the Chinese military: namely, cowardly and ill-trained men, and inferior weaponry and technology. A Soldier in His Common Dress shows an upright man averting his eye, and his shoulders are slouched and his facial expression one of indifference. Alexander repeats his hypothesis that the Chinese have (supposedly) enjoyed a too-long period of peace, and that “The army of China cannot be considered formidable, their troops being naturally effeminate, and without the courage of European soldiers….”79 He also asserts that a Chinese education is one which “is not calculated to inspire a nation with courage….” This casual use of the term ‘effeminate’ reveals a phenomenon which had been slowly taking root in the eighteenth century and flourished in the nineteenth: namely, the gendering of the East as feminine. If the East and its soldiers could be perceived as feminine relative to a strong, masculine West, then it would be better suited to conquest.

77 On Qianlong’s military campaigns, see: Yingcong Dai, “A Disguised Defeat: The Myanmar Campaign of the Qing Dynasty,” Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge University Press), 38, no. 1 (2004): 145-189; C. Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006); Joanna Waley-Cohen, “Militarization of Culture in Eighteenth-Century China,” and Yingcong Dai, “Military Finance of the High Qing Period: An Overview,” in Military Culture in Imperial China, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009). For Qianlong’s military victory prints, see Marcia Reed, “Imperial Impressions: The Qianlong Emperor’s Print Suites,” and Ya-Chen Ma, “War and Empire: Images of Battle during the Qianlong Reign,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015).

78 Barrow, p. 405. 79 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 63! of 300 David Porter explains that China came to be associated with the feminine by way of chinoiserie and porcelain. His assertion is that chinoiserie and porcelain-collecting in the eighteenth century “…may have been associated with the troubling realities of female agency in the commercial and economic spheres.”80 By the time the Macartney mission set sail, this association— China tinged with femininity—would have been well-established.81 The next image affirms the generalization that China’s military was weak. A Soldier of Chu- San (fig. 3.15) is unusual in that it is a horizontal engraving, rotated ninety degrees to fit the verticality of the book. Having a horizontal composition allows Alexander to split the space in half, accommodating the soldier on one side, and a military post in the other (comprising the background). The soldier stands respectfully, meets the viewer’s eye, and showcases his matchlock gun. The matchlock gun was brought to China by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, but it was obsolete in Europe by 1700. (Barrow confirms that the flintlock had become the firearm of choice among European soldiers.82) While Alexander acknowledges that “The Chinese are supposed to have known the use of fire-arms and gunpowder at a very early period,” he remarks that “the chief expenditure of gunpowder has been in the frequent practice of firing salutes and discharging of fireworks.”83 He concludes that “The matchlock is of the rudest workmanship” and that it “must be thought extraordinary that the Chinese government should continue with the use of this clumsy weapon, when the ingenuity of the people so well enables them to manufacture muskets equal to those in Europe.”84 It is curious that Alexander should so fervently deplore the uselessness of the matchlock guns when China had supposedly been at peace for over four centuries. In the background, the soldiers of the military post have been called out as a man of rank approaches, and they each line up holding their guns like the man portrayed at left. There is a subtle reassurance to European audiences that no matter how numerous the soldiers of the Chinese are, they are of no threat to European armies as long as they tout outdated weaponry.

80 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 33. Porter analyzes the association between women, porcelain, chinoiserie, and China in particular in Chapters One, Three, and Four. See also James Grantham Turner, “‘News from the New Exchange’: Commodity, erotic fantasy, and the female entrepreneur,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text, eds. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer. (London: Routledge, 1995).

81 I discuss this in-depth in the next chapter, particularly in the section entitled “Alexander’s Depictions of Other Women & His Commentary on Foot-Binding.” 82 Barrow, p. 411.

83 Alexander, Costume, no page. 84 Ibid. Page 64! of 300 It is not only the individuals and weapons that comprise the Chinese military that are subject to scrutiny—indeed, A Ship of War (fig. 3.16) is rife with its own criticisms. However, Alexander is not entirely acerbic in his appraisal; in a similar fashion to offering China’s centuries of peace as an explanation for its soldiers’ uselessness, he again explains that the Middle Kingdom’s lack of nautical navigation is attributed to the fact that “The Chinese are so well supplied with the produce of their own country, as to require very little from distant lands.”85 Chinese use of the compass is characterized similarly as gunpowder: that, although they each enjoy a long history in China (Alexander does not attribute their invention to China), their use has since stagnated. Alexander writes that the Chinese can neither fully appreciate the compass’s use in conjunction with astronomy, nor can they maneuver their “clumsy” ships. However, the seamen do “venerate” the compass, likening it to a deity, “to which they sometimes offer sacrifices of flesh and fruit.”86 While this deification is not explicitly judged, there is the hint that the Chinese would rather partake in superstitious rituals than embrace new technology. Lastly, as the viewer was reminded not to mistake the soldier’s uniform’s nankeen for mail, the viewer is again cautioned not to be too impressed with the image of the ship of war since “The ports are false; as few ships of the Chinese navy are, at present, supplied with artillery.”87 With Alexander supplying information such as this to the masses, one cannot help but wonder if this notion of a false and inexperienced military made the decision to take up arms against the Chinese four decades later an easier one to make.

Civilian Figures: Peasants, Merchants, and Elites

Peasants I would first like to analyze images of civilian figures, grouped by social class, in keeping with Cannadine’s thesis. However, what must be noted is the distinction Alexander makes between these civilians and military figures; the most striking visual and textual distinction is not between peasants and bureaucratic elites, but between those involved with the Qing military or not. The three engravings of peasants, despite being shown with diverse occupations, have a few visual characteristics in common: they are shown in groups, close to the earth (many are squatting), engaged in an activity, and for the most part, they are not depicted frontally. The groupings

85 Ibid. This statement is how Alexander and company would have understood contemporary international trade in China (or a perceived lack of it), but for a present-day analysis, see Zheng Yangwen, China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped Modern China. (London: Brill, 2011).

86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. Page 65! of 300 contribute to the anonymity of the peasants. The anonymity is an important quality in achieving the anthropological detachment which Alexander strives for, and also for creating a Warburgian catalogue of types which can be recycled in later iterations.88 A Peasant, With his Wife and Family, (fig. 3.17) describes the ubiquity of tobacco smoking and features the book’s only description of foot-binding. Following a straightforward description of the method of foot-binding, Alexander concludes, “In consequence of this extraordinary custom the feet of adult women seldom exceed five inches and a half; even the peasantry pique themselves on the smallness of the feet, and take great care to adorn them with embroidered silk shoes, and bands for the ankles, while the rest of their habiliments display the most abject poverty.”89 His tone is ambivalent here: on the one hand, he seems to criticize the resources devoted to creating and maintaining bound feet (and this criticism is purely a financial one), but on the other, he does not dwell on this point, either. Especially in comparison with Picturesque Representations, the reference to foot-binding here is curt. In the next chapter, I will conduct a case study on the way women and foot-binding are portrayed in the 1805 in comparison to the 1814 publications. To return once more to the depictions of peasants, class indeed remains the organizing category rather than gender, and class is very strongly present visually. Of the five men in A Group of Trackers, Of the Vessels, at Dinner, (fig. 3.18) four of them are sitting. They are in the middle of dinner: “The chief food of these poor labourers, is rice; and they consider it a luxury, when they can procure vegetables fried in rancid oil, or animal offal, to mix with it.”90 The method of eating is also described: “the standing figure is employed in eating his rice in the usual way, which is by placing the edge of the bowl against his lower lip, and with the chopsticks knocking the contents into his mouth.”91 Although these trackers’ occupation is described, it is noteworthy that only the peasants are seen engaging in base activities such as smoking and eating. Accordingly, the depictions of the social elite resemble portraits, while the peasants are showcased in anthropological studies. This further supports my hypothesis that Alexander has subtly created class demarcations within his book. The armchair travelers that comprised his audience would relate to the higher-classed Chinese individuals, while looking upon the Chinese peasants as they would look upon Britain’s own. (Hayot, as has been noted above, remarked on the high cost of the initial publication.)

88 David Freedberg, “Warburg’s Mask: A Study of Idolatry,” in Anthropologies of Art, ed. Mariët Westermann. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005). 89 Ibid.

90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. Page 66! of 300 The last group of peasants is A Group of Peasantry, Watermen, &c., playing with Dice (fig. 3.19). Once again, there is a group of five men and only one is standing upright; three are hunched around a game table while the fifth watches in a crouched position. The only reference to an occupation is that the standing figure is a husbandman, as indicated by his agricultural instrument, and that another is a waterman, which serves as a segue into the description of the gong with which every vessel is equipped. Alexander departs from his typical journalistic tone by describing the peasants’ gaming:

The Chinese are so much addicted to gaming, that they are seldom without a pack of cards, or a set of dice. … The laws of the empire allowing them full power to dispose of their wives and children, instances have happened when these have been put to the hazard of a throw; and it should be mentioned, that in all their games, whether for amusement or avarice, the Chinese are very noisy and quarrelsome.92

Alexander thus objectifies Chinese women and children through his account of Chinese men. This is not the only image of gaming in China; Chinese Gamblers with Fighting Quails (fig. 3.20) details the breeding of fighting quails, rules of the game, quail fighting’s illegal-but- commonly-practiced status, and once again, makes mention of wives and children being offered up as concubines and servants to pay gambling debts. This scene of four men (with two squatting) features a small boy who looks on worriedly. On the left, the peasant man squatting is seen in contrast to a lower-official, marked by his clothing and hat. Visually conflating the two men indicates that gambling is ubiquitous in China with little regard to class. Suzanne Morton suggests that the denigration of these forms of gaming were drawn from Protestantism: “… the criminalization of gambling reflected dominant Protestant liberal attitudes towards labour, rationality … English-speaking Protestants … who opposed gambling therefore used this governing moral code as testimony to their own ethical superiority as they elevated themselves above people who contravened their rules.”93 She emphasizes the notion that “Gambling and lotteries were characteristic of ‘less civilized’ or ‘less developed’ countries…”94 and that this had its origins in nineteenth-century racial constructs. While Alexander’s account predates these case studies, I suggest that the same Protestant ethos would have informed the artist and his contemporaries. Alexander perceives this alleged gambling addiction among the Chinese through the moralistic Protestant gaze.

92 Ibid.

93 Suzanne Morton, At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919-1969. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 110. Her analysis carefully considers the perception of Chinese migrants and the Chinese diaspora community in Canada. 94 Ibid. Page 67! of 300 Merchants and the Middle Class While the lower classes are characterized by their poverty and base activities, the middle-/ merchant class are visually marked by their trades. In Portrait of the Purveyor, For the Embassy, while the Embassador remained at Macao, (fig. 3.21) we are introduced to an upright, forward- facing man. Alexander begins, “The dress of this figure is the same as is generally worn by the citizens, or middle class people in China...”95 thus ascribing a class to him before any other identifying feature. The visual and textual descriptions of his dress are similarly astute, leading a documentary credence to the account, while Alexander concludes, “The back ground, is a scene at Macao.”96 Unlike the peasants, this middle class man is attached to an urban trading center. While a peasant’s geography could remain abstract, an industrializing Britain would easily see the connection between occupation and location. A Tradesman (fig. 3.22) begins with an almost-identical line: “The dress worn by this person is common among the middle class of people,”97 with a detailed description of the form and materials following. In accordance with his class, he is also shown upright and forward-facing. He and the Purveyor both make eye-contact with the viewer, unlike any of the peasants. This particular tradesman carries and sells birds’ nests, which the upper classes eat as a delicacy. Following a description of the nests’ origins and use, Alexander states, “They are therefore highly prized by the upper ranks, and their great expence [sic] excludes their use among the poor.”98 The British audience would understand a difference in diet based on social class. However, while the upper- classes enjoyed this delicacy, they are not shown eating it; instead, we are introduced to this food through the man that sells it. Lastly, the Tradesman is shown in a distinct setting: “On the bank near which he stands, is a post to which a lantern is attached; the back ground is a scene at Han-tcheou- foo.”99 Again, it is the urban setting which can produce particular occupations.

Social Elites Those who fall into the upper-class category are all depicted upright and forward-facing, like the two middle-class men, but unlike them, they avoid the viewer’s gaze. As A Chinese Lady

95 Alexander, Costume, no page.

96 Ibid. 97 Ibid.

98 Ibid. 99 Ibid. Page 68! of 300 and her Son, attended by a Servant (fig. 3.23) attests, social class and race are not the only considerations in creating hierarchies. The description begins, “The female sex in China live retired in proportion to their situation in life.”100 She is thus first identified by her gender, and only afterwards, by her class, or ‘situation.’ Alexander describes her clothing in detail, but unlike the upper-ranks of men, the Lady’s ornamentation is given much attention: her hair style, hair accessories, perfume, jewelry, cosmetics, and even shoes and feet—implied here to be ornamentation as well—are detailed visually and textually. The servant—noticeably smaller—is shown holding a parasol over the Lady, though this function is not explained, perhaps owing to contemporary Britons’ familiarity with the practice. Furthermore, the female servant is only accorded one sentence: “The servant, as is usual with the lower class, wears on the wrist a ring of brass or tutenag.”101 Thus, the Lady and servant are united by their gender: neither is solely defined in terms of her occupation or activity, but also by her gender and ornamentation. However, unlike the 1814 images of women, there is no mention of foot-binding here, except the observation that “The small shoes are elegantly wrought, and the contour of the ankles are never seen, by reason of the loose bandage round them.”102 In this regard, the women are mere curiosities, not objects of derision. The Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin, In his Dress of Ceremony, (fig. 3.24) depicts a civil servant who helped host Alexander’s party. This upper-class figure differs from the Lady primarily because his status is derived from his profession. He is depicted in the very clothing that signifies his rank: “His external honours were the customary distinction of a blue ball on his cap; from which was suspended a peacock’s feather, being a mark of additional rank.”103 While his dress is more fully explicated, and drawn in vivid detail, the last note is that “In his hands he holds a paper relative to the Embassy.”104 While the Lady was more fully visually described by including her son and servant as ‘accessories,’ the Civil Servant is defined by his bureaucratic role. This paper and the role it signifies are set apart from both the middle-class men and the peasants: the middle-class men are depicted with the very objects that provide their livelihood, not an object with which to provide administration, and the peasants are dynamic and engrossed in eating and playing. The boat seen in

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid. 102 Ibid.

103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. Page 69! of 300 the background of Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin may refer to the boats kept by public servants to transport them as their profession requires. In this manner, the role of the Civil Servant transcends any particular urban locale. Furthermore, this image is a portrait of a particular individual who is present in accounts of the Macartney Mission, whereas the peasants, merchants, and even the Lady could be anybody. That Alexander includes a portrait of a man he knew adds an air of authenticity to his account. Lastly, A Mandarin, attended by a Domestic, (fig. 3.25) depicts a literati and civil magistrate, whose “high rank and honour are … denoted by the red ball and peacock’s feather … as also by the beads of pearl and coral appending from his neck.”105 He is a high-ranking member of Chinese society, and while he averts the viewer’s gaze and is facing forward, he is seated “in the manner of the Turks.”106 His servant holds a purse full of tobacco, and he also has a pipe; thus, Alexander conveys that smoking tobacco transcends social class, but unlike the peasants, who are drawn smoking or carrying their tobacco, the upper-class Mandarin is separated from this activity by way of his servant. The inclusion of this clear class-based hierarchy would have been familiar to the British audiences affluent enough to purchase Costume. Depicting the class structure in this manner—not only individuals but members of various classes commingling—would make an otherwise exotic China feel more familiar. The mandarin’s robes are clearly delineated, again affirming Alexander’s first-hand experience. These blue-hued robes became signifiers of China in their own right following the publication of Costume; as I take up in Chapter Seven, figures depicted in the stained glass windows of the Royal Pavilion wear them, to note a prominent example of this diffusion.

105 Ibid. 106 Ibid. Page 70! of 300 Chapter IV William Alexander’s ‘Picturesque Representations’

As I have outlined in the previous chapter, William Alexander’s two works, Costume of China (1805) and Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese (1814) have previously been treated, respectively, as an original and a revised reprint of that original in the scant literature that addresses the artist’s engravings. Indeed, the ‘sequel’ has often been overlooked as Alexander’s images in Costume serve as mere illustrations in present-day publications about the Macartney mission, the kowtow controversy, and British diplomatic history. In particular, The Approach of the Emperor of China to His Tent in Tartary to Receive the British Ambassador, (fig. 4.1) from the elder Staunton’s Official Account of 1797 is frequently cited. Similarly, literature about the Picturesque movement largely ignores Alexander’s use of the term and his accompanying images, along with the Picturesque Representations series as a whole—maintaining instead a convention which privileges non-figural representations. As I stated in the previous chapter, Hayot only acknowledges Picturesque Representations in a footnote, and claims that this publication featured the “same illustrations” as Costume.107 They are not actually the same illustrations, but rather only the same subjects—an important distinction. As images rather than written accounts, they have also been largely overlooked in the wider literature on travel writing.108 Indeed, having two sets of engravings produced by the same artist over the course of nearly a decade offers an invaluable opportunity to examine how depictions of China—its people, military, customs, sailing vessels, topography, et cetera—began to change rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century. Holding one variable constant—that is, the artist—accounts for potentially different artistic interpretations of the same subject matter. That William Alexander chose the term ‘Picturesque’ is at once curious and instructive. Alexander has been credited with the entirety of Bulmer’s Picturesque series of engravings: there

107 Eric Hayot, The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 63. 108 For a comprehensive analysis of travel writing from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, see the series, Travels, Explorations, and Empire: Writings from the Era of Imperial Expansion, 1770-1835, eds. Tim Fulford, Peter Kitson, and Tim Young. (London: Routledge, 2001). Page 71! of 300 are also volumes on the dress and manners of the English, Austrians, Russians, and Turks.109 The use of the term is curious because Picturesque, as an aesthetic category, was typically used to describe landscapes, gardens, and paintings (typically in the landscape genre), but not to applied to profiles and portraits of human figures. In this sense, the previous series title of Costume seems more comprehensible. However, the use of the term is also instructive because it demonstrates a broadening of the application of such a term; understood in conjunction with the categories of ‘beautiful’ and ‘sublime’ (as the three categories are typically understood as a triad), it follows that profiles and portraits can be characterized as picturesque as well. Alexander is not idealizing his subjects, as a beautiful characterization might, nor does he set out to evoke a sense of terror, as sublime may suggest.110 This is also suggestive of Romanticism. Orthodox studies in the humanities have, until recently, distinguished the Picturesque, and then Romanticism, as a European phenomenon—diffusing occasionally to the periphery, but never eradicating borders or complicating transcultural experiences. Excepting Loske’s research into the role of Chinese imagery in the Royal Pavilion,111 and Sloboda’s work on Alexander’s version of chinoiserie, little has been made of the visual material to come of the 1793 Macartney diplomatic mission to China—never mind isolating the meaning of the term ‘Picturesque’ which Alexander uses. This chapter, then, seeks to understand William Alexander’s Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese (1814) within a Romantic framework. I suggest that his use of the term ‘Picturesque,’ along with its aesthetics, evokes Romanticism. I am particularly interested in juxtaposing images of human subjects in the aforementioned Representations to those in his 1805 Costume of China. His earlier work treats his subject matter with an attempted anthropological detachment, while the later publication depicts [renders] the figures in a more Romantic-Orientalist mode.

109 These offer an intriguing comparison to the Picturesque Representations of the Chinese: for example, the Picturesque Austrians includes a fifteen-page, 1,000-year condensed history of Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia. A Polish Jewess, for example, is stereotyped in the derogatory manner that one also finds of the Chinese figures. For analogous case studies on travel writing on India and New Zealand (respectively) during the same period, see: Pramod K. Nayar, “The Sublime Raj: English Writing and India, 1750-1820,” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 34 (2004): 3811-3817; and, Sarah Treadwell, “Categorical Weavings: European Representations of the Architecture of the Hakari,” in Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840, eds. Alex Calder, Jonathan Lamb, and Bridget Orr. (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999).

110 Edmund Burke’s 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful suggested this definition for the sublime. 111 This will be taken up in Chapter Seven. Page 72! of 300 imposes a more Romantic-Orientalist paradigm onto his figures. His use of the word ‘Picturesque’ in the later work’s title is particularly revealing. I will include several of his images from Picturesque Chinese, starting with that of the Qianlong Emperor and moving to other categories. I will also include three case studies within this discussion to ascertain exactly how Alexander’s 1814 volume is both an artistic and ideological departure from his 1805 work. While he evades overt idealization (aligning with the beautiful categorization) or denigration (sublimity) of his figures,112 it does seem anomalous that Alexander—or his publisher—should choose to include so many human portraits while virtually eliminating landscapes and boats from the 1814 book. In Costume, for example, boats and sailing vessels occupy an impressive number of plates. The counterbalance, however, is that there are more women, peasants, and vendors in the latter.113 This is not unique to the treatment of the Chinese: Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Austrians (1813) and Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Russians (1814) similarly depict only humans. However, the volumes on Austria and Russia carefully distinguish all the various cultural, ethnic, or religious groups, whereas the Chinese volume homogenizes, or at least fails to recognize, any such differences. The questions I would like to address include, why and how do the changing representations of the Chinese coincide with the change in the contemporary political climate? Also, why does Alexander strive for documentary accuracy in his earlier work, but apply a more picturesque style to his later works, as this chapter demonstrates? What does this shift in style say about his audience and the idea of the Chinese in the British consciousness? By conflating his two books, as has been done in the small amount of research that already exists, one loses the opportunity to examine the subtle differences that emerge in the span of a decade. I must also make a note of the origins of these two books. In 1805, Alexander published The Costume of China, which was issued by publisher William Miller. In 1814, he published Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, which was issued by publisher John Murray, who had bought out Miller’s holdings in 1812. Most sources will describe the two books as two editions of the same thing, as described in the previous chapter, but I assert

112 By ‘denigration’ in this colonial and Romantic sense, I follow Nayar’s “The Sublime Raj.” He argues that a sublime landscape—and by extension, its people and culture—embody desolation, danger, terror, and vastness. In the case of Alexander’s portraits, a sublime representation is one that evokes the sense of desolation. See Nayar, “The Sublime Raj.” 113 The other books in the Picturesque series also focus heavily on human portraits while forgoing other possibilities, such as boats or buildings, so this is not unique to Picturesque Chinese. This is why I believe that this may have been the series publishers’ choice, and was perhaps reflective of contemporary demand. Page 73! of 300 that this is a misunderstanding. Firstly, although they lay claim to the same author and illustrator, they belong to two separate series—a fundamental distinction to be made. There was a separate series of Picturesque Representations of the dress and manners of various peoples, including the English. It was possible that Murray commissioned a new series once he took over as publisher. One can speculate that this was due to a high demand for such imagery, although the specific changes that the new publisher, Murray, may have requested are not known, so one can only analyze the existing visual differences in the plates themselves. Hayot noted that Costume of China was published twice between its initial release and the publication of Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese,114 which suggests sufficient demand to justify the creation of a new series.

The Qianlong Emperor

Perhaps the most conspicuous absence from the 1805 Costume of China is a portrait of the Qianlong emperor himself—this exclusion is ‘corrected’ in Picturesque Chinese (Kien Lung, fig. 4.2). The earlier Costume does feature, uncommonly for Alexander, a particular individual who is named and depicted in Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin. This civil servant is a man that Alexander would have seen and met in person as he was attending to the artist’s party; in this regard, it is possible that in Costume, Alexander tried to focus on that with which he was personally familiar, while in Picturesque Chinese, public and publisher demands may have dictated that Alexander fill in the gaps for exciting images—such as that of the emperor—despite a lack of personal association. Among the most telling signs that Alexander did not personally meet the emperor is his depiction of the throne on which his subject sits. Alexander depicts a European-style armchair in a golden hue and adorned with stylized animals (one relief sculpture on the side of the thrones and another dragon-like animal carved alongside the edge). The decorative motif at the top resembles more a French fleur-de-lis than any Chinese figure. Perhaps this is meant to convey the emperor’s status to a European audience more familiar with French royalty.115 There is a small ottoman upon which the emperor rests one foot, and he rests his arms comfortably as well. Alexander’s imperial throne can be compared to three of Qianlong’s actual thrones. The first is in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection (fig. 4.3): it is a wooden throne likely

114 Hayot, p. 62. 115 As I describe later in this dissertation, the commingling of Chinese and French decorative motifs was to be found contemporarily to this book, at the Royal Pavilion. Page 74! of 300 commissioned in the 1780s for the Tuanhe Travelling Palace, a temporary shelter located in the Nan Haizi hunting park, which was just south of Beijing.116 (Alexander notes that Qianlong was an avid outdoorsman.) This throne is wider than it is tall, and it is polychrome lacquer over wood, rather than the gilded version that Alexander presents. The legs of the throne curl inwards and rest upon a base. At the sides are not armrests, but more of a graduated continuation of the back. The carvings include symbols of the emperor’s dynasty and status, including a five-clawed dragon, and also figures that represent foreign peoples paying tribute to China and Qianlong.117 Alexander attempted to capture the essence of the dragon carvings—perhaps he was familiar with Chinese imperial iconography—but his throne is nonetheless a British invention. The cushions on the actual throne would have been added separately; it is not clear why Alexander imagined this. Two other Qing-era thrones have recently come up for auction, which provides a few more examples of contemporary furniture. China Daily presents a later-Qianlong-era throne118 (fig. 4.4) which was originally housed in the “Hall of Imperial Supremacy (Huangji dian) in the Forbidden City, the main hall in the area of Palace of Tranquil Longevity (Ningshou gong), which the Emperor Qianlong built for spending his years after his retirement.”119 Like the Tuanhe Travelling Palace throne at the Victoria and Albert Museum, this throne features legs that bend inwards and rest on a rectangular frame type of base. It is made of rosewood and has inlaid gold and flower designs, its cushioning part of the seat itself. Dragon motifs can be found nestled inside the seat, along the back support. The fabric is of a yellow-gold color—yellow was an imperial color—which may have inspired Alexander’s use of the hue.120 The stag embroidered on the inside-backing of the throne may signify the emperor’s fondness for hunting. Also like the Victoria and Albert example, this throne has a rather short back relative to its seat depth and width.

116 Notably, the V&A did not acquire the throne during the Opium Wars or any other British military invasion. Instead, Russian soldiers took it in 1900, and it was brought to Britain in 1917 following the Soviet Revolution. The V&A indicates how the Russian soldiers acquired the throne during the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, during which time Chinese proto-nationalists rose up against, and lost to, an Eight-Nation Alliance (including Russia and the British Empire) which represented the foreign imperial expansion and Christian missionary influence which the Chinese began to detest. Indeed, Russia invaded and occupied Manchuria, and some of the territory gained during this campaign is still part of Russia. See Patrick G. March, Eastern Destiny: Russia in Asia and the North Pacific. (Westport, CT: Praegar Publishers), 1996.

117 “Throne.” The Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed September 2016, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/ O18895/throne-unknown/. 118 This was auctioned in January 2015 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, for 5.15 million USD.

119 “Emperor Qianlong's throne valued at $5.6 million.” China Daily, accessed September 2016, http:// www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/art/2015-01/08/content_19273893.htm. 120 Incidentally, yellow-gold is a predominant color within the interiors of the Royal Pavilion. Page 75! of 300 Sotheby’s auctioned another Qianlong throne,121 which gained fame as the world’s most expensive piece of Chinese furniture when sold at auction (fig. 4.5).122 Showing the same characteristics as the other two examples, the height is low relative to the width and depth, and the legs curl in and rest upon a rectangular frame. It is busy with iconographical carvings (it appears to be made of wood), and its five dragons, representing the emperor, dominate the otherwise elaborate composition. While the specifications of each of these three thrones vary, they share many traits that are not found in the Alexander image. In particular, the material (wood in the actual thrones, indiscernible but metallic in the Alexander), the nature of the carvings (Alexander vaguely alludes to these), the dimensions (Alexander depicts a Western-style high-back chair rather than the squat examples I have included), and even the base itself (the legs in the print rest on the floor rather than a supporting or symbolic frame) are all discrepancies and evidence that Alexander was unfamiliar with imperial furniture of this nature. Instead of studying one of Qianlong’s actual thrones, it seems as though Alexander found inspiration for his print from his similar depiction of the Prince Regent’s throne in Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English, (fig. 4.6) published a year earlier, in 1813. At this time, the Prince of Wales had served as Prince Regent for two years; Alexander titles the print simply Sovereign and the accompanying text is similarly sparse: “Represented in his coronation robes, over which he wears the insignia of the Order of the Garter. The chair in which he is seated is similar to that in which the Kings of Great Britain are crowned.”123 The chair is of similar dimensions to Qianlong’s anglicized, fictional furniture: only as wide as is necessary to accommodate an adult man, but high-backed and reaching an ornamental peak, and accompanied by an ottoman (although George’s is cushioned with red fabric). The hint that the seat’s interior back may be carved with a royal iconographical program is similar to the abstract motifs found on Alexander’s depiction of Qianlong’s throne as well. George IV’s seat appears to draw inspiration from William and Joseph Halfpenny’s Gothic revival drawings of the prior century; Gothic furniture design often intermingled with chinoiserie in the mid-eighteenth century. As I have discussed previously, Alexander aligns his figures with the social hierarchy that would have been familiar to his British audience; readers/viewers of Picturesque Representations of

121 This throne sold in Hong Kong in Autumn 2009 for 11 million USD.

122 “Throne of Emperor Qianlong Breaks World Auction Record for Any Chinese Furniture.” Art Daily, accessed September 2016, http://artdaily.com/news/33806/Throne-of-Emperor-Qianlong-Breaks-World- Auction-Record-for-Any-Chinese-Furniture#.V-o7AGWv5ov. 123 William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English. (London: John Murray, 1813), no page. Page 76! of 300 the Chinese could relate the image of the Chinese emperor to that of their own sovereign. George the Prince Regent, however, is depicted against a generic royal portrait backdrop: red drapery, Greek columns, and the suggestion of a landscape in the background. The Prince of Wales is not crowned as he is not yet king; the crown awaits him on a pedestal. He is depicted as a reluctant ruler, his body contorted in such a way—shoulders slumping inward, left hand awkwardly placed on his thigh—so as to suggest uneasiness. His head is turned in the opposite direction of his body, again undermining his ease in an authoritative role. By contrast, Alexander depicts Qianlong as the epitome of grandeur and rulership. His body is perfectly positioned on the throne along a straight vertical axis. His shoulders and arms are open, exuding confidence, but he is not weak. His gaze meets would-be visitors, and his clothing borrows from examples of mandarins. Unlike George, Prince of Wales, his throne is devoid of any context save for a short podium, onto which the throne casts a shadow. Perhaps this indicates the timelessness— or rather stagnation—of the Qing Dynasty.124 The accompanying text is also more flattering than that of the British ruler:

Kien Lung [Qianlong] was125 the fourth Emperor of the Tartar dynasty,126 which now possesses the throne of China.127 When the annexed Sketch was taken he was eighty-three years of age, but had all the appearance of a hale, vigorous man of sixty. Indeed his whole life had been spent in the active discharge of public business, and in the violent exercise of hunting and shooting in the wild regions of Tartary, which he continued with unabated zeal almost to the period of life above mentioned. He always commenced public business at two or three in the morning, and gave audience to foreign ambassadors at that early hour, whether in winter or summer, and he generally retired at sunset; and to this invariable habit of rising and retiring at an early hour, he attributed much of his healthy and vigorous constitution.128

The description is familiar, collegial even; despite having never made the personal acquaintance of the emperor, Alexander’s unique authority is dependent upon his own experiences and observations. Therefore, Alexander fine-tunes the description of Qianlong the Man rather than Qianlong the Emperor—after all, his audience would have had opportunities to read about Chinese emperors as

124 Alexander writes, about A Bookseller, “The Chinese have not made any great progress in literature, and still less in the sciences…Their printing is not performed by moveable types, like ours, but by wooden blocks the size of the page; and this mode appears to have been in use long before the Christian æra.” William Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page. The sense is one of stagnation and lack of progress.

125 Qianlong died in 1799, before any of Alexander’s works were published. 126 This name for the Qing Dynasty appears in nineteenth century European texts.

127 The Qing Dynasty resulted from the Manchu takeover in 1644. 128 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page. It is unknown to what extent his account his factual, or how he decided upon this description since he did not meet the Qianlong emperor personally. It is possible that this information was relayed to him by George Leonard Staunton, although this is only speculation. Page 77! of 300 archetypes, but what of their personality and disposition? These were the tantalizing details that only first-hand experience could accord a readership. Notably, there is no mention whatsoever of Qianlong’s rule: how long it was, any territories he may have conquered or lost, or what his legal philosophies were. By contrast, the Jesuits’ accounts like Kircher’s and Du Halde’s frequently cited histories of Chinese dynasties and emperors. A final curiosity about Qianlong’s appearance in Picturesque Chinese is that he is included at all, while the Jiaqing Emperor (who ruled from 1796 to 1820) is omitted entirely—he does not even warrant a mention. The textual accompaniment to Qianlong’s entry vaguely implies that he was no longer living by the time of the book’s publication, but there is no sense that the imperial role was passed on. This gives readers a sense that the Chinese Empire itself died alongside the Qianlong Emperor. Furthermore, excluding Jiaqing both visually textually reinforces the notion that China had reached a point of complete stagnation. By skirting the issue of Qianlong’s death and Jiaqing’s subsequent accession, Picturesque Chinese suggests that the Chinese Empire is somehow outside of time, or at least the progression of time. By refusing to acknowledge the new emperor, Alexander lends credence to the notion that China has not moved forward. At the outset of Picturesque Chinese, Alexander begins to assume more personal, intimate knowledge than in Costume, and the engravings visually reinforce this. The portrait of Qianlong is entirely imagined, demonstrating that the artist has begun to move away from his anthropological approach of a decade earlier. As I will describe in a later chapter, Alexander’s quasi-successor, Thomas Allom, goes so far as to imagine and depict entire interiors of China. This ‘moving in’ visually, from Alexander’s two works to Allom’s, parallels Britain’s attempts to gain economic, diplomatic, and military influence in China during the same period.

The Two Mandarins

While the Qianlong Emperor is conspicuously absent in Costume, Alexander includes the uncharacteristically personal Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin, which depicts a mandarin that the Macartney embassy knew personally. I have already analyzed this image in the previous chapter, but I will include him here as a point of comparison for A Mandarin in His Court Dress (fig. 4.7), featured in Picturesque Chinese. Curiously, the depiction of these two men is a reversal of what one finds in the portrayal of the Qianlong Emperor: namely, the later-dated mandarin is the less personal depiction; Chow-ta-zhin of 1805 had been transformed into a generic type by 1814.

Page 78! of 300 This apparent discrepancy between personal and impersonal representations can be attributed, at least in part, to the signification of the ‘characters’ in question. Chow-ta-zhin was included in the 1805 volume because Alexander knew him personally, and this acquaintance lends authority to the account. Costume also maintains a narrative close to the actual events of the Macartney Mission itself, with Alexander intervening with dates and personal observations. In this manner, he relays his journey to his readers while anthologizing the ethnographic types that he encounters. Picturesque Chinese, excepting a portrayal of the emperor (which the publisher or public may have demanded) strives for a Picturesque rendering rather than an anthropological one. In this regard, a personal affiliation with mandarins would not add anything to that portrayal. Indeed, denying the Picturesque mandarin an identity is what allows Alexander to fold him into the overarching theme of his 1814 volume. I have made reference to the 1805 portrayal of Chow-ta-zhin so as to juxtapose him to the 1814 Mandarin. The subtle differences between the two images reveal the deteriorating relationship between Britain and China. These two figures appear nearly identical at first glance, and the 1805 portrait of Chow-ta-zhin was clearly the visual model on which this unnamed figure was based. However, an examination of the details reveals that Chow-ta-zhin was only a visual inspiration, as the 1814 mandarin brings along ideological baggage missing from his predecessor. The most apparent difference is the fact that the former is named while the latter is not. In Costume, Alexander’s text offers a description of this individual, Chow-ta-zhin (also called Quan), who was “entrusted with the care of the British Embassy during its residence in China.”129 Alexander writes that “He was a man of grave deportment, strict integrity, and sound judgment, as well as of great erudition; having been preceptor to a part of the Imperial family.”130 He describes in thorough detail the symbolism of his official dress, and notes that the paper he holds is one relating to the Embassy. Chow-ta-zhin is not a type, as is more common in Costume, and he does offer armchair travelers the chance to feel as though they have met somebody of importance in China. Alexander’s association with Chow-ta-zhin also gives him the authority to depict China. Furthermore, Chow-ta-zhin is pictured with a mandarin’s boat in the background.131 As has been discussed, these vessels conveyed mandarins such as Chow-ta-zhin through China’s vast system of canals. Alexander is visually suggesting that China’s bureaucracy is dynamic, mobile,

129 Alexander, Costume of China, no page.

130 Ibid. 131 I have addressed these vessels in detail in the previous chapter. Page 79! of 300 progressive, and orderly. This also suggests the well-functioning social hierarchy within Chinese society. As quoted in the previous chapter, there was a strict punishment for interfering with the passage of a mandarin’s vessel; this demonstrates the custom in China which placed social harmony and bureaucratic efficiency above the rights of individuals. This is also portrayed in a respectful—if not admiring—tone. The travelling boat has been removed from the anonymous, Picturesque mandarin. Instead, there is a nondescript building in the background, which may connote domesticity and isolation. This building—along with its concomitant domesticity and isolation—replaces the boat, and with it, the dynamism and mobility (literal and metaphorical) which it represented. With one visual strike, the mandarin, and by extension, the Qing Empire, has been denigrated, demerited. The 1814 mandarin is also missing the official papers, which have been replaced by a pipe. This follows the replacement of the boat with a building. First, by removing the official papers, Alexander removes any association the mandarin could be thought to have to the Macartney Mission. This emphasizes his role as a Picturesque type, and not as a link between the armchair traveler and the interior of China. His professional, bureaucratic function is also de-emphasized with the removal of the official papers. The official papers have notably not been replaced by any other imperial objects, but those of leisure instead. It is possible that he is smoking tobacco, opium, or a combination of the two. By depicting this mandarin smoking his pipe, Alexander evokes the reputation for indolence and inactivity that Europeans saw in China by this time. The anonymous mandarin can be considered picturesque because of the simultaneous reactions he elicits: there are simultaneously qualities of beauty and horror. Viewers may feel curious, pleased, and repulsed all at once, a nod toward a Romantic aesthetic. This is no longer a documentary image. The audience is not expected to experience an intellectual response, which they would have had to the 1805 images. This image, as described, instead evokes emotion. The audience has already been made familiar with the mandarin on an intellectual level via the Costume of China, so the path was clear for a Romantic rendering to emerge. Lastly, the attire that the mandarin wears is kept visually and textually consistent with the earlier Costume version. This is important because by 1814, the mandarin in his court dress had become a new signifier of China. Although the mandarin would have been known in Europe by way of the Jesuits’ accounts, Alexander’s imagery secured its place in the visual canon of Chinese signs. An interpretation of the mandarins’ court dress appears, for example, in the stained glass windows of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, although on a woman (as indicated by the hairstyle) rather than a man. Page 80! of 300 High-Ranking Ladies

The aforementioned women in the stained glass windows of the Royal Pavilion can also be connected to Alexander’s Picturesque Chinese and the visual legacy he was creating. In Costume, female figures were scarce, warranting only a passing mention in peasant scenes in addition to A Chinese Lady and Her Son, attended by a Servant. This corresponds to Alexander’s adherence to his personal experience, as he would not have had the opportunity to meet many women individually, and his documentary accuracy depended upon his personal observations. However, Picturesque Chinese devotes six images to female figures, which aligns to his artistic mission of Picturesque representations.132 The visual and textual essays of women allow audiences ample opportunity to respond emotionally, particularly to the issue of foot-binding, as I will describe below. In this section, I will juxtapose the Lady featured in Costume (as described in the previous chapter) to her Picturesque Chinese counterpart (fig. 4.8). Like the mandarins, the two figures appear strikingly similar upon first glance, but the discrepancies in the details reveal a stark difference in contemporary attitudes towards China. While the actual figures remain unchanged, save for the absence of the servant in the latter, the depictions could not be more different. (It is possible that the servant has been omitted from this version in order to focus on the depiction of the Lady, and also because Costume focuses more heavily on class distinctions than does Picturesque Chinese.) The accompanying text also varies dramatically. The text accompanying the first image takes great care to describe the materials of the clothing, the cosmetics, et cetera. There is no mention of foot-binding. The second image’s text reads, “It is to be hoped that our ladies will never be brought to imitate the small and mutilated feet of the Chinese women, which disqualify them from the free use of their limbs.”133 In contrast to the 1805 work, the tone has turned derisive and dismissive. However, a detailed side-by-side comparison (and also a consideration of the history of foot- binding’s popularity) indicates that it is likely that the women in both images had bound feet. Alexander carefully renders the feet from different angles, perhaps to give his audience the feeling of real life observation. The visual depiction of the feet is identical in both images, while only the later version includes the scornful text, so it is likely that the British attitude (and morbid

132 By the time Picturesque Chinese was published, the Macartney mission would have been over for two decades. The curiosity about China had not come to an end, but publications related to this Mission would be outdated by this period. 133 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page. Page 81! of 300 fascination) towards foot-binding was what changed, rather than its prevalence among upper-class Chinese ladies. Another important distinction between the two depictions is the setting. In Costume, the scene takes place outside, despite the text indicating that upper-class ladies were almost never seen in public. (The reader does not know whether this outdoor setting is public or not.) His artistic license politely places the lady outside, perhaps because an interior setting (such as would be later seen in Allom) would imply an intimacy which would simultaneously detract from his anthropological intent, and seem socially inappropriate. Also, it is possible that he intended to follow the style of portrait artists such as Joshua Reynolds, who lent a timeless and pastoral quality to his works, such as this image (fig. 4.9) of a similarly-stationed woman. Alexander’s 1805 lady functions as an ethnographic type, but with a similarity to a style that his European audiences would understand. Class distinctions play an important role in the 1805 volume, so creating visual corollaries to the European tradition is instructive for Alexander’s viewers. His Picturesque lady, however, is confined to a generic domestic setting—a domesticity that repeats that which is suggested in his portrayal of a mandarin. And like the portrait of the mandarin, the domesticity connotes China’s tendency to turn inwards. The interior setting also suggests China’s unwillingness to open its ports to foreign traders; they have attempted to isolate themselves inside their own borders. The change in setting corresponds to the change in position. Tellingly, she is sitting rather than standing, rendering her a mere ornamental object. The change from a standing to a sitting position also coincides with the view of China in the British consciousness: by 1814, China had transformed from an admirable, curious place to one of despotism and stagnation. By sitting, the lady indicates that the upper classes of Chinese society are no longer vibrant and mobile, but confined to one place—that is, the past. As the mandarin has been stripped of his dynamism, so too has the lady: this lack of vitality has now been established as a pattern, rather than possibly being a chance occurrence. The interior setting also features a few stereotyped signs. The (simplified) red, blue, and white vase in the background connotes the lucrative porcelain trade, and the plants on the table remind the viewers of the popularity of anglo-chinois gardens and Europeans’ horticultural interest in the East. The two plants, side-by-side and domesticated, also suggest the cultivation of both tea and opium, the trade of which intensified Sino-British relations to the point of war. The characters on the wallpaper are thoroughly invented, but add the notion that the Chinese are exotic and inscrutable—a far cry from the 1805 types that Alexander tries to make familiar. After all, if a Page 82! of 300 people are made less familiar and more alien, they can more easily be conquered artistically, ideologically, and eventually, militarily. Regarding the Picturesque, the term is far more often used in relation to landscape images in this period, but the series publisher has decided to apply it to foreign human figures. Firstly, the use of this term for figures conflates them with the land: they are conquerable in the same way that terrain is. The lady in her domestic setting becomes as visually consumable and conquerable as a landscape. Secondly, the picturesque landscape is often detached from obvious human activity; similarly, picturesque Chinese figures are herein detached from what a European audience would consider modern civilization. They are, in a sense, of another era. The picturesque landscape also quite often features ruins, and so Alexander’s picturesque Chinese are the human remnants of a ruinous culture. There is nothing included in the Lady’s interior to suggest modernity or industrialization; this ‘snapshot’ of sorts could have been taken from any imaginable time in Chinese history.

Alexander’s Depictions of Other Women & His Commentary on Foot-Binding

Picturesque Chinese is distinguishable from Costume for, among other things, its inclusion of far more images of women, such as the one described above. On the surface, this would seem to be a benign, or even equitable, change. However, a more nuanced approach reveals that the women can be read as a metaphor for China more broadly. Orientalism, I assert, is not a static entity—a system of understanding East and West, or a body of imperialist knowledge—but rather a process.134 Part of that process requires inserting a wedge between East and West, if one subscribes to Said’s binary,135 and one method of doing that is by gendering those places. After all, inferiorization is a prerequisite for military action, and feminization is a convenient means to achieve that. Said writes that “Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and … ‘the Occident,”136 so understanding

134 Dennis Porter, “Orientalism and its Problems,” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 150-161.

135 One of the limitations of Said’s Orientalism and the later texts that he inspired is that he demarcates a binary between East and West that is largely exclusive of the Far East, and instead focuses upon the Middle East. Subaltern studies have successfully brought India and South Asia back into the scholarly dialogue, but Orientalism as it pertains to China is largely absent from the literature. For the sake of focusing on the images included in this chapter, I am not challenging the East/West binary as Said postulated, but the issue is worthy of greater attention. 136 Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 2-3. Page 83! of 300 the gender dynamic inherent in that distinction is key in understanding the inclusion and depiction of women in Alexander’s Picturesque Chinese. This process of feminizing the East was well underway throughout the eighteenth century. David Porter highlights how tea-drinking and porcelain-collecting were seen as feminine endeavors, which in turn, tinged China itself with femininity; he writes that the satirical essays and literary depictions exhibit “a pronounced gendering of Chinese commodities but also an association of the Chinese taste with the supposedly vain extravagance of female passion in the aesthetic, economic, and sexual spheres.”137 This characterization was the norm in the eighteenth century, but through it, China eventually could come to be gendered as well. Porter also asserts that chinoiserie as an artistic movement (which witnessed its peak of popularity at the same time as the period of rapidly increasing tea-drinking and porcelain-collecting) “marks the consolidation of an oppositional aesthetic widely embraced by contemporary women and coded along specifically gendered lines in its resistance to cultural assumptions embedded within the classicist norm.”138 This has several implications. First, that women were driving the demand for chinoiserie interiors means that contemporary arbiters of taste could read China as having had qualities which attracted a female audience. In this manner, by attracting female consumers, China itself must be feminine. Second, this female-driven demand for chinoiserie as an antithesis to the classicist norm implies that the classicist norm is male; so, one would find this female aesthetic trend to be just that—a trend—and that the beginning of a new (nineteenth) century could see the return to a classical, male norm. As it pertains to Alexander’s Picturesque Chinese women, Said writes that “The Oriental was linked … to elements in Western society (delinquents, the insane, women, the poor) having in common an identity best described as lamentably alien,”139 thus othering both women and the East. Again, one finds the conflation of ‘the Orient’—including China—with women; they share an identity which is outside traditional Western notions of masculinity. I have hitherto focused on Western women, by way of drinking tea, collecting and displaying porcelain, and creating chinoiserie interiors. These habits all either peaked in the eighteenth century (chinoiserie), or by 1814, had become so completely absorbed into the British cultural sign system (tea drinking, displaying porcelain) that they had begun to shed their overt Chinese associations. Therefore, by

137 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 31.

138 Ibid., p. 32-33. 139 Said, p. 207. Emphasis mine. Page 84! of 300 depicting numerous Chinese women, that process of gendering China could be renewed for nineteenth-century audiences.140 The women that are included span the social-class hierarchy, but are primarily peasants. One ‘woman’ is not a woman at all, but rather a man playing the role of a female comedian on stage, while A Lady, and Her Son, described above, corresponds to an 1805 version. I would first like to offer a cursory examination of the remaining images before moving on to that which unites them all: the subject of foot-binding. The other high-ranking woman is appropriately titled A Chinese Lady of Rank (fig. 4.10). This image is among Alexander’s most unique, and it evades straightforward classification. She is portrayed upright and outside, lending an air of grace and dignity. This is a departure from the other Lady, who has inexplicably been moved from her original outdoor setting into a generic interior. Alexander has taken great care to illustrate a great number and variety of Chinese-style buildings in the background, and he comments that, “The buildings in the back ground form part of a view of Pekin, near one of the western gates.”141 Indeed, the buildings remain strictly in the background; a fretwork-style fence (which was copied in places like the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion) divides the picture plane into that building-saturated background and the bare foreground which the woman occupies. This visually suggests that a high-ranking lady would not have been permitted to freely venture out into public and that the setting is stylized and evocative, rather than serving as an anthropological rendering. In her left hand she holds a pipe and a small bag of what is assumed to be tobacco, although Alexander does not textually account for either of these objects. Her right hand showcases a bird, which the artist explains is kept either for singing, decoration, or plumage. Her headpiece and clothing also warrant both visual and textual detail; Alexander notes that ladies’ headdresses “exhibit great taste, and great variety,” and that “the materials of which their garments are made, and especially those parts of them which consist of their own embroidering, are exceedingly beautiful.142” Lastly, Alexander notes that these ladies spend a great deal of time “looking after and cultivating plants growing in pots which decorate their apartments and inner courtyards,”143 which

140 This was not a preoccupation in Costume because, as I suggest in the previous chapter, that volume’s primary classification is by social class. This was a more intellectual, didactic, anthropological volume, and this categorization by class would be easily understood by British audiences. This is not to suggest that social class is absent from Picturesque Representations, but the categorization becomes more complex. 141 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page.

142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. Page 85! of 300 ties in closely with the potted plants seen in the interiors of the other Lady’s portrait. The overall tone of this portrait, visually and textually, is approving: “…the dress of Chinese ladies in the upper ranks of life is by no means unbecoming.”144 Thus, the Lady is reduced to an ornamental object, available for the Western male gaze. The denigration is concentrated on the topic of foot-binding, rather than general appearance. A Nursery Maid and Two Children (fig. 4.11) connects the lower-ranked women to their high-status counterparts. The woman is depicted outside with some hint of shrubbery in the middle ground nearby, and with a soft hilly landscape topped by a simplified pagoda in the background. A folded-in umbrella is placed perpendicularly at her feet, drawing attention to her bound feet, and also separating her from the male child. She holds a female child in her arms. In this way, the peasantry is conflated with children, via a nursery maid, but the sexes are still visually segregated by means of the umbrella. Alexander only mentions that the clothing that the children wear is a “tolerably correct” representation, but he does not address the children in further detail. The boy is holding a triangular flag which features mock-Mandarin characters; this flag is reminiscent of the flags that adorn the vessels of bureaucratic officials. This suggests that this well-born son (one assumes his station by the employment of the nurse maid) will grow up to achieve such a position. However, the boy is also dressed as a mandarin, which infantilizes that profession, and by extension, the Chinese bureaucracy. The girl, contrarily, is in the nurse maid’s arms and wears a youth’s version of the headdress that Alexander has written so much about. That she is being held indicates her own future as a stationary decorative object. Returning to the nurse maid, one notices that her hairstyle with the accompanying headdress, in addition to the color of her clothing, is strikingly similar to the right-hand figure in the Royal Pavilion’s stairway stained glass scenes. While the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) was known to have owned a copy of Costume, it is unknown whether he acquired a copy of this later version. Additionally, a small sack, presumably for tobacco, is suspended from her belt, and Alexander strategically places the slits in her dress in such a way as to highlight this (though he does not address it textually). This demonstrates that the consumption of tobacco was common among peasants, regardless of gender. The next two peasants share many of the visual characteristics of the nurse maid. Female Peasant (fig. 4.12) (also called Women Winding Cotton,) and Woman Selling Chow-Chow (fig. 4.13) wear blue dresses and their hair is tightly secured in a bun-style with sticks, a headband, and a

144 Ibid. Page 86! of 300 vague suggestion of additional ornamentation. Woman Selling Chow-Chow is depicted as a solitary figure, and unusually, is portrayed from behind; she sits in a three-quarter position away from the viewer. Another unusual feature of this portrait is that it is the only female-centric plate that does not include any textual mention of the feet or foot-binding. Instead, the visual and textual emphasis is on the merchandise and the act of selling. Alexander adds his personal touch, noting that “Some hundred of similar stands and umbrellas were displayed on a plain near the spot where the embassy disembarked, within the mouth of the Pei-ho [River]; the little booths, if they may be so termed, being generally well stored with sweet-meats and sliced water-melons laid upon ice.”145 It is a strange occurrence that Alexander should omit any mention of foot-binding in Chow- Chow, since all of the other images of women include at least a cursory reference to the practice. However, the other women are engaged in other activities, whether they are sitting inside or minding children or winding cotton. The exclusion of foot-binding in Chow-Chow can be attributed to the woman’s occupation, which is that of vendor. If Chinese women’s bodies are read as a metaphor for China, then foot-binding is a visual and cultural metaphor for China’s perceived stagnation. As the Chinese women are rendered immobile, so too is China immobilized culturally, socially, and politically. However, there was one arena which the British knew the Chinese still dominated: manufacturing for the export market. By omitting any reference to foot-binding from the woman depicted in Chow-Chow, China’s capacity to sell and trade is kept dynamic; this would be a key distinction to make as Picturesque Chinese was published on the eve of the second British diplomatic mission to China, which was yet another attempt to negotiate better trade conditions for Britain. The last peasant, A Boat Girl, (fig. 4.14) does not have bound feet, but Alexander takes great care to androgynize her as much as possible. Visually, she is shown with her hair down, rather than pulled into a knot, and it is without any headdress or ornamentation. While she does not have a shaved head like her male counterparts, the length of her hair is similar to the queue that men were forced to wear. Her clothing does not resemble that of the other peasant women, and Alexander remarks that “Their [boat women’s] dress differs very little from that of the men,” and that, “They smoke tobacco and chew the betel and areca nut with as much avidity as the men.”146 He writes,

“Among persons of this description the feet are allowed to grow to their full size,”147 but this is less

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid. 147 Ibid. Page 87! of 300 a comment on China’s stagnation than it is on the gender roles among the maritime peasants. Alexander unwittingly implies that full-sized feet are unfeminine among Chinese women, and since these feet do not belong to a feminine Chinese woman, they are not part of the metaphor which connects Chinese women’s bodies to China more generally. A Female Comedian (fig. 4.15) aptly demonstrates the conflation of femininity with bound feet. The performer, per Alexander’s account, is actually a male (either a boy or eunuch), so his femininity must be properly exhibited in order for him to convincingly play the role of a woman. The performer wears a “dress [which] is supposed to be that of the ancient Chinese, [which is] not very different from that of the present day,”148 and this dress comes down to skim the top of his feet. The shoes he wears resembles those of the high-ranking lady. Alexander does not suggest that male performers in female roles would be required to engage in foot-binding as well, but the dress refers to the act. For example, none of the women wear dresses as long as this; even the elaborate portrait of A Chinese Lady of Rank has an ankle-length dress, and the others wear knee-length dresses with pants underneath that are also gathered around the ankles. Also, Alexander notes in Comedian that women with bound feet “hobble along,” so it is possible that this performer imitates that movement as well. I have hitherto withheld Alexander’s textual descriptions of these women’s bound feet since reading them as a unit emphasizes their full impact. Again, in 1805, Alexander treated foot-binding with detached neutrality, but the 1814 Picturesque Chinese depicts six female characters, and five of the six accompanying texts feature some derisive commentary on foot-binding. The first text, accompanying A Lady, And Her Son, reads: “…it is to be hoped that our ladies will never be brought to imitate the small and mutilated feet of the Chinese women, which disqualify them from the free use of their limbs.”149 This is one quotation which most judiciously establishes the connection between immovable bodies and an immovable country. The phrase ‘small and mutilated feet of the Chinese women’ can be read as a clear merging of those women’s bodies with the country they are meant to represent, and the phrase ‘disqualify them from the free use of their limbs’ immobilizes the women and their country concurrently. Next, A Chinese Lady of Rank has a favorable opinion of the general appearance of elite Chinese women, but the text reads: “If we except the unnatural custom of maiming the feet, which swells and distorts the ankles, and wrapping the latter up in bandages, the dress of Chinese ladies in the upper ranks of life is by no

148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. Page 88! of 300 means unbecoming.”150 Again, just as it is unnatural for the Chinese to bind women’s feet, so too is it unnatural for the Chinese to restrict trade and close off ports. It is the Chinese emperor’s unnatural interference in an otherwise ‘natural’ economic process (e.g. growth and trade). In A Nursery Maid and Two Children the class differences between upper-class women and those women who must work is noted, but Alexander explains the similarity between employer and employee: “That [dress] of the maid servant differs in nothing from her mistress, but in the materials; the latter generally wearing silk, and the one in question cotton. A Chinese woman of the meanest condition would feel herself degraded if not allowed to mutilate her feet.”151 One observes here the (near) universality of foot-binding, and how, regardless of class, women are united in their femininity by way of those bound feet. The engraving Female Peasant features a text which explains: “Blue or brown cotton frocks with green or yellow trousers are the ordinary dresses of the female peasantry, all of whom, except such as labour in the field or the fisheries, have the vanity to cramp their feet, in imitation of their superiors.”152 This is not the only reference which suggests a class distinction regarding foot-binding. The implication is that only upper-class ladies should be ‘permitted’ to engage in foot-binding, perhaps because they render the women ornamental and inhibited from movement. In the last 1814 engraving I described, A Female Comedian, the text concedes that

If it was not a rigid custom of the country, to confine to their apartments the better class of females, the unnatural cramping of their feet, while infants, is quite sufficient to prevent them from stirring much abroad, as it is with some difficulty they are able to hobble along; yet such is the force of fashion, that a lady with her feet of the natural size would be despised, and at once classed among the vulgar.153

Again, this textual account uses terminology such as ‘unnatural’ and ‘natural,’ and underscores motion—or lack thereof. My point here is not only to draw attention to the relative normative neutrality of the 1805 Costume of China, but also to anticipate how rapidly the opinion and characterization of the Chinese in Britain changed in such a short period of time—nine years in Alexander’s case. Alexander’s peer, John Barrow, had foreshadowed (or perhaps even influenced)

150 Ibid. 151 Ibid.

152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. Similarly, Pearl S. Buck’s 1931 novel The Good Earth follows the life of the destitute Wang Lung, who, as a young man on his wedding day, hopes his wife has bound feet. His father sagely advises that such a woman would be an impractical addition to a farm. Page 89! of 300 the artist’s interpretation of foot-binding: as early as his own 1804 account, Barrow described “the barbarous fashion of cramping the feet.”154

Religious and Funerary Scenes

Just as a juxtaposition between select images of women featured in the 1805 Costume and the 1814 Picturesque Chinese yields cogent results, so too does a comparison between the earlier and later scenes of religious life, rituals and sacrifice, and funerary practices. Again, the acts depicted do not vary—the subject matter is held constant—but the manner of depiction has changed in subtle ways to reveal corresponding changes in contemporary British attitudes towards the Middle Kingdom. A cursory quantitative analysis also demonstrates a difference in the allocation of this subject matter to begin with. Including two images of pagodas (with one titled “A Pagoda, or Temple, for religious Worship”), there are seven plates in total devoted to religion and worship in Costume, while in Picturesque Chinese, there are only three. Of these three, there are no representations of any built structures such as temples, but instead, they are all of figures—again placing the emphasis on human types. Also, the images and texts in Costume attest to a certain fascination with Chinese spiritual beliefs and practices which had existed at least since the Jesuit missionaries sent back their courtly reports in the sixteenth century. As I will explain below, the later images and texts have begun to assume a new, more cynical, understanding of Chinese religious beliefs and practices. A case study which compares A Sacrifice at the Temple (1805, fig. 4.16) and Portrait of a Lama, or Bonze (1805, fig. 4.17) to An Offering in the Temple (1814, fig. 4.18) reveals the subtle changes in depiction that I have mentioned. I must note that Picturesque Chinese does contain an image of a solitary bonze figure, but the 1805 iteration is (inexplicably) most closely reproduced in the aforementioned interior temple scene. One of the primary differences between Sacrifice and Offering is that while the earlier image depicts a priest and two lay worshippers (one praying and one making a sacrifice), the later image only depicts the priest. Again, this can be attributed to the shift from anthropological to Picturesque. In the first scene, the viewer feels herself to be a casual observer. The text also describes these various rites in detail. It serves as a visual document for what may have transpired in these temples, or at least purports to. Various particularities are described: the method of prayer, the burning of ritual incense, and that there is no set day for sabbath (or its

154 Barrow, p. 542. Page 90! of 300 equivalent). Alexander mentions, importantly, that the priesthood “wear a loose dress of silk or nankeen, the colour of which is characteristic of their particular sect.”155 (This is the best method for ascertaining that the 1805 priest has been recycled in the 1814 scene.) There is no mention of Buddhism (which Alexander refers to as the ‘sect of Fo’) in this active scene, but rather it comes up in the description of the solitary Bonze portrait. By contrast, Buddhism is referenced in the 1814 Offering and Bonze. Returning to the interior temple scenes themselves, the Picturesque image, in contrast to its antecedent, does not offer the viewer the opportunity to partake by proxy; there are no lay worshippers present, only the priest. The priest is not depicted in a disparaging manner, but Alexander does write that “superstitious rites are performed several times by the priests every day, but there is no kind of congregational worship in China. The people pay the priests for taking care of their present and future fate.”156 This evokes the sense of a moral decay, a decay reminiscent of the ruined landscapes of Picturesque paintings. It also implies a sort of spiritual insincerity on the part of the Chinese.157 Also, as I have noted, Alexander has borrowed his 1805 bonze figure for his 1814 priest. This is an important shift because this is an imperial figure, as designated by his yellow robes. In the first image, he stands nobly with a specific temple connected to the emperor in the background. (This is noted in the accompanying text.) This figure, then, symbolizes the spiritual activity of Qianlong, and by extension, his empire. His recycled figure for the 1814 version renders him on his knees, inside, and performing what he calls superstitious rites—again, this is indicative of the ruinous aspect of the Picturesque. Offering also demystifies Chinese religion by referring to trade. Alexander writes, “He is burning incense, or rather paper that is covered over with some liquid that resembles gold. Sometimes, in lieu of this, tin foil is burnt before the altars of China, and this is the principal use to which the large quantities of tin sent from this country [from Britain to China] is applied.”158 A description of the material objects in use continues. These physical points of focus—which usurp any potential for spiritual concerns—unveil Chinese religious beliefs, so to speak, which also inadvertently discredits those beliefs. Implicitly, this validates the influx of Western missionaries

155 William Alexander, Costume of China, no page. 156 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page.

157 Though Alexander does not refer to this, the act of paying priests to take care of their ‘present and future fate’ is reminiscent of the Catholic Indulgence—functionally, the act of paying alms (or equivalent) in order to lessen one’s time spent in Purgatory. Martin Luther’s Protestant reforms criticized the practice, and Protestant England would likely be suspicious of such deeds. 158 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page. Page 91! of 300 that arrived after the Opium Wars. Additionally, while Picturesque Chinese lacks the references to the Macartney Mission that are abundant in Costume, this short explanatory note is suggestive of China’s international trade. The reference to tin importation also draws attention to European trade; Alexander suggests that trade with China is still a viable and worthwhile endeavor. The visual repetition of the bonze acts as a connection between the two publications, but the portrait of this first bonze also corresponds to a counterpart, of sorts, in the 1814 work. The later image is simply titled A Bonze (fig. 4.19) rather than the earlier, which is Portrait of a Lama, or Bonze. Yet again, even in the title there is a nuanced shift: Alexander may have seen such a bonze during his time in China, and so he lends him the anthropological accuracy that Costume aspires to. Visually, he is characterized as an upright (physically, and by extension, morally) and dignified man. The bonze averts his gaze; he is present physically, but one senses that his mind is occupied with sincere spiritual thoughts. Alexander writes:

This figure is from one of the Lamas inhabiting a temple called Poo-ta-la, which is situated near the Imperial residence at Zhe-hol in Tartary. These Priests are all clad in the royal colour, yellow … . The temple Poo-ta-la, which is distantly seen, maintains eight hundred Lamas, devoted to the worship of the deity Fo: to this sect the Emperor is attached, and it is the greatest religion of the empire.159

The noble tone of this account matches that of the visual style. By contrast, the 1814 bonze that is depicted in this same portrait-style composition lacks the distinction of his antecedent. His robe is a pinkish-red hue, meaning he is not associated with the emperor. The buildings in the background are generic (they are not addressed in the text), severing yet another imperial tie. Furthermore, he meets the viewer’s eye, which ‘grounds’ him; his mind, as well as his body, is present, suggesting that he is not occupied with the deep contemplation that his counterpart was engaged in. Textually, the second of the two paragraphs is concerned with the make and use of umbrellas, diminishing the bonze’s connection to the spiritual realm. The first paragraph relays that Buddhism was transmitted to China via its origins in India, and observes similarities to other religious groups. He writes that, “they practice, ostensibly at least, all the austerities and mortifications of the several orders of monks in Europe, and inflict on themselves the same painful, laborious, and disgusting punishments which the faquirs of India undergo.”160 Alexander is also dubious of their motivations: either they endure this suffering “for the love of God, as they would have it supposed,” or they do so in order “to impose on the multitude, as is most probably the real

159 Alexander, Costume, no page. 160 Alexander, Picturesque Chinese, no page. Page 92! of 300 motive.”161 This is a cynicism completely lacking in Costume. Additionally, his criticisms conflate this religion with Catholicism:

In China, however, they [bonzes] are generally esteemed as men of correct morals: and there is reason to believe, that the calumnies heaped upon them by the Catholic missionaries are for the most part unfounded, and were occasioned by the mortification they experienced in finding their ceremonies, their altars, their images, their dress, to resemble so very nearly their own.162

Alexander is able to make claims of British superiority not only over the religion of China, but the religion of Britain’s rival—France—as well. Regarding the ‘superstitious’ beliefs and practices of non-Christians, it should be noted that this type of characterization is not unique to the Chinese. In his analogous 1814 Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Russians, Alexander depicts a female shaman, and uses these pages to describe pagan religious beliefs. He writes, “The numerous Pagan nations who inhabit the vast extent of the Russian empire are distinguished by three distinct kinds of idolatry: those who profess Schmanism [sic], those who are followers of the Lama, and those under the government of the Brahmins.”163 The second category refers to Buddhists, while the last references Hindus. Alexander’s description continues: “Among the Russian nations, however, Schmanism, [sic] from various causes, is now become a mass of unintelligible contradictions, idolatrous absurdities, and the grossest superstitions.”164 Visually, his female shaman is presented as a solitary figure with no landscape or context; she is frontal in one image and shown from behind in another. The clothing is of great concern, which is the justification for a depiction from multiple angles. There are no comparable texts or images in the account of Austria: though he writes that Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and members of the Greek Orthodox Church live in the region, there are no figures who are ‘superstitious’ or ‘idolatrous.’ In this sense, there is an implied distinction between religious beliefs within the Judeo-Christian purview, and those that are ‘pagan.’ Alexander expands his comparison, in Picturesque Chinese, of Chinese paganism with Catholicism (rather than other pagan religious) in A Pagoda, Or Temple, For religious Worship, (fig. 4.20), which is exclusive to Costume. The building, which is centered and shown at the angle that best shows detail (i.e., the stairs are shown in three-quarter profile), is teeming with activity.

161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. Alexander’s criticism extends to the Catholic missionaries.

163 William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Russians. (London: John Murray, 1814), no page. 164 Ibid. Page 93! of 300 Despite the term ‘pagoda’ in the title, this is a much more squat structure than what had been typically connoted by the term, and is indeed a departure from the more ‘standard’ Pagoda also featured in Costume. This pagoda, or temple (as Alexander suggests), is depicted on a platform, and one must ascend a staircase—which an archway straddles—to reach the first story. Each of the two successive stories is narrower in circumference than the previous one, which is also a difference from the typical pagoda with uniform levels. The roofs are upturned and adorned with small bells, and the tip of the top roof is embellished as well. The predominant brownish-red is complemented by Alexander’s characteristic yellow and blue-grays. (This color scheme is repeated in the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.) Alexander notably does not distinguish pagodas or temples, or their religious functions. Indeed, even Alexander’s peer, John Barrow, was confused about the pagoda’s purpose, writing in his own account, “These pagodas…that so frequently occur in the country, seem to be intended only as embellishments to particular grounds, or objects to terminate vistas or prospects,”165 which contradicts with his observation that a pagoda is “…a kind of temple or monastery, where a great number of priests, clothed in yellow, lived together in a state of celibacy… .”166 This anticipates the ambivalence that the Europeans displayed towards Chinese religious architecture. There are numerous figures, both inside and outside Alexander’s temple. A man at front kneels in front of the structure, and peasants are in the right-hand background. There is an unexplained dog near the archway; since this would seem to be an oddity to a viewer, it is perhaps included to give the impression of lived experience.167 There are two yellow-robed bonzes, one near the stairs, and one on the first level, and a red-robed bonze ascending the stairs. They are recognizable not only for their robes, but also their completely shaved heads (they were the only men exempt from the queue mandate). There are unidentified figures peering out of the second- story windows. The first-floor doors are open and most windows are open, which, in addition to the kneeling figure and stair-climbing bonze, gives the impression that this is a well-visited, active place of worship. The numerous buildings in the distance, and even a glimpse of water and vessels, help to contextualize the temple; this is also a departure from images like Pagoda which are shown devoid of context, giving them an encyclopedia-entry impression.

165 Barrow, p. 503.

166 Barrow, p. 214. 167 Alexander also writes that “The greater part of the people are of the sect of Fo [Buddha]; whose followers believe…in a future state of happiness, after a virtuous life; and suppose, that the souls of the irreligious live hereafter in a state of suffering, and subject to the hardships endured by inferior animals” (Costume, no page). The dog could be read as an allusion to the reincarnation of one such irreligious person. Page 94! of 300 The realistic, rather than sterile, setting is confirmed in the text: “The figures dressed in loose gowns are priests [bonzes] attending at the temple; and the back ground is a view of the city Tin-hai, Nov. 21, 1793.”168 By attaching a particular date and city to the image, Alexander lends credibility to his observations of religious rituals, which further validate his conflation of these practices with Catholicism. On that subject, he writes, “Some religious ceremonies of the Chinese resemble those of the Church of Rome: and the Chinese Idol, denominated Shin[g]-moo, is very similar to the representations of the Virgin and Child; both being figures of a female and an infant, with rays of glory issuing from their heads, and having lights burning before them, during the day as well as night.”169 Incidentally, Alexander just falls short of actually depicting the Chinese Idol that resembled the Madonna and Child. However, the overall tone of the text is detached and observant; he seems to genuinely strive to educate his audience rather than take the opportunity to criticize Chinese religion. There is no corresponding image (or text) in Picturesque Chinese, and the only reference to temples is in Offering, described above. This is a conspicuous omission, as Alexander had described in the 1805 Temple text that “The Chinese are scrupulously observant of moral and religious duties; and their country abounds with temples, of various forms, to which they resort, on every interesting occasion, and offer their sacrifices,” and also that “Besides these temples, a small tabernacle, or niche, containing their household gods, is to be found in almost every house and ship.”170 Picturesque Chinese is exclusively figural types, and all other matters, such as religious practices, have been minimized. The last topic which fits into this category, that Alexander also treated twice, is that of funerals and burial sites. Since death is among the few truly universal experiences, these engravings offer viewers the chance to connect with the subject matter (and the places and people) in question, on a level that more ‘exotic’ scenes do not offer. In Costume, there are two such scenes: the first View of a Burying-Place, near Han-tcheou-fou, (fig. 4.21) is devoid of any human figures, and instead centers on the cemetery. The second, A Funeral Procession, (fig. 4.22) shows a somber, yet active, event as it transpires. The single sample available in Picturesque Chinese is Visit to the

168 Alexander, Costume, no page. The inclusion of specific locales and dates is entirely absent from Picturesque Chinese, but untethering these later images from specificities lends them the distinctive trait that they have all somehow transpired in an ambiguous past, and yet are timeless representations of an Empire in decline.

169 Alexander, Costume, no page. 170 Ibid. Emphasis mine. Page 95! of 300 Grave of a Relation, (also called Mourners at a Tomb)171 (fig. 4.23) which combines the earlier burial setting with human figures. All three of the texts and images treat the subject matter with dignity; this is not the occasion that Alexander (or his editors) have chosen to criticize the Chinese people or government. However, the engravings and texts in Costume show a greater attention to detail, while the solitary mourning scene in Picturesque Chinese gives the impression that it was an obligatory inclusion. Upon first glance, it appears that View of a Burying Place is among the more straightforward of Alexander’s illustrations, but a closer look (and reading) affirms Alexander’s anthropological intentions. The landscape is hilly, neatly accented with greenery, and has been cleanly divided into a foreground, middle ground, and background. In the foreground, there is a large monument: its front features carved Mandarin characters, and its roof is tepidly upturned. There is a coffin in front of it, which, by suggesting the size of a person, indicates the grandiosity of the monument. Two other unidentified structures flank the large monument, and while Alexander does not address them directly, he does record that “The characters on the monuments, signify the name and quality of the defunct; and epitaphs, extolling the virtues of the deceased, are inscribed on tablets of marble at the entrance of the vaults.”172 In the middle ground, there is another style of tomb with steps in front of it; it appears to be a semi-circular, or horse-shoe, configuration, and a much smaller version of it has been included in the 1814 Visit to the Grave. The tomb is built into the earth, its walls a grayish- blue hue (it is probably marble), but the doorframe is painted red, China’s auspicious color. Including the yellow-hued stairs, the color scheme is very typical of Alexander’s watercolor- inspired palette, affirming the subject’s canonicity. The background features a tall, columnar structure atop a spherical structure, which is itself atop a cubic structure. United in their gray tones, there are no upturned roofs, but the middle structure looks to feature a niche. (Alexander writes in the aforementioned A Pagoda that niches containing the household’s gods are found in nearly every house or ship, so it can be supposed that they would be present within tombs, as well.) The numerous trees and shrubs balance the manmade marble forms, indicating the natural process that is death. There are no other buildings in the background, but the landscape does stretch into the horizon, indicating the vastness of the burial grounds.

171 Several engravings in Picturesque Chinese have one title in the list of plates, and then are titled something else within the actual book. I have included both titles so as to avoid any potential confusion in comparison to other texts. 172 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 96! of 300 The accompanying text does not go into extensive detail describing the image, but instead, Alexander has labored over a thorough explanation of the practices surrounding death: the class distinctions in coffins and final resting places, the duty of the surviving family members, and even embalming knowledge. He also remarks that “The tombs and monuments of China exhibit a variety of architecture”173 which accounts for the three different styles seen in the image. One practice which would have been unfamiliar to European audiences was that the dead were not immediately buried: “A deceased parent is often-times preserved in the house by an affectionate family for months, and even years … .The duty of the widow or children is not finished here; even after the corpse is deposited in the sepulchres of its ancestors, the disconsolate relatives (clad in coarse canvas) still reside with the body, and continue their lamentations for some months.”174 Maintaining an anthropological detachment, Alexander describes these various curious rituals, while also commenting on the occasion’s appropriate clothing (coarse canvas). This is an (alleged) actual burying place ‘near Han-tcheou-fou,’ again emphasizing the personal observation, and therefore authority, of the account. Additionally, by omitting figures from the visual material and including them only in the text, Alexander makes these experiences all the more relatable to his Western audience. The last two images, A Funeral Procession and Visit to the Grave form a very loose corresponding pair. Characteristic of the differences between earlier and later images of similar subject matter, Procession is, as the title suggests, active, and despite the somber topic, possesses a mobility and sense of progression. Even in death, then, the Chinese are moving forward, per Costume. Alexander lists the dramatis personæ and details their clothing and hairstyles; he also notes that white is the color of sorrow rather than joy (as in Europe). Lastly, he writes that this scene has transpired in Macao—just like Temple, the actual, rather than fantasized, locale grounds the scene. It also facilitates a divorce from the imagined settings of Rococo chinoiserie. Buildings which echo those found in Burying Place can be seen in the distance, uniting the two images. While Visit to the Grave prioritizes the human figures, there are a few elements which have been borrowed from the earlier images. However, although this is the singular funerary image in Picturesque Chinese, it is also not a compilation, either. The two (male) mourners and the horseshoe-shaped grave are of primary importance. The background hints at the burial place; the rolling hills have given way to a mostly flat, static landscape. This landscape is dotted with a few

173 Ibid. 174 Ibid. Page 97! of 300 structures resembling those of Burial Place, and there are even some cypress trees, too. The cemetery, however, seems to be truncated, cropped. The mourners wear identical nankin robes and caps which were described in Procession, and warrant a mention again here in Picturesque Chinese. Alexander professes a favorable opinion of cemetery architecture: “Some of the monuments erected over the dead are by no means inelegant; like their bridges and triumphal arches, they are very much varied….”175 Referring to these structures as ‘not inelegant’ suggests a sort of beauty, while the subject matter—death and mourning—are of a sublime nature. This mingling of beauty and sublimity anticipates Romantic imagery. These case studies are by no means exhaustive, but are instead a representative sample of the comparisons that can be made between Alexander’s two separate books of engravings. This preliminary research testifies to the distinction between the 1805 Costume and the 1814 Picturesque Chinese, and the necessity in analyzing them as two separate documents.

175 Ibid. Page 98! of 300 Chapter V Thomas Allom’s Travelogue Illustrations

William Alexander’s Costume of China and Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese, the visual results of the 1793 Macartney mission, act as a fulcrum in the Western tradition of depicting China. In Chapter One, I briefly analyzed his predecessors, the Jesuit missionaries, in order to understand the visual vocabulary and predecessors that he draws upon, appropriates, and ultimately, recreates for himself. Stacey Sloboda writes that Alexander primarily repeated and emphasized the visual signs already associated with China because of the popularity of chinoiserie,176 but his participation in the Macartney mission imbued his imagery with a newfound authenticity. What, then, became of these signs after this period of intense diplomacy and curiosity had expired? Understanding how Alexander’s visual vocabulary was employed following the first Opium War (1839-1842) punctuates the semiotic interpretation which I have woven into this dissertation. Many of the signs remain the same since the Jesuits’ time: pagodas, craggy mountains, junks. Interpreting their deployment in the early Victorian period elucidates the extent to which Alexander's mission imagery had diffused. To that end, this chapter is entirely concerned with Thomas Allom’s China, in a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits, of That Ancient Empire. Allom’s four-volume series was first published between 1843 and 1847, with a textual accompaniment written by the Protestant clergyman George Newenham Wright (c. 1794-1877). Allom (1804-1872) follows Alexander by one generation, revealing a shift in British attitudes towards China that transpired within that temporal difference. He would have matured at a time when the Qing empire was an unwilling trading partner, an obstinate barrier to British industrial expansion. In this chapter, I will focus on the images from The Chinese Empire: Historical and Descriptive, Illustrating the Manners and Customs of the Chinese, the 1858-59 second edition which consolidates the four volumes into two. By limiting my selection of images to this latter version, I have allowed more distance from Alexander. I must also note that the first series was published simultaneously in London and Paris, while the 1858 reprint was published in London and New York City. The series, then, was sufficiently in-demand to warrant distribution in multiple cosmopolitan locales.

176 Stacey Sloboda, “Picturing China: William Alexander and the visual language of Chinoiserie,” The British Art Journal 9, no. 2 (2008): 29. Page 99! of 300 Allom’s engravings have been almost entirely overlooked—if not dismissed—in art historical scholarship because, on the surface, it appears as though he has no credentials on which to base his images. He is encumbered with a lack of first-hand experience, having traveled only as far as Turkey, Anatolia, and Syria.177 In Sloboda’s dissertation, for example, he is only mentioned once, in a footnote—rejected on the grounds that he is merely a ‘plagiarist’ of Alexander.178 Paul A. Van Dyke and Maria Kar-wing Mok derisively write, “… there are works of art done by artists who never set foot in China. The most widely distributed images of unreliable nature are those by Thomas Allom in the 1840s. Allom’s views were drawn from other people’s works, some of which may not have been that reliable in the first place.”179 In the same paragraph, they state plainly, “Allom never visited China.”180 Besides this commentary, the only analysis they offer of Allom’s The City of Nanking is that it is “suspicious,” with inaccurate flora and a Western-looking priest. But this misses the point. No artwork, including photography, can objectively capture and present a locale, but because Allom’s works were perceived as succeeding in presenting ‘authentic’ images and accounts to his readership,181 they must be analyzed within their own historical context.

George Thomas Staunton

Allom did not produce his images on a whim. While he has largely been regarded as an imposter in previous scholarship, one critically important detail has not been acknowledged. In the preface to 1843’s Volume 1, Wright (writing on behalf of himself and Allom) writes, “… acknowledgment is also due to Sir George Staunton, Bart., for permission to copy several interesting subjects from his beautiful collection of Chinese Drawings by native artists.”182 The extent of the relationship between Staunton and Allom is unknown, but this preface suggests that Allom was privy to the contents of Staunton’s sizable collection of Chinese art and objects.

177 These travels resulted in the 1838 publication of Constantinople and the Scenery of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor. 178 Stacey Loughrey Sloboda, “Making China: Design, Empire, and Aesthetics in Britain, 1745-1851” PhD Diss., University of Southern California, 2004, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing (3145290), p. 229.

179 Paul A. Van Dyke and Maria Kar-wing Mok, Images of the Canton Factories, 1760-1822: Reading History in Art. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 54. 180 Ibid., p. 55.

181 Diana Brooks, Thomas Allom (1804–1872). (London: British Architectural Library & Royal Institute of British Architects, 1998), 41. 182 The collection was variously dispersed, sold, and donated upon Staunton’s death, but this preface suggests that these were Chinese drawings intended for domestic, Chinese audiences. Page 100! of 300 Sir George Thomas Staunton was the son of Sir George Leonard Staunton, who was the secretary and vice minister to Macartney and wrote the Official Account upon the mission’s return from Beijing. The younger Staunton traveled with his father; at twelve years old, he served as a page and even learned some Mandarin prior to the embassy.183 In 1798, he was appointed as a writer for the East India Company at Canton, and in 1804 he became a supercargo (managing the trading of the cargoes of the East India Company’s ships).184 In 1816, he became president of the Select Committee, and was also appointed second commissioner on the Amherst embassy to

China.185 The following year, he left China for good. In his nearly twenty years in China, Staunton published translations of Chinese works,186 and amassed a collection of books, drawings, paintings, and objects. Staunton helped found the Royal Asiatic Society in 1823, to which he donated a significant portion of his collection. This included 2,310 books: these were Chinese classics, dictionaries, and European volumes on Chinese histories, geographies, and religious beliefs. The artwork included drawings and woodcuts by Chinese artists, and some of the objects included Chinese musical instruments, clothing, furniture, and newspapers.187 Since Allom had access to Staunton’s collection of art and objects—many of these bona fide Chinese products that Staunton acquired personally while living in Canton—one cannot outright dismiss the British artist as a charlatan, blindly copying Alexander, among others. Instead, while Allom did not travel to China, he had a deeper engagement with its visual and material artifacts than previous scholarship has acknowledged. This chapter will not analyze Allom’s work in isolation, but rather in dialogue with William Alexander’s travelogue images. This serves two purposes: firstly, it acts as a continuation of the semiotic interpretation I maintain throughout this dissertation, and secondly, this allows for an examination of the diffusion of mission-derived visual motifs. In the first section, I will examine a few examples of Allom’s more direct copies of Alexander’s works. I will follow this with an

183 Singer notes that he was a “linguistic genius,” having already acquired fluency in Latin, Greek, French, and German. He also used his knowledge of Mandarin to copy documents for the Emperor. See Aubrey Singer, The Lion and the Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking, 1792-1794. (London: Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1992), 6.

184 Peter Kitson, Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760-1840. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 99. 185 Ibid. For a brief biography of Staunton, see Kitson, Forging Romantic China, p. 98-106.

186 His most famous translation is that of a Qing penal code. 187 The George Thomas Staunton Collection held in the R.A.S. Library, May 1998. Donation List, Royal Asiatic Society Library. Page 101! of 300 analysis of domestic interiors and female-centric scenes, and finally, I will look to Allom’s opium den imagery.

Thomas Allom, after William Alexander

Before I begin my interpretation of Allom’s Alexander-inspired works, it is necessary to first provide an overview of the contents of the 1858 tome. In both volumes of this edition, he provides a lengthy (40 pages and 32 pages, resepctively) overview of the history of China. The visual themes that Allom chose to omit, or amplify, in his Chinese Empire (relative to Alexander’s two books) are revealing in their own right. For example, one of the greatest discrepancies between the two artists is in military scenes. Alexander depicts every manner of soldier and garrison, commenting on military practices, arms, and fortifications. Though his second book emphasizes human types over architectural structures, his preoccupation with the military genre is unwavering. Allom, by contrast, is uninterested—including a few stations and soldiers as if by obligation. The text offers no explanation, but one may hypothesize that China’s military was deemed redundant or uninteresting after its sound defeat in 1842. While the military genre has been condensed, Allom does introduce a new genre: that of industry. Cotton cleaning, tea harvesting, and silk production are all prominently-featured scenes. These types of scenes were commonly depicted in Chinese drawings (fig. 5.1), which Allom likely saw, or collected. Additionally, Allom deviates from Alexander in his preoccupation with interior scenes, many of which feature women. In Chapter Four, I suggested that Chinese women’s bodies, immobilized with bound feet, act as a metaphor for an effeminate and conquerable China. Allom took this metaphor to the next level, penetrating Chinese interiors and offering his readers a (false) familiarity. Allom’s China is not conquerable—it is conquered. I will elaborate on this topic in the next section. The last discrepancy between the two artists is that Alexander decided to use colored plates, while Allom does not. The latter’s adherence to a more traditional black and white appearance evokes the engravings that predate Alexander, including those by figures such as Athanasius Kircher and Johan Nieuhof. Perhaps this was intended to situate his works, stylistically, within this historical milieu.188 By aligning himself with the earliest European visual accounts of China, Allom declares himself an authority of their caliber. Additionally, this traditional approach is one which distinguishes him from Alexander, from whom he otherwise borrows readily.

188 It is also possible that there was a market for this style, as the reprint of Alexander’s works earlier suggests. The ultimate decision-makers were possibly not the artists themselves, but the respective publishing houses. The details of how decisions regarding color were made is currently unknown. Page 102! of 300 Allom’s visual reference to Alexander can be categorized into two groups: those that reinterpret individual scenes, people, or objects, and those that take multiple images and amalgamate them into a unified, all-encompassing scene. Because Alexander strove for an anthropological catalogue, his subjects are generally singular: one pagoda, one game of cards, one vendor. Alexander’s audience was curious to know what China ‘looked’ like—armchair travelers eager to take their own visual tour. Allom’s audience would have had a different experience of China, having recently lived through the first Opium War, so he is less cautious in his depictions of everyday life. Allom also took more artistic liberty, despite—or because of—his lack of first-hand experience in the Middle Kingdom. However, the engravings that Allom produced that seem to copy Alexander’s figures,189 i.e., those in the first category, feature embellishments and elaborations. One such example is Allom’s Canton Bargemen Fighting Quails (fig. 5.2), which echoes Alexander’s Chinese Gamblers with Fighting Quails, (fig. 3.20) from Costume of China. While Alexander clearly depicts the men’s clothing, accessories, and activity—e.g., the details that the volume promises—the setting is nearly vacant, devoid of any visual commentary, save for a vaguely rocky terrain and a modest mountain in the far-off distance. Allom plucks up these figures and places them into a bustling cityscape, which I describe below. He borrows his predecessor’s depiction of varied class types: there are men in mandarins’ robes and others in more modest attire and straw hats. They are also similarly shown in a variety of poses. The Manchu-mandated hair queue is also found, as are pipes; the viewer is left to decide whether the pipe-wielding men (one who appears affluent, and one who appears to be a laborer) are smoking tobacco or opium, as Allom mentions neither in the accompanying text. Like Alexander, Allom visually suggests that vices such as gambling and smoking are ubiquitous regardless of social class; however, the text notes that in China, gambling is most common among the lower classes, while in Europe, it is the domain of the wealthy.190 Allom seemed not to notice the incongruity between the image and the text. The text also does not focus much attention on these particular quail fight gamblers, but instead, explains gambling and gaming more generally. The greatest divergence between Allom’s gamblers and Alexander’s is the aforementioned setting. Allom’s gamblers occupy a portion of a thoroughfare, which appears unpaved, and recalls Alexander’s rocky terrain. Though the group of men occupy the near-central foreground, the rest of

189 Brooks writes that Allom traced over Alexander’s watercolors in the British Museum, and then visualized what they would look like from various angles. See Brooks, p. 41. 190 Thomas Allom, The Chinese Empire: Historical and Descriptive, Illustrating the Manners and Customs of the Chinese. (London: The London Printing and Publishing Company, Limited, 1858-59), 12. Page 103! of 300 the engraving is completely saturated with extraneous figures, boats, and buildings. None, however, copy or definitively refer to any of Alexander’s other images, and as such, they have a certain generic quality. The figures, all male, are occupied in various activities: buying and selling fish, carrying dried goods, conversing with others. The boats are reminiscent of Alexander’s junks, but only the sails are visible; they are also so densely-packed in the waterway that attention to fine detail is not possible. The buildings feature vivid details in their arches, roofs, and balconies—all stereotyped repetitions of earlier imagery—but the intended purpose of these structures is not clear. One man has ascended a staircase, and the archway decorations mimic those shown in Allom’s mandarin’s home (as discussed below), so it is possible that these are upscale residential dwellings. Taken as a whole, this saturation of imagery suggests two things. The first is that stereotyped scenes, when rendered with enough convincing detail and dynamism, successfully sated Britons’ appetite for glimpses of life in China. Secondly, and more specific to the gamblers, Allom suggests that gambling is so ubiquitous that it is not cordoned off or pushed away to a back alley or private home. Instead, men of all classes gather in the middle of a busy street to ‘get their fix,’ so to speak. In the text, Allom refers to quail fighting as “cruel and unmanly,”191 and by emphasizing how common it is, even on a busy street, one extrapolates that the whole of the country must be filled with “cruel and unmanly” men. Although space does not allow for an extensive analysis, there are several other images that recall Alexander that warrant mention. For example, Allom’s Junks Passing an Inclined Plane (fig. 5.3) copies and modifies Alexander’s Front View of a Boat, passing over an inclined Plane or Glacis (fig. 3.6). Alexander’s Boat is unique among his images because it is a full scene; as I discussed in Chapter Three, this may be because it has a date attributed to it, so the artist may have witnessed the event as it unfolded. Allom, characteristically, copies the fundamental elements and then elaborates. The vessel, sluice, joss house, and even the small, modest archway retain a place in Allom’s reinterpretation. His embellishments include additional vessels, a group of men at a table in the foreground eating a fish, and buildings, trees, and mountains that are much more vivid than those in Alexander’s more subtle rendition. Again, one may speculate that Allom’s dense depiction offers abundance in place of authenticity, or, that the abundance is the token of authenticity. Furthermore, Allom’s sluice-passing vessel also hits the water, creating a splash. On first glance, this seems to add movement to the image. While it does lend energy to the overall composition, Allom attributes this to the clumsy and outdated system of moving vessels through

191 Ibid, p. 13. Page 104! of 300 various parts of the canals. Alexander described the mechanism with his typical detached neutrality; Allom, by contrast, criticizes it, attributing the system to China’s refusal to progress. He writes, “Civilised Europe may smile at this awkward contrivance, and at that obstinate attachment to ancient usages, which influences the government in retaining so laborious a process, rather than substitute our simple locks.”192 He concedes, however, that such stagnation at the very least maintains employment for China’s masses, and this populousness is depicted by both artists. While Allom contented himself with copies of various elements of Alexander’s work, he did not textually acknowledge his images, texts, or observations in any written material. One may only speculate as to why this credit is omitted, but this does speak to the authority and endurance of engravings resulting from the Macartney diplomatic embassy. Among the other Alexander-derived engravings are depictions of the Punishment of the Tcha, or Cangue, and Military Station of Chokian. The former was also depicted by Alexander’s contemporary, George Henry Mason, and proved to be an enduring motif for late-eighteenth and nineteenth century artists. The latter is directly followed by exact replicas of Alexander’s Tiger of War and Portrait of Van-ta-zhin, which is curiously renamed The Archer. The inclusion of these recurring motifs suggests, again, the authority which had, by 1858, been granted to Alexander’s first-hand account and engravings.

The Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing

The set of images that I would like to include in this section not only relate to William Alexander, but to the genealogy of Chinese signs in Europe more broadly, as well. Thomas Allom depicts the famous Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing three times, in one sequence: in The Bridge of Nanking, Nanking, from the Porcelain Tower, and The Porcelain Tower, Nanking (figs. 5.4-5.6, respectively). The Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing sparked the European imagination as early as 1669, when Nieuhof’s illustration and description of the structure was published (fig. 5.7). It is likely that this served as an inspiration for William Chambers’ 1762 pagoda constructed at Kew Gardens (fig. 5.8). Alexander chose instead to depict a pagoda in Suzhou (fig. 5.9), though his depiction borrows heavily from Nieuhof: both artists’ pagodas are nine-story towers atop an octagonal foundation, with upturned roofs adorned with bells. The famed tower also inspired Frederick Crace, who borrowed the motif for the Music Room wallpapers at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.

192 Ibid., p. 79. Page 105! of 300 In this regard, Allom was an heir to a two-century-long tradition of rendering the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing. Unspecified pagodas, in general, had become a visual short-hand signifier for the Chinese landscape by the time Alexander and Crace completed their respective works. It is unsurprising, then, that Allom should adopt this subject matter. That Allom chose the Porcelain Pagoda, in particular, indicates his self-identification with those artists seeking to depict China anthropologically. However, Allom’s interpretation differs from that of his predecessors. His first and third images of it are irreconcilable views: he places the pagoda near a river bank, the complement to a bridge, in the first engraving, and in the third, it is placed in the midst of a quaint village. The second engraving imagines what the city of Nanjing looks like from the top of the Porcelain Pagoda—a (fantastical) view unique to Allom. Besides the fact that he names the pagoda in the titles and text, Allom adheres to the convention of depicting the pagoda as Nieuhof did, so it is clearly recognizable to an informed audience. Characteristic of his œuvre, Allom does not isolate his subject matter, as Alexander did with the Suzhou pagoda. The first image, as mentioned above, treats the pagoda as an accessory to a river scene. Indeed, the accompanying text focuses instead on the diversity of bridge-building techniques in China. A junk and several smaller boats are included, as are a few small stereotyped buildings and the city wall of Nanjing. The third image also merges many of Alexander’s illustrations, including not only the central (Porcelain) pagoda, but also an outward-moving procession of an unidentified sort, which is reminiscent of Costume’s A Funeral Procession. Laborers, meanwhile, carry buckets suspended from bamboo poles. Allom depicts plush trees, grasses, and shrubbery. None of these are named as native to China as they often are in the Jesuit accounts, and this omission betrays the artist’s inexperience in the country. His inclusion of two irreconcilable images of the Porcelain Pagoda suggests that geographical accuracy was of secondary importance to the more vague, evocative function of the paradoxically detailed scenes. Allom’s incessant scene-setting and space-filling suggest a desire to convince his audience of his own authority and authenticity. But he seems to temporarily postpone this ethos in order to maximize his engravings of the noteworthy Porcelain Pagoda. It is the second engraving, Nanking, from the Porcelain Tower, that aligns with Allom’s imperialistic style. Having no first-hand experience in China did not deter him from borrowing Chinese imagery, or from consulting Staunton’s books and objects in order to reinterpret those motifs for a new generation’s audience. This much seems plausible. However, imagining the view of the city of Nanjing from atop the Porcelain Pagoda is a strikingly imperialistic impulse. Indeed, this fits within Allom’s interior scenes, discussed below, which assume a privileged vantage point. Page 106! of 300 Instead of following Nieuhof’s or Alexander’s example of depicting a pagoda from one’s detached viewpoint, imagined aerially or from the ground, Allom punctures the implied barrier between Westerners and pagoda interiors. As pagodas acted as visual signifiers of China itself for centuries prior to this 1858 work, Allom, in the wake of the first Opium War, has penetrated the country in a way that no artist had done before. Not satisfied with merely depicting the hypothetical interiors of the pagoda, Allom chose a sweeping vista—this is what he imagined Nanjing would look like from atop the structure. His work is an all-encompassing rendering: the bridge from the first engraving is pictured, along with another similar bridge; several junks float down the river, the city wall of Nanjing is unthreateningly positioned along the river bank, and the rooftops of innumerable buildings dot the fore- and middle-ground. In the distance, soft, picturesque mountains are nestled within a fog. A compelling comparison between Nieuhof’s image and Allom’s can be made. While Nieuhof traveled to China, and strove for representational accuracy in his work, there are nonetheless many features in the two images that are similar. Nieuhof depicted the Porcelain Pagoda within seventeenth-century conventions: the pagoda is seen somewhat from afar, but aerially, while situated within a greater context. Its setting is the city of Nanjing, replete with city walls, human figures, myriad buildings, picturesque mountains on the outskirts—and palm trees. The riverscape, however, is omitted. Since the river in question is, indeed, the Yangtze, this is a curious absence. Allom adopts these visual motifs for his own work, and goes one step further by including the river. It is likely that he knew of the Yangtze’s placement and importance from Staunton. In this manner, Allom’s image is not outrageously fantastical; what makes it a work of fantasy is that he chose to reject conventional depictions of the pagoda, and instead ascend the structure, mentally. The representation of the Porcelain Pagoda and Nanjing more generally, then, shifted from one of knowledge-building to one of empire-building. The British had, by this time, already acquired the island of Hong Kong, and if the interior of China could not be colonized militarily, then it could, as a ‘consolation,’ be colonized artistically. Allom’s text is quite precise and exhaustive in its description of the Porcelain Pagoda. He provides a cursory history of the structure, which is reasonably accurate. He notes that the missionary Louis le Comte saw it and sang its praises, and also that “…these praises have been reiterated by the English who examined it during our occupancy of Nanking in the late Chinese war.”193 In the preceding textual account, Allom laments that the pagoda was destroyed in 1856, at

193 Ibid., p. 15. Page 107! of 300 the hands of Taiping rebels. He criticizes their actions thus: “With the disregard for antique remains such disorderly bands frequently exhibit, they blew up the fine edifice, which had so long been the boast of China; and only its ruins now remain.”194 The British government supported their former adversary, the Qing court, so Allom’s commentary is unsurprising. His overall condemnation of the rebels, and the destruction of the esteemed pagoda, hints at a viewpoint that China was barbarous, chaotic, crumbling. By penetrating the pagoda, he suggests that British rulership, or influence, would be beneficial to the country.

China from Within: Allom’s Domestic Scenes

As described above, Allom’s visual reference to Alexander can be categorized into two groups: those that reinterpret individual scenes, people, or objects, and those that take multiple images and combine them into a completed scene. Among the images that best demonstrate the second category is Pavilion and Gardens of a Mandarin, Near Pekin (fig. 5. 10). Because Allom takes existing images and creates new scenes and compositions, a semiotic interpretation in necessary. The newly-created scenes are imbued with meaning that an iconographical reading would not capture. Keith Moxey observes that “…visual representation has less to do with a perennial desire to obtain mimetic accuracy—that is, the artist’s desire to duplicate the objects of perception—and more to do with cultural projection, with the construction, presentation, and dissemination of cultural values.”195 This is keenly appropriate to Allom’s Pavilion and Gardens, especially in comparison with the individual elements he borrows from Alexander. Whereas Alexander seeks an encyclopedic collection of people and places he encountered during his time in China, Allom projects his own cultural values, in Moxey’s phrasing, onto the scenes he creates. In Pavilion and Gardens alone, one can identify elements of Alexander’s A Pagoda (Or Tower), View of a Bridge, A Chinese Lady and Her Son, Portrait of Chow-ta-zhin [a mandarin], In his Dress of Ceremony, and A Small Idol Temple, commonly called a Joss House. The differences in these compositions cannot be attributed to variations in artistic styles. Instead, Alexander works at the turn of the century, when the Qing Dynasty was still a formidable global presence and China offered tantalizingly endless markets for British industrial goods; Allom, however, first published China Illustrated in 1843—one year after Britain forced China to sign the

194 Ibid., p. 14. 195 Keith P. F. Moxey, The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism, Cultural Politics, and Art History. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 30. Page 108! of 300 Treaty of Nanking (later known in China as the first of the ‘unequal treaties’). This treaty saw the cession of Hong Kong to Britain, the opening of five ports, and an indemnity to Britain, among other consequences. This was a China that had refused illicit British trade, had attempted to maintain an aggressively secretive monopoly over its exports (the Canton System), and above all, had challenged British pride, and lost; in other words, Allom’s China has been penetrated and appropriated. Pavilion and Gardens exemplifies this encroachment. It depicts a plethora of easily- recognizable Chinese ‘signs’: the people include a lady, a mandarin, and another official; the three are dwarfed by the exaggerated background, which includes a body of water, a pagoda, an indeterminable boat, a large building with the iconic upturned roof, and other buildings, possibly including a small idol temple. Allom has saturated the composition with these signs of China to establish locale, but by placing himself (/the viewer) inside, he asserts a privileged access to a space otherwise unavailable to outsiders. This composition is unlike any before it, and serves as a marked departure not only from Alexander, but from fantastical eighteenth-century chinoiserie as well. In the latter, when Chinese figures or scenes made their way onto export porcelain, there is no contemporary setting, only spaceless mythologies. Alexander, sketching in China, concentrated his creative energies on isolated figures, rarely hinting at topography. This way, British viewers could purchase a catalogue of ‘real’ people (or at least types) and places that Alexander attempted to capture. Allom’s Pavilion and Gardens interior, however, conveys false familiarity. He strategically places the pagoda in the exact center—in the distance, but conspicuous nonetheless. Since Allom never travelled to China, and Alexander did not produce any sweeping vistas, this is the former’s creation. The pagoda, appropriated in Brighton in 1822 as a symbol of decadence, a warning of despotism (as is discussed in Chapter Seven), aligns perfectly and is conflated with the centered official; the official (representing the moribund Chinese bureaucracy) is therefore responsible for China’s stagnation and defeat. In this regard, a semiotic reading informs the viewer that the pagoda has not always symbolized despotism, and it may not in the future; accordingly, the pagoda is not an arbitrary sign. Moxey observes, “That the sign includes its object and an interpretant has important consequences for the work of interpretation. Because it includes the object, the sign is never completely severed from its referent: that is, the sign is never wholly divorced from the circumstances in which it is formulated, for those very circumstances bring it into being.”196 This is

196 Ibid., p. 34. Page 109! of 300 why it is noteworthy that Allom has chosen to repeat the sign—in this case, the pagoda—repeatedly throughout his two volumes. He was acutely aware of the cultural signification the pagoda would bring to his work. This also explains why the novelty in Allom’s work is to be found in the composition, not the individual signs brought into that composition. In Pavilion and Gardens, Allom also includes a mandarin, a lady, another man (possibly of lower rank), and a nursery maid with a child: a mingling of the sexes, ages, and classes that Alexander never attempts. This homogenizes the population of China, and renders them all subject to the British gaze and visual colonization. Lastly, the spectacular vista that the mandarin has from within his home acts as a picture within a picture. In the foreground, the figures sit within the confines of their home—a quaint domesticity. However, the floor, roof, and flanking columns serve as a framing device: within this space is the landscape. All of the aforementioned elements—the bridge over the river, the joss house, the large building, the pagoda, and even the trees and shrubbery—that is, all of the quintessential, nonfigurative Chinese signifiers—are enclosed within this frame. A large lamp suspended from the roof and an interior column interrupt the picture space, reminding the viewer of the interior. This can be read in two ways: firstly, Allom claims to see the Chinese landscape from within; he claims to have the same access as a well-positioned mandarin. Secondly, he reduces China, via its landscape, to the trivial property of an anonymous bureaucrat. In this sense, China is not a vast and formidable empire, but a shriveled entity, a remnant of a happier yesteryear. The mandarin, as a metaphor for the Qing emperor and dynasty, has ensnared the entirety of the Chinese empire within its restraints, within its frame. Pavilion and Gardens, then, silently criticizes the grasp of the failing Qing court. A second interior scene displays Allom’s imagined privileged position, but departs dramatically from Alexander. Boudoir and Bed-Chamber of a Lady of Rank (fig. 5. 11) is one of the most intimate scenes in Chinese Empire, and no known predecessor exists. Alexander depicted ladies of rank, but primarily in outdoor settings. He did not purport to have gained access into the most private, restricted parts of a Chinese family’s home. What he did focus on instead was foot- binding, first neutrally in Costume, and later, with admonishment in Picturesque Representations. In Chapter Four, I suggested that Chinese women’s bodies, particularly their bound feet, acted as metaphors for China more broadly. Allom extends this metaphor for a post-Opium War audience. In intricate detail, he has rendered three connected rooms (all of which are lavishly furnished), a lady of rank, several of her attendants, and the subtle suggestion of a landscape through opened doors. The lady of rank in Page 110! of 300 question is centered; she sits while a servant tends to her hair. In her hands are a long (tobacco) pipe and a mirror, which Allom explains in the text. Another servant holds a musical instrument. The pipe and instrument, however accounted for textually, are phallic motifs, visually. The artist has taken great care, also, to include the bed in the next room. Allom suggests the sexual availability of these women, and in doing so, connotes the availability of China for Western penetration. In the last paragraph of the Boudoir text, Allom details the way in which middle-aged Chinese women abandon their fancy clothing and cosmetics in order to tend to their daughters’ adornment. He writes, “The matron now puts on the plainest raiment, her hair is smoothed, and no flower, or gem, or ribbon employed to divert attention from its faded lustre—no vain effort made to conceal the approaches of old age; the respect that years command in China being then deemed a sufficient passport in society.”197 In his depictions of ladies of rank, Alexander pays no heed to age; instead, the ladies are still young enough to adorn themselves with headdresses and personal ornamentation. By allocating considerable space to older ladies, Allom suggests that the Qing dynasty—for which women’s bodies are metaphors—has aged and withered. Since this is the time past Western penetration, it follows that now China has served its purpose in Britain’s eyes.

Opium-Smokers

Allom did not single out women for his unflattering portrayals. The last image in this chapter is entitled Opium-Smokers (fig. 5.12), and it is among the earliest of Western depictions of the Chinese opium den. In art and literature, the mystifying opium den certainly captured the Victorian imagination, and its appearance in the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, among others, is well-established.198 Scholarship on visual depictions, however, is much more scarce. Before I discuss Allom’s engraving, Opium-Smokers, it is prudent first to contextualize opium use in nineteenth-century China. As I have described in previous chapters, the Macartney (1793) and Amherst (1816) diplomatic embassies had sought to establish more favorable trade conditions, as the Canton system severely restricted terms of trade. The East India Company financed their purchase of tea, silk, and porcelain with silver bullion since Chinese merchants were

197 Allom, The Chinese Empire, p. 24. 198 See Elizabeth Hope Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth- Century Britain. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 111-140. Page 111! of 300 wholly uninterested in British woolens and tins,199 and this led to increasing debt and dissatisfaction. British merchants finally landed on opium as a tradable good in the 1790s. The narcotic, conveniently, was produced in British-held India. The illegal exportation of opium to China became dramatically more problematic two decades later: while opium was known in China previously, and had been used largely as a medication and luxury item, in 1818 “…somebody developed a cheaper, more potent blend of opium. The results were as spectacular as those that the Medellín drug cartel would later achieve by turning expensive cocaine into cheap crack.”200 Chinese officials, concerned not only with troublesome social conditions, but the exchequer as well, sought, unsuccessfully, to curb the trade. Finally, in 1839, Qing official Lin Zexu was sent to Canton to destroy a ship full of British opium, which catalyzed all-out war between the Chinese and British militaries.201 The ensuing Chinese loss resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Nanking and the surrendering of Hong Kong, among other consequences. The loss of the first Opium War in 1842 only led to more chronic and widespread opium addiction throughout the Chinese empire. While William Alexander had only alluded to opium use, Allom could not resist the chance to depict the seedy underbelly of Chinese society. His Opium- Smokers characteristically captures his subjects within an imagined interior. In the textual description, he credits the published account of Lord Robert Jocelyn (Viscount Jocelyn served in the first Opium War). The work which Allom credits is Six Months with the Chinese Expedition; or, Leaves from a Soldier's Note-book (1841). Allom writes:

It will probably be a melancholy satisfaction to Christian England to be assured, by competent and credible authorities, that the accompanying illustration does not exaggerate the deplorable spectacle exhibited by the interior of a smoking-house, into which the initiated alone are admitted. Lord Jocelyn, who accompanied a late mission to China, gives the following painful description of a smoking-house at Singapore.202

Despite conflating Singapore with China, thus homogenizing the Far East and the Chinese diaspora, there is an incessant claim to authenticity in Allom. First, Allom invokes Jocelyn, who boasts of his own first-hand experience. Secondly, Allom writes that his sources are ‘competent and credible

199 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 24. 200 Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven C. Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, And the World Economy, 1400 to the Present. (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 2006), 91.

201 Keith Mahon, The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth Century China. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), 37. 202 Allom, The Chinese Empire, p. 5. Page 112! of 300 authorities,’ signaling he has done his due diligence in securing reliably accurate, objective points of reference. The engraving is entirely that of an interior, with a back-room hinted at in the background, though no windows or exterior doors are visible. This creates the impression that the opium den is a world unto itself. Strategically, Allom portrays several men in various states of opium use, visually describing the process of consuming opium in order to indulge viewers’ curiosity. The upright man at the center is lively but appears sinister; he holds his pipe in a way that suggests that he is about to commence his activity. The viewer’s eye, already drawn straight into the interior through this first man, then moves about the image to take in the other figures. The other men, both in groups and alone, are positioned on couches and chairs. Some light their pipes, some inhale, and others recline. Near the back of the room is a man lying unconscious on a stretcher, which another man holds. They are presumably headed towards the back room, where the unconscious man will stay for an indeterminate length of time. Allom describes every manner of opium smoking, and describes this finality: “The last scene of this tragic play is generally a room in the rear of the building, a species of morgue or dead-house, where lie sheltered those who have passed into the state of bliss the opium-smoker madly seeks—an emblem of the long sleep to which he is blindly hurrying.”203 While Allom does not suggest this reading, it is possible that the deterioration of this man’s condition, and his eventual collapse, echoes the esteem in which China was held in Europe. As Chang writes, “The pernicious lingering effects of [integrating foreign aesthetics within British narratives] at century’s end counterpointed the willow pattern’s benign presence, and posed ominous questions about China’s future global status after the Qing empire’s anticipated collapse.”204 This opium den insinuates China’s debasement, which, as Chang notes, inevitably precedes the Qing empire’s demise.205 But is there any hope for the nineteenth-century Chinese? Allom concludes his entry on Opium-Smokers with prescriptive recommendations. Despite the fact that the preceding six decades witnessed relentless British infiltration into the China trade—innocuously, at first, with the Macartney mission, but then culminating in the above-described Opium War—Allom sees Occidentalization as the panacea to Chinese woes:

203 Ibid., p. 5-6.

204 Chang, p. 110. 205 Indeed, it was shortly after the close of the nineteenth century, in 1912, when the Qing dynasty collapsed. Page 113! of 300 It may be asked, can no remedies be discovered for a vice so deplorable, a disease so corroding to the heart of the nation? Yes, let the Chinese abolish despotism, enlarge the liberty of the people—remove prohibitory duties, cultivate foreign commerce—establish philanthropic institutions—and receive the Gospel—then will the distinction between virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, honour and shame, be understood, and the duties of the public censor become less onerous and more valuable.206

If only the Chinese removed the shackles of their despotism, embraced (Western, capitalistic) free trade, and converted to Christianity—in other words, if China did all the things requested of them, by the West, for the previous three centuries—would the degeneration resolve itself, according to contemporary Britons. Allom’s visual depictions, accompanied by such texts, are less about conveying a Linnaean world order to a curious public, and more about imperial ambitions. While his forerunner, William Alexander, sought a degree of authenticity, Allom appropriates this term to affirm a colonizer’s view of China. His claim to authentic objectivity—going so far as to cite men like Jocelyn— masquerades as an ethnographic endeavor. He was successful, however, because he adapted longstanding and well-established signifiers of China. By employing the signs that Alexander helped make legitimate, e.g., the pagoda, Allom situates his own work within this genre.

206 Allom, The Chinese Empire, p. 6. Page 114! of 300 Chapter VI China, Britain, and the Anglo-Chinois Garden

Up until this point, I have examined the corresponding concepts of diplomacy and depiction. Through an examination of the visual sources that the Jesuits created, the engravings that resulted from the Macartney diplomatic embassy, and the work that was produced in the wake of the Macartney and Amherst diplomatic missions and the aftermath of the resulting Opium Wars, I have detailed the British artistic depiction of China and its people. In the following chapters, I turn my attention to the corollary concept of diffusion. That is, how do these more literal depictions of China diffuse into the British aesthetic and cultural consciousness more broadly? To that end, the following chapters examine anglo-chinois gardens, the landscape, and an example of Constable’s paintings (Chapter Six) and the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (Chapter Seven). The extent of China’s role in shaping Romanticism has recently been addressed in Kitson’s

Forging Romantic China and Coleridge, Romanticism and the Orient,207 which contend that China plays a covert but important role in literature and poetry. Art historians, however, have been less active in investigating corollaries in visual and material culture. The ‘chinois’ half of the term anglo-chinois garden has begun to garner scholarly attention, but the gardens have largely been read in isolation. Scholars have been hitherto remiss in not examining the ephemeral but actual gardens and vistas that inform landscape painting. This is certainly the case with the landscape artist John Constable. While almost every possible element of Constable’s actual paintings have been examined, in works such as Paulson’s Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable,208 Bermingham’s

Landscape and Ideology: the English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860,209 or Barrell, who, in The Dark

Side of the Landscape: the Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840,210 invokes the plight of the peasants, there is no case study that compares one of England’s most famous landscape painters and anglo-chinois gardens. True, Constable was not a painter of anglo-chinois gardens per se, nor was he an anthropological artist. But he was a painter of ‘the English landscape,’ and he was esteemed as one of the nation’s foremost. In this vein, it is necessary to explore ‘the English landscape’ as

207 David Vallins, Kaz Oishi, and Seamus Perry, eds., Coleridge, Romanticism and the Orient: Cultural Negotiations. (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). 208 Ronald Paulson, Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable. (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press), 1982.

209 Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: the English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860. (Berkeley, California: University of California Press), 1986. 210 John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: the Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1983. Page 115! of 300 Constable may have understood it in his own time, for this nebulous term is too often taken for granted in art historical scholarship. What might be the connection between English gardens (a topic with its own copious literature) and the English landscape as Romantic artists conceptualized it? Furthermore, what external forces influenced the actual composition of landscapes and gardens? To that end, this chapter is a journey of sorts which begins with a brief examination of the history of gardens in England to better understand and contextualize the anglo-chinois gardens that became popular from the mid-seventeenth century. The emergence of ‘oriental’ influence in gardens will be considered alongside contemporary and opposing aesthetic philosophies which find Horace Walpole at odds with a number of others. While Walpole and his foes predate the paintings by Constable with which I am concerned by more than half a century, the outcome of these pre- Romantic debates, as I will discuss, greatly influence how current audiences perceive Romantic and later landscape paintings. Walpole’s ardent nationalism, for example, has reshaped the more cosmopolitan focus of his contemporaries. Lastly, I will focus on my argument, which will include an analysis of Constable’s late oil paintings: Water-meadow near Salisbury (1820 or 1829), and Hamstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond (1829). This analysis will be carried out under my proposed anti-Walpolean (or, post-Walpolean) paradigm. I will argue that the English landscape—which Walpole insists is ‘pure’— is a myth, in the Barthean sense, and that its rootedness in Walpole’s legacy obstructs one’s understanding of potential alternative readings. Water-meadow and Hampstead Heath epitomize the Romantic tension in which Chinese influence is simultaneously embraced and rejected. I argue that Constable’s œuvre is read within a Walpolean and Eurocentric framework which must now be reconsidered. The landscapes of Water-meadow and Hampstead each display the characteristics of irregularity and spontaneity popularized by anglo-chinois gardens: characteristics which eighteenth-century observers such as Addison, Pope, and Chambers (who traveled to China) attributed to Chinese influence. Walpole—on whose authority we still mistakenly depend—dismissed the connection out of nationalistic concerns. My chapter aims to examine the impact of China and anglo-chinois gardens on landscapes that have hitherto been read as purely British. Because Walpole interferes with the current understanding of the landscape as it appears not only in art but also in our own consciousness, it is necessary to go back to the beginning. By interweaving literature on both garden design and history with art history, I hope to provide an elucidation and interpretation of early nineteenth-century landscape painting that has been hitherto incomplete.

Page 116! of 300 Garden History, Theory, and Inspiration in England, 1730s-1820s

Garden design and history is a field of research with an abundance of traditional and insular research all its own. While a thorough recapitulation of this would be futile, it is necessary to highlight the orthodox narrative of English garden history in order to identify the ‘myth’ of the landscape, which I will discuss later, and to position eighteenth-century thinkers’ opinions on the subject. By establishing the orthodox narrative that many scholars take for granted today, I am better able to complicate the teleology against which I argue. That is to say, at a point which is coincident with heightened contact with China, English gardens underwent a dramatic change which favored irregularity and asymmetry compared to the uniformity of past designs. Current scholarship either de-emphasizes or neglects this greater exposure to Chinese aesthetics (for example, through the Jesuits’ engravings) and supposes that this aesthetic shift in gardens was random, or at least intrinsic to England, and was somehow destined to happen (hence the teleology). Understanding the history of those designs will better disentangle China’s role. The earliest formal gardens in England date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 usually serving as a modern-day origin point. The Pleasure Gardens, as they were known, came about for several reasons: after all, when leisure time was infrequent and quick long-distance travel yet impossible, “the Pleasure Gardens offered all that could be dreamt of.”211 This use of the phrase ‘dreamt of’ instantly identifies gardens to sites of fantasy, which would go on to provide a convenient connection to China (a source of fantastical projection during the Rococo period). From the Restoration onwards, Pleasure Gardens offered the elite—who were responsible in this period for commissioning such endeavors—not just the chance to flaunt their wealth, but also, importantly, their erudition.212 There was also a practical element helping to popularize gardens: while the wealthy preferred walking as a form of exercise, city streets in London and elsewhere in England were dirty, smelly, overcrowded, and infrequently featured surfacing beyond mud.213 The need and desire for Pleasure Gardens became so profound that by the mid-eighteenth century, London alone boasted more than sixty.214 Since seeing and being seen became increasingly important during this period, the garden also filled an important social role. They provided a socially acceptable locale for such encounters.

211 Sarah Jane Downing, The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860. (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2009), 5. 212 Ibid.

213 Ibid., p. 7. 214 Ibid., p. 8. Page 117! of 300 The late seventeenth century witnessed the birth of what would become one of London’s most famous sites of the day, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Originally named New Spring Gardens (for the geological feature), this supposed-paradise opened on the Lambeth side of the Thames in

1661.215 As Downing elaborates, many late seventeenth-century gardens gained a reputation of ill- repute,216 which indicates that some diversion from everyday living grew up alongside the gardens themselves. The names of the most popular Pleasure Gardens in London became metonyms for Pleasure Gardens themselves, and soon, New Spring Gardens, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, Marylebone Gardens (established 1650), My Lord’s Garden (1663), and the slightly-later Ranelagh (established 1733) began to dot the city’s map. What united these Pleasure Gardens across the whole of Britain was an adherence to French (jardin à la française), Italian, and, to a lesser-extent, Dutch prototypes.217 The most influential

French garden example (also called a French formal garden) was, of course, Versailles.218 In England, these prototypes converged to create what is known as the Grand Manner, which was at its height of popularity from the Restoration until the 1720s, when more naturalistic designs (discussed below) became more favorable. The French style, sometimes referred to as the Baroque style, is characterized by symmetry and an obvious control of and reigning in of nature. As Gordon Haynes succinctly notes, “It follows that no aspect of the design could be allowed to appear random or naturalistic.”219 The gardening textual authority of this era was Antoine-Joseph Dezallier Argenville’s The Theory and Practice of Gardening, written in 1709 and translated into English by

John James in 1712.220 d’Argenville’s book detailed the methods of André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), a landscape architect whose most prominent patron was King Louis XIV of France and whose most notable project was a significant portion of the Gardens of Versailles. One of d’Argenville’s most noteworthy theoretical contributions was his assertion that, essentially, a plot of land could only be considered for garden-making once it had been completely

215 Ibid., p. 11. 216 Ibid., p. 14.

217 The reign of William III of England, Prince of Orange (1650-1702) is usually credited with bringing Dutch inspiration to Britain. 218 French formal garden design is typically associated with the French monarchy and nobility, but its origins are often attributed to Renaissance Italy and fifteenth-century Italian garden designs. This origin was not unknown in England but it is beyond the scope of this chapter. See Kenneth Woodbridge, Princely Gardens: The Origins and Development of the French Formal Style. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986).

219 Gordon Haynes, Landscape and Garden Design: Lessons from History. (Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2013), 14. 220 Ibid., p. 15. Page 118! of 300 levelled221—the antithesis of garden philosophy of the mid-eighteenth century.222 Indeed, Grand Manner gardens in England found inspiration in the architectural volumes of Vitruvius and Palladio, where symmetry and geometric forms take precedence over the curvilinear forms and emotional responses that would come later.223 Function, as well as form, evolved over time as well. Pleasure Gardens were not mere repositories of botanical and horticultural specimens224 but sites of entertainment of all sorts: promenading and dancing, dining and gossiping. Concert venues were built, and all-weather, covered dancing floors followed. The boat ride required to reach Vauxhall, among others, in its early years was its own source of amusement, and it also enhanced the escapist sensation of the garden visit.225 Finally, the Pleasure Gardens were among the first pursuits in England that flattened the strict social hierarchy: “A visit to the gardens presented for the first time a respectable pursuit that was open to everyone who could afford the entrance fee, rather than by invitation according to title and class.”226 This was one characteristic of English gardens that remained relatively unchanged throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. However, while gardens remained open to the gentry alongside the nobility, they retained (up until Romantic competition emerged) their allusions to that which was only open to gentleman —namely, the Grand Tour. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ruling classes needed not only a classical education, but cultivation as well, and developing good taste was a social necessity. Money was not sufficient to buy respectability: the elite fervently collected books, artworks, and other signifiers of discernment because “[t]hey served to enhance the owner’s prestige. So indeed did plants and gardens.”227 Estates with mansions and well-maintained and elegantly-designed gardens proliferated. The preference for the designs, however, are rather contentious. Quest-Ritson, an orthodox garden historian, presents an incomplete assessment of garden design of the eighteenth century. He writes,

221 Ibid., p. 23-4.

222 Most orthodox garden historians do not attribute the change in design to any particular outside influence such as China, which I assert is Walpole’s legacy. This is taken up later in this chapter. 223 George London and Henry Wise and Andre and Gabriel Mollet are among the most well-known duos to design in the Grand Manner in England.

224 These topics are also well-covered by existing research. See Charles Quest-Ritson, The English Garden: A Social History. (London: Viking, 2001), 154-165. 225 Downing, p. 19.

226 Ibid. 227 Quest-Ritson, p. 117. Page 119! of 300 [C]lassical tastes—classical fashions—spilled over into every aspect of gardens and garden-making … . From about 1720 onwards, the larger English gardens began to fill up with classical buildings of every kind. Classical sculptures, too, were more widely displayed in gardens… . Classicism also received a boost from the arrival of Palladianism, a stylized development or reinterpretation of classical and Renaissance architecture largely promoted by Lord Burlington.228

It must be noted that Lord Burlington was a three-time Grand Tourist, and is credited with bringing Palladianism to Britain. Palladian architecture229 is important to note because, while the matching garden design declined in popularity as the eighteenth century wore on, these mansions were left in tact when Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown came to prominence; these buildings were the backdrop against which most of his landscapes were situated.230 Returning to Quest-Ritson’s assessment, I do not dispute that classical tastes were pervasive in a period when Neoclassical art in Britain and elsewhere in Europe was in demand. And, unlike painting or other media, gardening is a multi- generational pursuit that does not lend itself well to whims in style. (While gardening may seem ephemeral, biologically-speaking, plants could take decades to reach maturation, so this was not the place for capricious fads to manifest.) However, as Downing and Haynes are quick to point out, there were numerous other gardeners, landscape architects, and noblemen who began to work in alternative styles from about 1720 on, and this must be noted briefly before I introduce scholarship that brings Chinese gardens back into the discussion. William Kent (1685-1748) is seen as something of a transitionary figure; an architect and landscape architect who accompanied the aforementioned Lord Burlington on two of his three Grand Tours, he helped his patron bring his Palladian ideals into reality in the form of Chiswick House in London, which was completed in 1729. Kent lived in Rome from 1709 to 1719, and studied both painting and architecture; his credentials garnered him an impressive clientele including Burrell Massingberg (to whom he sent copies of Guido Reni, Annibale Carracci, Paolo

Veronese, and Nicolas Poussin) and Thomas Coke (for whom he copied Correggio paintings).231 However, Lord Burlington was Kent’s primary patron. At Chiswick House, Kent decided to create ‘naturalist’ gardens, resulting in a juxtaposition which would come to be seen throughout the century: Palladian architecture nestled within ‘natural,’ decidedly non-Renaissance (although perhaps not anti-Renaissance) gardens. So, Quest-Ritson’s representative assertion that classical

228 Ibid., p. 118. 229 That is, the symmetrical architecture derived from Venetian architect Andrea Palladio, who used Greek and Roman Antique sources.

230 Haynes, p. 25-6. 231 Quest-Ritson, p. 125. Page 120! of 300 tastes pervaded garden design is true, but not wholly representative of the shifting preferences that began to emerge. Stowe House in Buckinghamshire and Rousham House in Oxfordshire also acquired their own natural landscape garden.232 The latter is a particularly compelling transitionary case study. Began in 1719 by Charles Bridgeman, who worked in the more traditional Grand Manner style, Kent had taken over by 1738. The garden, according to Haynes, “… is quintessential William Kent, although it must be stressed for the record that the main lines of the design are not his but Bridgeman’s. As might be expected then, this landscape garden is rigidly structured by a geometry which relates the parts to the whole and determines the scale.”233 What is most significant about Rousham for my purposes is that its inclusion of “…the wider landscape within its realm is characteristic of the English Landscape Garden,” and that “it represent[s] the turning point in history when the French influence was largely discarded for a character more in tune with the native qualities of the English countryside.”234 That Rousham incorporates the wider landscape into the vistas confined within the garden space is of paramount importance. This is the connection between landscape and garden; the garden can include a plethora of exotic and fantastical elements but these are worked within a broader English landscape. This is one way that designers were inspired by Chinese garden aesthetics—which garnered increasing attention first via the Jesuit accounts, and later, through William Chambers—and natural English landscapes, as discussed below. Horace Walpole “considered Kent a great landscaper, the first to see that gardening might be inspired by landscape painting.”235 In this sense, an influential relationship between landscape painting and gardening is not unidirectional; that is to say, if artists and designers took European landscape paintings as inspiration in creating gardens, then it is plausible that they would also find inspiration in the numerous illustrations of China and from scenes painted on Chinese export porcelain that had begun to inundate British markets. Before taking up Kent’s student, Capability Brown, there is one facet of the classical taste which has not yet been explored. I am including here Quest-Ritson’s statement in full. On the connection between landscape painting and gardens, he writes:

232 Haynes, p. 38, 39-41. 233 Ibid., p. 39-40.

234 Ibid., p. 40-41. 235 Quest-Ritson, p. 125. Page 121! of 300 Grand Tourists have also been credited with starting the fashion for landscape gardening. The argument is that, during the seventeenth century, artists like Claude, Poussin and Salvator Rosa began to study and appreciate the landscape of the Roman Campagna. In the 1720s, long after all three were dead, their work became both collectable and collected. The young men who bought their paintings were so influenced by the beauty of their purchases that when they came home to England they started to turn their gardens into three-dimensional Claudes and Poussins. … The truth, however, is more complicated… . It is true that the greatest collectors also built the most magnificent Palladian houses and glorious classical gardens … [b]ut these were men of exceptional intellectual ability, who distinguished themselves as politicians, scholars or professional men. And they all shared one common characteristic: they were nouveaux riches with lots of money to buy their way into social respectability.236

An affinity for Antiquity was certainly a way for the nouveaux riches to assert their social pedigree and legitimacy (by connecting themselves to an unbroken and ancient tradition) but that does not yet take into account the number of other gentlemen who might find themselves more settled socially and willing to be more experimental. The nouveaux riches, then, account, to some degree, for the sustained fashionability of Neoclassicism, but as I described, alternatives also began to find expression. Regardless of the family money’s origin, Capability Brown (1716-1783) was the landscape gardener of choice among patrons of the mid-late eighteenth century. Brown is typically characterized as the English landscape gardener, and while I do not seek to challenge this notion, I do aim to situate him within a broader narrative of early modern globalization than is typically done in the literature which clings to the idea of the ‘Virgin birth’ of English culture. A few lines from one of his innumerable biographies will serve as a representative of the standard characterization:

The eighteenth-century landscape garden is consistently defined as England’s single greatest contribution to European culture. The term invariably conjures up a ubiquitous image of sweeping lawns, undulating lakes and artfully placed clumps of trees—in short, all the attributes of the standard park formula instigated by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and his followers, which held the commercial monopoly on garden design well into the nineteenth century. That Brown’s name has become synonymous with the English garden is hardly surprising. Between 1751 and 1783 his consultancy handled over 170 commissions, changing the face of Georgian England.237

Brown is seen as not only the paradigmatic English gardener, but also the first to truly break away from the Grand Manner style. From 1751, Brown’s naturalistic formula spread like wildfire. There is a certain genealogy that must be acknowledged: as previously noted, London and Wise are considered prototypical English Grand Manner garden designers, and their apprentice, Charles

236 Quest-Ritson, p. 120. 237 Laura Mayer, Capability Brown and the English Landscape Garden. (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2011), 5. This same source (Mayer) is one which claims that English gardens featuring Chinese, Indian, or Turkish elements are not ‘chaste’; the fact that these elements were often grouped together with the Gothic structures that Walpole and later Britons would come to see as purely, native English is ironic. Page 122! of 300 Bridgeman, is credited with an initial break from their style.238 Kent, the transitionary figure, was commissioned to redevelop some of his designs, notably at Rousham. The point here is that famous individuals such as Brown carry the risk of becoming isolated from their own predecessors, but he was not working in a historical vacuum. Some of Brown’s most notable gardens were located at Petworth (West Sussex), Chatsworth (Derbyshire), Bowood (Wiltshire), and Blenheim Palace (Oxfordshire), and while he contributed to dozens, if not several hundred, more, his basic formula remained unchanged. This formula invariably included a surrounding belt of trees, clumps of trees (learned from Kent), a body of water, no visible outbuildings (such as a kitchen garden, which would have been connected to the main house through a tunnel so as to hide the servants), ha-has, sparse garden buildings or ruins, and a curving driveway rather than a grand triumphal avenue.239 At Stowe, from 1740, Brown is said to have cultivated his signature style: here, he “… developed his skill in simplifying formal gardens and creating the distinctive curves and contours which we now recognize as an essential feature of the English landscape garden.”240 Bowood (fig. 6.1) offers an intriguing case study: not only is it one of the most extant and well-preserved examples, it is also a place where he was given a blank canvas to work with—a rare opportunity, indeed. While the main house has since been demolished and Italianate terraces were added in the nineteenth century, the garden retains its naturalistic, Brownian characteristics. That is to say, the “… essence of Brown’s work here is the creation of a landscape that appears to be entirely natural, within which cattle grazed in the field between house and lake… . The simplicity belies the skill of its creation.”241 It is this very simplicity, however, that came to be viewed with a critical eye in the second half of the eighteenth century, alongside the emergence of the Picturesque movement. William Gilpin, having published essays on the Picturesque in 1782, gave the movement a title, and Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price contributed to the contemporary literature at the end of the century as well. The spirit of the Picturesque, however, was already in the air by the time Brown’s successors were working. While the idea of the Picturesque manifested in many arts, in gardening, it “… was seen as an approach to landscape design that allowed both the Sublime and the Beautiful

238 Haynes, p. 28. 239 Ibid., p. 29.

240 Quest-Ritson, p. 132. 241 Haynes, p. 43. Page 123! of 300 to coexist.242 Picturesque gardens were more complex than Brown’s designs and were a reaction against their simplicity.”243 Among the values of this style were “Variety and contrast [which] were deemed necessary as a replacement for the peace and tranquility of middle-century layouts.”244 The Picturesque movement is not only important because contemporary gardeners took to the style, but also because it is in many ways a forerunner to the Romantic movement; the Picturesque, like the Romantic, sought an emotional rather than a purely intellectual response to a work of art. Whereas the emphasis on the Grand Tour and one’s cultural erudition was bound to Grand Manner and formal styles, an emerging Picturesque aesthetic relied on this psychological response to be part of the experience of the garden. Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) was among the first post-Brown garden designers to embrace the Picturesque. Whereas Brown’s landscapes were often static—that is, having a similar appearance no matter where an observer stood—Repton took Payne Knight’s and Price’s ideas and applied them to his gardens. As a result, his gardens had a foreground, middle ground, and background, as in paintings, and each of these zones were treated differently. His formula included visual intrigue in the foreground (such as colorful planting), a Brownian parkland in the middle ground, and wilderness, or at least wild-seeming landscapes, in the background.245 Haynes asserts that his method—rather than any individual project—is the reason he is best remembered in garden history. One of the most charming aspects of Repton’s career was his use of Red Books, which offered potential clients a before-and-after preview of their property. He also began his career as a defender of Brown, but he eventually came to value creativity, and he “… selected diverse design elements both from his time and from history.”246 He also reintroduced flower gardens, themed sections, and the “Mixed Style” which celebrated an eclecticism not previously seen in England.

242 By the early eighteenth century, philosophers began writing about the Sublime as a distinct aesthetic category as the Beautiful. Joseph Addison and Lord Shaftesbury, discussed in the next section, were among the writers of the day theorizing on the topic. Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful of 1756 formalized the category and set it in opposition to the Beautiful. This paved the way for the Picturesque, an aesthetic category that reconciles the two, to emerge.

243 Haynes, p. 27. 244 Ibid.

245 Ibid., p. 28. 246 Ibid., p. 46. Page 124! of 300 Early- & Mid-Eighteenth Century Garden Theory: Shaftesbury, Addison, Pope, and Chambers

Up until now, I have focused on a few key figures and movements within English garden history, and referenced a few standout patrons. Yet, the stage is incomplete: the dramatis personæ is a triangular unit, consisting of patrons, landscape architects and garden designers, and aesthetic philosophers. In this section, I will focus on philosophers and other writers of the eighteenth century who took up theories of garden and landscape design. Many of these figures, such as Addison and Pope, were involved first-hand in the creation of their own influential estates, if not others. I will explore, in chronological order, the way that gardens were the site of so much contestation and interpretation. In this manner, I can better juxtapose Walpole’s politically-motivated garden- historical revisionism. Sir William Temple provides a starting point in understanding the diversion of inspirational sources for garden design away from Europe. Temple is credited as the first to use the term sharawadgi in English in 1685; the term was meant to describe “… the Chinese idea of beauty without order,”247 and this notion would influence Shaftesbury, Addison, and Pope.248 The actual etymology of the term is obscured and debated: Liu, citing sinologist Michael Sullivan, suggests it is a derivative of a Persian word;249 Porter claims a Chinese origin via the phrase sa luo wei qi, “literally meaning careless grace employed for an impressive and surprising effect”;250 and numerous other sources connect it to the Japanese word sorowaji, meaning ‘not being regular.’251 The ambiguous source of the term could only add to the exoticism of its use in English. It is in the publication Upon the Gardens of Epicurus: or, Of Gardening, in the Year 1685 (published in 1692) that Temple first used the word sharawadgi; it was intended to convey the Chinese style of tree-planting, which differed from the then-popular European style of planting trees in straight lines and rows. A oft-cited key passage summarizes Temple’s vision:

The Chineses [sic] scorn this [regular and symmetrical] way of planting … . But their greatest reach of imagination, is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed: and, though we have hardly any notion of this sort of beauty,

247 Yu Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal. (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 7.

248 Ibid. 249 Ibid., p. 18.

250 David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 121-122. 251 See for example, Ciaran Murray, “Sharawadgi Resolved,” Garden History 26, no. 2 (1998): 208-209. Page 125! of 300 yet they have a particular word to express it, and, where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the sharawadgi is fine or admirable, or any such expression of esteem.252

Though he writes at the close of the seventeenth century—before Grand Manner gardens waned in popularity in England—Temple’s admiring tone towards the Chinese aesthetic fails to anticipate any domestic origins of irregularity. In fact, it is just the opposite: he claimed that no such irregularity or asymmetry existed in Europe. Liu posits that the popularity of Temple’s Upon the Gardens of Epicurus paved the way for other philosophical writers (such as Shaftesbury, Addison, and Pope) “… to denigrate the symmetrically organized parterres and the variously shaped shrubs and trees that had been a common sight in an English pleasure ground and had been studiously copied from models in France, Italy and Holland.”253 Armed with knowledge of sharawadgi, garden designers (including Batty Langley and Stephen Switzer)254 could begin the new century by finding in Nature the ultimate source of garden design inspiration. Liu suggests that Temple learned about irregularity from the accounts of the Jesuit missionaries circulating throughout Europe, and also from seafaring employees of the Dutch East India Company, as he served as a diplomatic envoy of Charles II in the Netherlands.255 Regardless of who might have been Temple’s informants, the crucial point is that he attributed the notion of irregularity and looking to Nature to the Chinese, to a foreign source. There was no hint that the idea of irregularity originated in Britain. As mentioned above, one of the first writers to follow Temple and to look to nature for inspiration was Lord Shaftesbury. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1670-1713), politician, writer, and philosopher, was among the most influential voices of the Enlightenment. Osvald Sirén remarks that “The new style was introduced, however, less by professional gardeners than by prominent philosophers and writers who, ever since the beginning of the century, interpreted the new romantic attitude towards Nature. One of the most influential and eloquent among them was … the Earl of Shaftesbury.”256 His Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was published in three volumes in 1711; The Moralists had been written in 1705. In The Moralists, Shaftesbury is an ardent supporter of nature and of natural designs in gardens, and

252 William Temple, Upon the Gardens of Epicurus, quoted in Liu, Seeds, p. 18.

253 Liu, Seeds, p. 18. 254 Ibid.

255 Liu discusses this at length in Seeds, p. 22-25. 256 Osvald Sirén, China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century. (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1950), 16. Page 126! of 300 though he makes no explicit reference to China, his enthusiasm for seeking inspiration from nature is intriguing. On nature, he comments, “O Glorious Nature! supremely Fair, and sovereignly Good! …Whose Looks are so becoming, and of such infinite Grace; whose Study brings such Wisdom, and whose Contemplation such Delight; whose every single Work affords an ampler Scene, and is a nobler Spectacle than all that ever Art presented!”257 His phrase, ‘whose study brings such wisdom’ can easily be translated into a critique of the thoroughly unnatural Grand Manner garden styles still popular in England in the early eighteenth century. Additionally, ‘whose contemplation such delight’ suggests that naturalistic settings can provide as much aesthetic satisfaction as the aforementioned Grand Manner gardens. It is also possible that the term ‘delight’ here foreshadows the emotional, rather than purely intellectual, response that was a tenet of the Picturesque style later in the century. Shaftesbury continues in The Moralist to make clearer claims about French and Italianate garden styles. He states, “The Wildness pleases. We seem to live alone with Nature. We view her in her inmost Recesses, and contemplate her with more Delight in these original Wilds, than in the artificial Labyrinths and feign’d Wildernesses of the Palace.”258 For Shaftesbury, God is the ultimate artist,259 and the artificiality of contemporary gardens stood in stark contrast to this belief. That Shaftesbury’s volumes were successful and acclaimed across Europe meant that he had an influence upon the Picturesque, nature-inspired gardens that would come into fashion in the middle of the century.260 In this regard, leading philosophers had a role to play in the direction of landscape design preferences. Shaftesbury was not a sinophile, but his ability to appreciate and promote irregularity paved the way for anglo-chinois gardens to proliferate.261 While Shaftesbury connects nature to a Creator, Joseph Addison (1672-1719) associates irregularity in gardening to Liberty. His sentiments are known through The Tatler, the society and literature journal founded by his childhood friend Richard Steele, and also through the magazine that the two men started together in 1711, The Spectator. Addison’s essays in The Tatler would form

257 Shaftesbury, The Moralist, quoted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, eds., The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820. (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 1988), 122.

258 Ibid., p. 123. 259 For the interconnections between God, nature, and landscape, see Katherine Myers, “Shaftesbury, Pope, and Original Sacred Nature,” Garden History 38, no. 1 (2010): 3-19.

260 Mavis Batey, “The Pleasures of the Imagination: Joseph Addison's Influence on Early Landscape Gardens,” The Garden History Society 33, no. 2 (2005): 189. 261 Yu Liu, “The Inspiration for a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas in England in the Early Modern Period,” Comparative Civilizations Review 53 (2005): 100. Page 127! of 300 “…an essential part of the ideology of the English landscape garden, [which is] its freedom from unnecessary constraints.”262 Indeed, gardens and politics were conflated early in the century: “Just as England itself is happily spared the absolutism of French politics, its gardens should also be cleared of the ordered and fiercely prescriptive designs that mirror it.”263 Before the nineteenth century—and the attendant cultural, economic, and military fiascos between Britain and China— rejection of non-Classical aesthetic ideals (such as were found in the Rococo style) were based in anti-French, not anti-Chinese, sentiments.264 Therefore, writers who sought an alternative to Classical principles had a source in China; before Walpole’s nationalistic intervention, any protest would have been a debate about taste, not about foreign influence in Britain. Indeed, taste-makers such as Addison freely commented upon the Chinese method of garden design. In 1712, he wrote:

Writers who have given us an Account of China, tell us, the Inhabitants of that Country laugh at the Plantations of our Europeans, which are laid out by the Rule and Line; because, they say, any one may place Trees in equal Rows and uniform Figures. They chuse rather to shew a Genius in Works of this Nature, and therefore always conceal the Art by which they direct themselves. They have a Word, it seems, in their Language,265 by which they express the particular Beauty of a Plantation that thus strikes the Imagination at first Sight, without discovering what it is that has so agreeable an Effect. Our British Gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring Nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible.266

One of the key words in this passage is ‘deviate’: Addison does not view contemporary garden design as one version of nature, but as something alien to it. China, in this manner, had the potential to familiarize Britons with models of gardens which epitomize the balance between wilderness and symmetrical regularity. On the topic of nature, Addison remarks, “There is something more bold and masterly in the rough careless Strokes of Nature, than in the nice Touches and Embellishments of Art. … [I]n the wide Fields of Nature, the Sight wanders up and down without Confinement, and is fed with an infinite variety of Images, without any certain Stint or Number.”267 In Addison, one is able to find a direct connection between Chinese gardens and nature, and praise of nature as a

262 Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 138. 263 Ibid.

264 For example, in 1755, David Garrick attempted to stage the failed The Chinese Festival, based on the French original. Four years later, the sets were reused for Arthur Murphy’s 1759 The Orphan of China, which was based on a Chinese play rather than a French one. See David Beevers, Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 18-19. 265 The word Addison is probably searching for is sharawadgi.

266 Addison, The Spectator, no. 414, quoted in Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 142. 267 Ibid., p. 141. Page 128! of 300 source for his own countrymen to tap into. Addison is among the first not only to embrace Chinese prototypes, but to openly ridicule Grand Manner elements such as the parterre and topiaries.268 Alexander Pope, like his contemporary Addison, found in Chinese gardens a potential model to break away from classic designs. Although he is presently remembered more as a poet, he was instrumental in championing an alternative in garden design. He accomplished this in word and deed alike: “Pope exercised a doubly strong influence over the course of garden history: by his published pronouncements, and by his private example. His own gardens at Twickenham were justly famous during his lifetime….”269 Pope consulted with Kent and Bridgeman in the design of his gardens,270 but he also wrote about his aesthetic ideals. In conjunction with a translation of the descriptions of the Gardens of Alcinous from Homer’s The Odyssey, he commented: “How contrary to this Simplicity is the modern Practice of Gardening; we seem to make it our Study to recede from Nature, not only in the various Tonsure of Greens into the most regular and formal Shapes, but even in monstrous Attempts beyond the reach of the Art it self….”271 He is notably criticizing then- popular topiaries in this passage, but also the impulse to plant in regular forms. For Pope, a desire to return to Nature as a source of inspiration was not a passing trend; the above-quoted passage was written in 1713, and two decades later, he was still devoted to the same cause. In the text of 1731, Epistle to the Earl of Burlington, Sirén has argued that “His thesis was that the point of departure was Nature, the fundamental prototype that must never be lost from sight; but at the same time one should seek variety and surprise and not allow her full beauty to appear at the first glance.”272 This notion of variety and surprise anticipates both the attributed Chinese influence and also the tenets of Romanticism. Pope prefigures the shift in emphasis from an intellectual response (via cultural erudition) to an emotional one. In order to shift towards Nature, “He did his best to ‘consult the genius of the place,’ to shape the ground, to distribute the trees, and to utilize the water and the stones, in order to conjure up scenes of the same kind as those created by Nature herself.”273 This is still a manipulation, or intervention, of sorts. Pope, like the advocates of the Chinese taste (such as Chambers) did not strive for an untouched Nature, but rather, an improved one. Irregularity, like Temple’s sharawadgi, was one way to advance that cause.

268 Haynes, p. 26. 269 Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 204.

270 Sirén, p. 23. 271 Pope, Essay from The Guardian (1713), quoted in Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 207.

272 Sirén, p. 20. 273 Ibid. Page 129! of 300 While essayists and philosophers debated the advantages of the irregular, there was one architect whose first-hand knowledge would prove invaluable. William Chambers (1723-1796) was born in Sweden to Scottish parents. He later worked in England, and traveled to Guangzhou (Canton), China on two separate occasions between 1743 and 1749 as an employee of the Swedish East India Company. The publications he produced as a result of his trips would fuel the craze for Chinese designs in the middle of the eighteenth century. While Temple and Addison promoted sharawadgi decades earlier, Chambers’ work acted as a cultural conduit between China and Britain. The mid-century saw demand for these flows increase. Having studied Chinese architecture and decoration during his journeys, Chambers produced three separate volumes which would stimulate British curiosity about the Far East; these were Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils: to Which is Annexed a Description of their Temples, Houses, Gardens, &c, published in 1757, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey in 1763, and A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, in 1772. All were published in London. The second book, Plans, was published after he had been invited to improve the royal gardens at Kew—work which included the inclusion of a pagoda (see fig. 5.8). Chambers’ dissemination of first-hand accounts and ‘expert’ testimony offered Britons, particularly gardeners, the opportunity to study ‘authentic’ Chinese aesthetics at a time when fantastical chinoiserie was at its peak.274 In Designs of Chinese Buildings, Chambers, like his predecessors, comments upon the role of nature in a landscape; he writes, “Nature is their pattern, and their aim is to imitate her in all her beautiful irregularities.”275 As evidenced by Addison, the classical patterns in England were deemed as a deviation from nature, not an alternate version of it. However, Chambers writes that the Chinese strive to ‘imitate’ nature, rather than adhering strictly to whatever is already present within the grounds; this notion comes to prominence with the Picturesque movement, which did not shun nature, but instead attempted to create a more perfect nature.

274 Up until this point, Europeans were not completely oblivious to images of China. The Italian Father Matteo Ricci of the Imperial palace and gardens at Jehol created engravings which he sent back to Europe. These images were known in Britain, and Lord Burlington had a copy which is now housed in the British Library. Jean Denis Attiret was a Jesuit missionary to China from 1737 until his death in 1768. He was also a painter of natural subjects and portraits and his works were known in Europe. In 1752 Joseph Spence translated Attiret’s 1747 French original as A Particular Account of the Emperor of China’s Gardens. See Liu, Inspiration. See also Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè, China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. (Los Angeles, California: Getty Research Institute, 2007), 121-132. 275 Chambers, Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils, quoted in Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 283. Page 130! of 300 Chambers also foreshadows Romanticism in the way he describes Chinese aesthetics. In addition to itemizing the elements that should go into a garden, such as ground,276 rocks, bodies of water, clumps, and willows, and also commenting more generally upon optics, lines, and composition, he also speaks more theoretically in this description:

The perfection of their gardens consists in the number, beauty, and diversity of these scenes. …Their artists distinguish three different species of scenes, to which they give the appellations of pleasing, horrid, and enchanted. Their enchanted scenes answer, in a great measure, to what we call romantic.…They introduce into these scenes all kinds of extraordinary trees, plants, and flowers, form artificial and complicated echoes, and let lose different sorts of monstrous birds and animals. In their scenes of horror, they introduce impending rocks, dark caverns, and impetuous cataracts rushing down the mountains from all sides; the trees are ill-formed, and seemingly torn to pieces by the violence of tempests. …These scenes are generally succeeded by pleasing ones. The Chinese artists, knowing how powerfully contrast operates on the mind, constantly practise sudden transitions, and a striking opposition of forms, colours, and shades.277

This passage is densely-packed with design principles that would not only come to characterize anglo-chinois gardens, but tenets of Romanticism itself. The ‘three different species of scenes,’ which Chambers labels ‘pleasing, horrid, and enchanted,’ could be seamlessly compared to the beautiful, sublime, and picturesque—a triad which would become significant aesthetic categorizations of the Romantic movement. The enchanted scenes could be read as picturesque, since both incorporate elements that are visually beautiful (extraordinary plants) and elements that invoke distress (monstrous birds and animals). The pleasing is a proxy for the beautiful. The scenes of horror are akin to the sublime, with a viewer left to feel aghast—to question his or her mortality—and to enjoy the thrill. Edmund Burke’s 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful framed and formalized conceptions of those aesthetic categories, which “… made it possible to respond emotionally to both art and nature.”278 This included the aforementioned feeling of terror and dismay. This was an important shift in discourse; Burke “… opened the gates to a wider definition of what was acceptable in polite society.”279 By attaching a ‘proper’ aesthetic category to scenes of horror and sublimity, an attending shift in creating gardens which elicit these emotions could transpire. A final principle that

276 Grand Manner gardens completely leveled all the ground before laying out parterres, et cetera, but ‘naturalists’ such as Chambers thought that what the terrain had to offer should be incorporated into the overall design of the garden. In the latter case, each starting ground would be taken on a case-by-case basis rather than applying one formula onto all estates. 277 Chambers, quoted in Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 284.

278 Quest-Ritson, p. 148. 279 Ibid. Page 131! of 300 would come to typify anglo-chinois gardens is that of variety, which Chambers describes as ‘sudden transitions, and a striking opposition of forms, colours, and shades.’ While a one-to-one translation might be problematic, the confluence of the Chinese landscape with the British is worth analysis.280 Chambers’ A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening of 1772 provides an illustrious example that Walpole’s ‘Virgin birth’ claims of English gardens were not taken as gospel even in the late eighteenth century; accordingly, it is not only Walpole’s predecessors who find Chinese inspiration for English garden design. Commenting once again on the need for English gardeners to look to nature for inspiration, Chambers writes, “But where it is more strongly marked, their [China’s] artists never fail to improve upon its singulars; their aim is to excite a great variety of passions in the mind of the spectator.”281 Again, writers such as Chambers anticipate the emerging emphasis on emotional and psychological experience rather than a purely intellectual response. Furthermore, Chinese cultural products of all sorts, from garden design to porcelain to furniture, were paradoxically characterized as both novel and ancient. Missionaries and merchants, such as Attiret and Chambers, respectively, provided accounts of Chinese culture, and as David Porter explains, “… the resulting dissemination of unusually detailed knowledge about a distant culture stamped the European imagination with the indelible and … deeply transformative awareness that there existed, on the far end of the globe, a highly advanced civilization with a rich and unbroken cultural heritage of over four thousand years.”282 The intermingling of the new and the ancient in landscape design would have been enticing to upwardly-mobile patrons, and anti- Classicists looking for viable alternatives. Of other famous exports, Porter notes that “Chinese vases and painted wallpapers … were initially prized for their novelty, but unlike the latest fashions in dress, the Chinese style offered the paradoxical distinction of novelty with a four- thousand year-old lineage.”283 The result was that Britons “… valued Chinese goods not only as a new fashion statement, but simultaneously as enchantingly unfamiliar tokens of a well-established cultural value.”284 While Porter is discussing porcelain and other tangible objects, it is an intriguing notion to apply to garden design as well. This possibility is especially acute when one considers the above-

280 David Porter takes up the issue of Chambers and translation. See David Porter, “‘Beyond the Bounds of Truth: Cultural Translation and William Chambers’s Chinese Garden,” in Sinographies: Writing China, eds. Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 140-158.

281 Chambers, quoted in Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 320. 282 David Porter, “Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste,” Eighteenth Century Studies 35, no. 3 (2002): 399.

283 Ibid. 284 Ibid. Page 132! of 300 described juxtaposition of Neo-Palladian architecture and asymmetrical gardens popular from approximately the 1750s onward.285 Chambers, then, was at the vanguard of not just a fleeting fashion statement, but of a deeper aesthetic-cultural paradigm shift in which foreign signs were absorbed into the English visual sign system. To return to my allusion to the anti-Classicist—mainly upwardly mobile nouveaux riches patrons—Chinese designs offered one of the primary alternatives to Neoclassical and Grand Manner styles, but it was not the only alternative. Indeed, a revival in interest in Gothic designs began to emerge just as Chinese styles began to proliferate. The otherwise disparate styles were not disentangled, but rather often conflated as viable non-Classical styles. This was explored in popular publications of the day; Thomas Chippendale’s 1754 the Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director was “…interspersed [with] unlikely Gothic and Chinese fantasies.”286 In addition, there were numerous publications by the brothers William and John Halpenny: New Designs for Chinese Temples, Triumphal Arches Garden Seats, Pavilions etc. (Vols. I-III, 1750-51), Rural Architecture in Chinese Taste etc. for the Decoration of Gardens, Parks, Forests, Inside Houses etc. (1750-52), and Chinese and Gothic Architecture properly Ornamented (1752). Sirén describes the Halfpennys’ publications as “Characteristic examples of the heterogeneous combinations of Chinese elements of style with western forms of architecture.”287 Unlike the Chinese elements, however, the British landscape would have been dotted with decaying Gothic buildings, meaning that there were nativist qualities to be found in the ruins.288 And unlike the Gothic elements, the Chinese contribution to non-Classical styles seems to have disappeared from many academic studies, while the Victorians’ (and, to a lesser extent, Georgians’) interest in the Medieval has garnered plenty of attention. Two recent publications which are especially relevant to the present discussion, however, make it clear that this is a burgeoning field: James Watt’s “Thomas Percy, China, and the Gothic,” and Porter’s “From Chinese to Goth: Walpole and the Gothic Repudiation of Chinoiserie.”289 Watt

285 See Liu, Inspiration, p. 97.

286 Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 117. 287 Sirén, p. 19.

288 It is not my intention here to articulate a detailed history of the Gothic revival in Britain, but only to cite it as it fits into my broader discussion on Walpole and China. See Peter N. Lindfield, Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture and Interiors, 1730-1840. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Boydell and Brewer, 2016), 9-31. 289 James Watt, “Thomas Percy, China, and the Gothic,” The Eighteenth Century 48, no. 2 (2007): 95-109, and David Porter, “From Chinese to Goth: Walpole and the Gothic Repudiation of Chinoiserie,” Eighteenth Century Life 23, no. 1 (1999): 46-58. The latter was reconfigured as a chapter in Porter, Chinese Taste. Page 133! of 300 is primarily concerned with literature, which would be tangential to this chapter, but it is noteworthy that the Chinese/Gothic conflation is garnering a renewed response. Porter, however, centers his argument on Walpole, to whom I now turn. Walpole had been a sinophile in his youth, and praised sharawadgi.290 Later, however, as nationalism flourished, he began to disavow any connection between British and Chinese styles. Porter suggests that “Walpole is not so much rejecting the Chinese style per se as repudiating his earlier belief in the possibility of productive architectural [and garden] synthesis between East and West … . [I]t is the potential mongrelization of norms that raises the alarms.”291 On the Gothic, he continues: “In later years, Walpole definitely breaks off his flirtation with chinoiserie, positing the Gothic not only as a distinct style but as a clearly superior one.”292 While there were numerous variables to consider, it is not coincidental that following Walpole’s embrace of the Gothic—as opposed to the Chinese—that the Gothic revival continued to thrive well into the Victorian period. Lastly, Porter writes that “While the Gothic revival as a whole was informed by historical research and a patriotic identification with the values of a heroic past, like chinoiserie it also represented an escape from the banalities of history in its fanciful evocations of a distant and exotic world.”293 The yearning for escapist fantasies did not wane in the eighteenth century, but the site of those fantasies became politically contested, as I describe below. The Gothic could flourish because of its associations with ‘a heroic past,’ and it was not tinged with sinophobia. This made it safe for Walpole’s endorsement. As a parallel move, (attribution of) Chinese influence would need to be similarly excised from garden design, in addition to the aforementioned architectural manifestations.

Mid-Eighteenth Century Garden Theory: Walpole and the Aesthetics of Nationalism

One of the reasons the Grand Manner was abandoned was because of its similarity to

‘oppressive’ French styles.294 Rococo and chinoiserie in art and architecture was rejected on similar grounds. That France is England’s historical foil is well-known, but the increasing nationalistic concerns of the mid-eighteenth century—which would later ripen in the nineteenth century—meant that influential men of taste would begin to renounce all which could not be easily identified as

290 Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 121-122.

291 Ibid., p. 122. 292 Ibid.

293 Ibid., p. 117. 294 Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 138. Page 134! of 300 native to England. However, that which could be considered “English” was often a matter of preference and convenience rather than any allegiance to objects’ and designs’ true provenance. A clear example of this is the porcelain story. This brief overview of what happened to porcelain’s credited provenance parallels what possibly happened to garden design attribution as well. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, Chinese and Japanese export porcelain began trickling into Europe, and many prized pieces became mainstays in the curiosity cabinets of the elite. One reason for European dependence on Asian export wares was that true hard-paste porcelain was not invented in Europe until 1709, when kaolin clay deposits were discovered in Saxony.295 The next century witnessed a proliferation of porcelain factories across Europe, with many in England becoming synonymous with the goods they produced; Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, for example, was founded in 1759. However, even well into the 1750s and 1760s, the Chinese character of porcelain was still valued: for example, “… the Bristol manufactory … said in 1762 [that it] had been set up in ‘imitation of East India China Ware,’” and Vauxhall similarly advertised that its porcelain was made ‘“in Imitation of the Ware of China’ in 1753.”296 The co-mingling of Chinese originals and British simulacra, however, would become troublesome for a growing consumer class; as Porter notes, “Chinese imports and the imitations they spawned may have helped to catalyze this shift [in attitudes]…these objects and the storied civilization they evoked continued to remind their viewers, often uncomfortably, of England’s own cultural backwardness, material dependency, and relatively late arrival on the world stage.”297 Despite—or because of—this tension between the Chinese origins and the English ubiquity of porcelain, its exoticism was downplayed, having undergone a “striking metamorphosis from exotic novelty in the early seventeenth century to quotidian necessity and paradigm of Englishness by the end of the eighteenth.”298 Nationalism, by definition, leaves no room for cross-cultural convergence.

295 Marie-Noëlle Pinot de Villechenon, Sèvres: Porcelain from the Sèvres Museum 1740 to the Present Day. Translated by John Gilbert. (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 1997), 9. See also: Hilary Young, English Porcelain, 1745-95: Its Makers, Design, Marketing and Consumption. (London: V & A Publications, 1999), Teresa Canepa, Luísa Vinhais, and Jorge Welsh, European Scenes on Chinese Art, exhibition catalogue. (London and Lisbon: Jorge Welsh Books, 2005), Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010), Maxine Berg, “Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Birth of Modern Europe: Culture and Economy 1400-1800: Essays in Honor of Jan de Vries, edited by Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr. (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010), et cetera. 296 Young, p. 74-5.

297 Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 7. 298 Ibid., p. 133. Page 135! of 300 And so it goes with gardens as well. Just as porcelain needed to become ‘nativized,’ so too did gardens. Any attribution of influence to outside countries—whether France, Italy, the Netherlands, or China—needed to be exorcized; attribution here is the key word. Horace Walpole had the authority and renown to do just that. Walpole, son of Britain’s longest-serving prime minster Sir Robert Walpole, was a politician, antiquarian, art connoisseur, and Grand Tour alumnus; these myriad occupations and fame lent him authority in public on matters of taste. What is intriguing about Walpole is that he personally parallels the sinophilia/sinophobia trajectory of Britain at-large. For example, in the 1730s while at Cambridge, he received a copy of the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s General History of China, in which he demonstrated a great interest.299 By the 1770s, however, coinciding with a general waning of Rococo chinoiserie, he had nothing but disdain for China. Walpole’s aversion to China transcended matters of taste, though, as he sought to eradicate the surface-level Chinese influence in Britain rather than conceding that ‘China’ was previously in fashion. He wanted to wholly deny that China had had any influence in British cultural products (such as porcelain, wallpapers, and gardens). There were a few issues at play in the 1750s. One issue is that the English landscape garden, in its numerous forms, and gardens more generally, became sites of political contestation:300 the landscape became hallowed ground in the face of increasing globalization and the surge in overseas trade that the British East India Company facilitated. As Yiu states, “Resenting what he perceived to be a French cultural snub on the English and blaming Chambers for it, Horace Walpole counter- attacked. More successfully than anyone else, he did it with an unabashedly nationalistic account of the English landscaping revolution.”301 This is in reference to the French coining the term le goût anglo-chinois to describe the asymmetrical, naturalistic English garden, which Walpole felt denied the English their due credit in its creation. Walpole felt this way not just about gardens, but about all manner of art and design; indeed, “Walpole’s early enthusiasm for chinoiserie gave way to later dislike and a strong preference for a nativist Gothic tradition, so much so that he claimed that the beauties of chinoiserie were in fact English rather than Chinese.”302 Walpole was entirely unwilling to see anything but English fingerprints in the new signifiers of England.

299 Ibid., p. 120. 300 See Peter Kitson’s Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760-1840. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 182-209, Elizabeth Hope Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 23-70, and Porter, Bounds, 41-58.

301 Yiu, Inspiration, p. 86. 302 Quest-Ritson, p. 182. Page 136! of 300 This was partly a political motive on Walpole’s behalf. As the son of a Whig prime minister, Walpole found in the mid-century art and garden debate a polarity between what he perceived as the domestic aesthetics of his own party and those of his antagonists, the Tories. He “… has been a strong influence on our perceptions of how the landscape movement developed. But Walpole had his own agenda. He sought to prove that the English had created a unique, modern, natural style of laying out a garden, and that this could only have been brought about by the English.”303 This political agenda estranged England not only from China, but from France as well. After all, France, Walpole would attest, was doing what was already outdated in England in garden design; the English, then, were the champions of the new, free style which he saw as a symbol of English progress and liberty, while the French were frozen in time.304 Walpole and his friend (and adulator) William Mason found themselves at odds with Chambers, in particular, over his reverence and aggrandizement of Chinese models. As Elizabeth Hope Chang details, “… both [Walpole and Mason] were profoundly invested in preserving and defending an undiluted national landscape aesthetic properly representative of English political liberty. In this their chief opponents emerge as the French, who not only themselves create gardens indicative of repressive Bourbon formality… ” but who also insist on describing ‘English’ gardens as anglo-chinois gardens, thereby denying the purebred genealogy of an English icon.305 Chief among their grievances was that “The Dissertation’s delight in the productive possibilities of that hyphenation is for Walpole and Mason a token of Chambers’s, and by extension Tory, sympathy for

Oriental despotism.”306 In a rapidly industrializing Britain, ‘Oriental despotism’ was viewed as the antithesis of a progress-drive West.307 Because of its conflation with Oriental despotism, the chinois of anglo-chinois needed to be purged: “Walpole’s rejection of chinoiserie relates to his growing awareness of it as an imported foreign style that had been overlaid onto native English models and, more troublingly, which had become associated with Tory politics.”308 This political contest has left consequences for scholars today not least because of Walpole’s and Mason’s writings. Walpole’s History of the Modern Taste in Gardening, which was written in 1770 and published a decade later, was among the most influential of its time: despite others writing

303 Ibid., p. 123. 304 Liu, Seeds, p. 2.

305 Chang, Chinese Eye, p. 34. 306 Ibid.

307 John S. Gregory, The West and China Since 1500. (New York: NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 119. 308 Kitson, p. 187. Page 137! of 300 garden histories in the same period, “Walpole’s was the most influential and its control over subsequent historians continues to be enormous.”309 Walpole employed a two-prong approach in his attack against Chambers and his sympathizers. In 1773, he requested Mason to compose a satirical response to Chambers’ Dissertation, which became the well-publicized An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers. Mason also attacked Chambers and the Chinese emperor’s pleasure grounds in The English Garden (1771-81). This was more directly an attack on the Tory government and George III rather than on China itself. (As a court employee, Chambers rose through the ranks and ultimately became Surveyor General and Comptroller.) For Walpole and Mason, Chambers and the anglo-chinois gardens he promoted symbolized “the Asiatic dream of George III.”310 The Chinese taste, then, served as a symbol of an oppressive monarchy which, to Walpole and company, England should stand against. Additionally, Walpole was not only motivated by public politics, but also by personal feeling: Chambers’ indirectly criticized what he saw as stale, formulaic works epitomized by Capability Brown, of whom Walpole happened to have a high opinion. Mason, it should be noted, took a slightly less sardonic tone than Walpole. Whether or not English gardeners had access to Chinese pleasure ground theories in the 1720s, when irregularity came into vogue, was debated. Walpole’s acquaintances Richard Owen Cambridge (1717-1802) and Thomas Gray (1716-1771) were among the participants in the debate.311 However, unlike Walpole, Mason and company “… resented any suggestion that the English were followers of the Chinese, but… [none of them] challenged the possibility that the Chinese pleasure ground was naturalistic and similar to the new landscapes being designed in England.”312 What was disputed among them, then, was how the English and Chinese grounds differed while sharing Nature as a source of inspiration. In this regard, Walpole was the most radical, and the loudest. Indeed, it was Walpole’s reversal from sinophile to sinophobe and his awareness of the Chinese empire through Du Halde’s publication which lent him an air of credibility. Walpole’s credibility and legacy is troubling for those who wish to scrutinize images of Britain today, as he still eclipses scholarship. As Liu explains, “Walpole deliberately confused Chinese gardening ideas with chinoiserie, casting a very long and unhealthy shadow on the subsequent writing of English garden history.”313 David Jacques’

309 Dixon Hunt and Willis, p. 311.

310 Kitson, p. 187. 311 Liu, Seeds, p. 2-5.

312 Ibid., p. 3. 313 Ibid., p. 11. Page 138! of 300 scathing essay On the Supposed Chineseness of the English Landscape Garden, which blindly refutes British knowledge of China even up until the 1750s, is one such example.314 Stephen Bending offers a deeper insight into the Whig/Tory political dichotomy which manifested in the English landscape garden. He observes, “… the status of the landscape garden as a political site … resulted precisely from the dual nature of land itself: land provided the right to political representation, the landscape garden the means of representing the justness of that right.”315 Since property ownership ensured voting rights, this offered all the more reason for Walpole to connect that property and its iterations to Britain, democracy, and Antiquity.

Gardens and Romanticism: Inspiration, Exoticism, Nationalism

The timeline I offer here is fragmentary, but representative. The transition from 1720s Sinophilia to 1820s Sinophobia manifested artistically, politically, and philosophically before Britain resorted to military action against China in 1839. Information about China, including Jesuit- produced personal accounts and engravings, began to circulate more widely by the 1720s. The 1750s, during which time irregularity had become the norm in garden design, Walpole and Chambers epitomized the dichotomy between embracing and rejecting Chinese influence in English gardens. While that debate lingered well into the second half of the century, by 1800, China had been sufficiently reduced in British consciousness to eradicate its attribution in English signs, while functioning as a negative, despotic sign itself (as King George IV was famously likened to an Oriental Despot). When William Alexander published The Costume of China in 1805, there was only one modest reference to Chinese gardens, and their irregularity: “The garments of rocks artificially piled on each other with flower-pots, containing dwarf trees here and there interspersed, will convey in some degree an idea of Chinese taste in ornamental gardening on a small scale.”316 The textual nonchalance suggests that irregularity in Chinese gardens was no longer a topic of debate in the early nineteenth century; Alexander’s second book, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese makes no such references to garden design.

314 See David Jacques, “On the Supposed Chineseness of he English Landscape Garden,” The Garden History Society 18, no. 2 (1990): 180-191.

315 Stephen Bending, “Re-Reading the Eighteenth Century English Landscape Garden,” Huntington Library Quarterly 55, no. 3, Symposium: “An English Arcadia: Landscape and Architecture in Britain and America (1992): 396. 316 William Alexander, The Costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight colour engravings. (London: W. Miller, 1805), no page. This passage accompanies the image titled, A Stone Building in the Form of a Vessel. Page 139! of 300 As Kitson describes, the poet William Wordsworth helped pervert the image of China in Britain in the early 1800s. Wordsworth began formalizing his ideas about China after the Macartney Mission; indeed, his brother John was an employee of the British East Company from 1788 until his untimely death in 1805.317 In 1805, William read John Barrow’s Travels in China, which would familiarize him with the various pleasure gardens in the emperor’s repertoire. Barrow wrote about the various gardens at Jehol, including Wanshu Yuan; Wanshu Yuan represented to Wordsworth “an orientalist false paradise of artifice and excess, a surfeit of pleasure and luxury antithetical to the natural beauty” of England,318 and he “reads into the Manchu landscape the orientalized forms of despotism he sees as the origins of its existence, as opposed to the English landscape grounded in an idea of British liberty.”319 By 1805, Wordsworth, informed by Barrow’s anti-Confucianism and Walpole’s legacy, converted Chinese gardens into lavish Chinese pleasure grounds.

Just as the later Brighton Pavilion was read as a manifestation of “exotic splendor”320 and decadent excess, the Chinese garden and pleasure ground was seen to contrast with the sober refinement of English gardens. S. T. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan (written 1797, published 1816) describes Mongol ruler Kublai Khan’s summer palace Xanadu—the grounds themselves becoming opium-induced fantasy, conflated with a mythologized figure from several centuries earlier. This is doubly condemnatory: not only are the grounds turned into a whimsical site of excess and lasciviousness—again, to contrast with the elegant ‘English’ gardens—but the ruler presiding over them harkens from the Yuan dynasty. In this way, China is accused of stagnation, its history cyclical rather than linear. Macartney’s own assessment captures the ambivalence towards Chinese gardens, and Chinese influence, at the end of the eighteenth century. He writes:

Whether our style of gardening was really copied from the Chinese, or originated with ourselves, I leave for vanity to assert, and idleness to discuss. A discovery which is the result of good sense and reflection may equally occur to the most distance nations, without either borrowing from the other. There is certainly a great analogy between our gardening and the Chinese; but our excellence seems to be rather in improving nature, theirs to conquer her, and yet produce the same effect. … [A Chinese gardener’s] point is to change everything

317 See Kitson, p. 188-209. 318 Kitson, p. 200.

319 Ibid. 320 Greg M. Thomas, “Chinoiserie and Intercultural Dialogue at Brighton Pavilion,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West,” eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 235. Page 140! of 300 from what he found it, to explode the old fashion of the creation, and introduce novelty in every corner.321

While Macartney cannot deny the English garden’s similarity to Chinese styles, he is also unwilling to acknowledge any connection between the two. Chang establishes that this excerpt “… lays out the essential distinction being established in both governance and gardening.”322 This intertwining between garden and governance speaks to the perceived cyclical, rather than linear, nature of Chinese history: “A British empire steered by a progressive, dynamic leadership might look forward to very different global prospects than a Chinese dynasty bent on alteration for alteration’s sake, carelessly uprooting and replanting itself in an endless cycle without any substantial change.”323 In this manner, Macartney is able to validate the similarities between the two nations’ garden designs, while also distancing England’s employment of those designs from the perceived stagnation and despotism that China’s garden suggested. Therefore, by the 1820s, the English landscape had been nationalized—mythologized against the Asiatic other. However, the aesthetics of anglo-chinois gardens did not vanish; rather, the natural elements were gleaned and labelled “English.” These are the circumstances under which Constable and others were working.

The Romantic English Landscape

One of the overarching theoretical aims of this chapter is to demonstrate how Chinese garden aesthetics largely figure in the prized, famous English landscape garden, and how this influence came to find its ultimate expression in the later landscape painting genre, à la Constable.

Indeed, one of my theses, in following Arthur O. Lovejoy’s generally overlooked text,324 is that China and its gardens, missionary illustrations, et cetera, was a necessary input channel into what would become European Romanticism. Considering the evolution of garden design preferences in the second half of the eighteenth century, the garden came to express an emerging Romantic aesthetic. This manifested in landscape painting, as well, as I discuss below. Conventional art historical scholarship on English landscape

321 John Barrow, Travels in China. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1804), 134-135. 322 Chang., p. 53.

323 Ibid. 324 Arthur O. Lovejoy, “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism,” in Essays in the History of Ideas. (New York, NY: George Braziller, 1955), 99-135. The first part was originally published in The Journal of English and German Philology (January 1933). Page 141! of 300 painting, for example, cites Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, and Salvator Rosa as the main progenitors of a derivative British canon—a Eurocentric orthodoxy. By contrast, Lovejoy had a more comprehensive understanding of Romanticism; he posits that Romanticism was fed by four such input channels: the aforementioned trio (Claude, Poussin, Rosa), the naturalistic garden, the Gothic Revival, and the admiration of Chinese gardens especially, and Chinese architecture and other artistic achievements additionally.325 Furthermore, he suggests that the second factor (naturalistic gardens) and the last (admiration of the Chinese) were, in the eighteenth-century mind, “… so completely fused that … they came to bear a single name, le goût anglo-chinois. They were associated because they all exemplified … the same set of fundamental aesthetic principles. They were differing applications of the gospel of irregularity, diverse modes of returning to the imitation of nature… .”326 While he acknowledges the role of earlier European artists on the proto-Romantic English imagination, he has not allowed twentieth-century nationalism to obfuscate his insight into the Chinese influence. Contrary to the Eurocentric orthodoxy, Lovejoy does not anticipate the Barthean mythology of the Romantic or English landscape. Constable also acknowledges his own artistic separation from Claude, though the former is also conflated with the latter. In his memoirs, he wrote:

The attempt to revive styles that have existed in former ages, may for a time appear to be successful, but experience may now surely teach us its impossibility. I might put on a suit of Claude Lorraine's clothes and walk into the street, and the many who know Claude but slightly would pull off their hats to me, but I should at last meet with some one, more intimately acquainted with him, who would expose me to the contempt I merited.327

Constable elaborates that a particular artistic style can only truly exist in its own time—so it is with Gothic architecture as well as his own painting. The new iteration of an old style, he suggests, can only ever be an imitation. Constable’s English landscape, therefore, is not one that imitates Claude or Poussin, but one that has been informed by the four channels which Lovejoy outlines. And those four channels created a unique movement in the Romantic English landscape. As I have outlined, anglo-chinois gardens were nationalized, and it follows that these boundaries were drawn up around the landscape as well. Evoking Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Claire Lamont and Michael Rossington write that “… the emergence of the nation

325 Ibid., p. 101.

326 Ibid. 327 John Constable, quoted in Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Esq. R.A., Composed Chiefly of His Letters, edited by Charles Robert Leslie, R.A., second edition. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845), 357. Page 142! of 300 increased the importance of borders. In the social organization before the nation … borders could be allowed to be ‘porous and indistinct.’”328 Nationalism, then, solidifies borders. These borders can be read metaphorically in regards to culture, besides the socio-political and geographic borders about which the authors write. Fittingly, the landscape—as it is painted, imagined, thought of—becomes the site of that cultural border. Michael Rosenthal posits that, in the nineteenth century, ‘Englishness’ is to be found in its landscapes, not its modern, urban cities.329 Because the land was inextricably tied to British notions of prosperity and liberty, the national landscape was one that needed to be depicted as both pure and ancient. The Romantic aesthetic indulged this urge: “And by the 1820s the picturesque was associated with landscapes and their details mellowed through time, pictorially articulating the value of tradition, and by extension those phenomena, not least the ancient if unwritten constitution, that set England apart from and preferable to other countries.”330 As I have written, it only becomes necessary to define those alleged traditions, and to define a national culture and its myths, when confronted with the Other. At the time when the anglo-chinois garden becomes so definitively ‘English,’ its Chinese source needed to be excised. It was an uncomfortable reality that China could so readily inform what the English desired to be uniquely theirs. As W. J. T. Mitchell states, “The intrusion of Chinese traditions into the landscape discourse … is worth pondering further, for it raises fundamental questions about the Eurocentric bias of that discourse and its myths of origins.”331 He elaborates: “Not only does it [the Chinese landscape painting tradition] subvert any claims for the uniquely modern or Western lineage of landscape, the fact is that Chinese landscape played a crucial role in the elaboration of English landscape aesthetics in the eighteenth century, so much so that le garden anglo-chinois became a common European label for the English garden.”332 The Romantic landscape, however, as it sought to glorify the English countryside (particularly as it faced increasing threats from industrialization) had no tolerance for that which was not ‘native’ or pure. Rosenthal posits that “One way to define a phenomenon is by contrasting it with what it is not, and…through most of the 18th century, that defining other had been supplied by continental

328 Claire Lamont and Michael Rossington, “Introduction,” in Romanticism’s Debatable Lands, eds. Claire Lamont and Michael Rossington. (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 4.

329 Michael Rosenthal, “Constable and Englishness,” The British Art Journal 7, no. 3 (Winter 2006/7): 40. 330 Ibid., p. 41.

331 W. J. T. Mitchell, “Imperial Landscape,” in Landscape and Power, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell, second edition. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994 and 2002), 9. 332 Ibid. Page 143! of 300 Europe in general and France in particular.”333 While France served as England’s foil, he writes, during the eighteenth century, the opening of the world stage in the nineteenth century, in addition to the growing awareness of ‘Oriental despotism,’ necessitated the establishment of the East, as epitomized by China, as another foil. Indeed, the emergence of nationalism catalyzed Britain’s assertion that it was descended from Antiquity. This Britain, descended from the Ancient Greeks, could at the very least claim France as a relation, having a democratic ancestor in common. The same could not be said of China. The Romantic landscape in England, therefore, is a highly politicized entity which cannot so summarily be assessed. As I will describe in the following section, Constable serves as a revealing case study on how the Romantic landscape, its political contestation, and its Chinese influence, manifested in painting.

Constable and the Legacy of Anglo-Chinois Aesthetics in English Gardens and Landscape

I have been concerned, thus far, with contextualizing the history of garden design theory, and its Chinese influence, so that I can situate Constable’s work within a longer chronology of British thinking on garden and landscape design. John Constable (1776-1837) is, undoubtedly, an unlikely point of departure for a chapter seeking to marry painting to the anglo-chinois garden. Surely, the ‘Romantic’ English landscape is one which celebrates the natural beauty of the nation at the crucial period that industrialization encroached upon sacredly-held acres. Saree Makdisi suggests that “… the romantic period in Britain marks the earliest sustained (though largely doomed) attempt to articulate a form of opposition to the culture of modernization,”334 and that “romanticism celebrates the pre- or anti-modern at the moment at which that eradication is just beginning.”335 In tandem with questions of modernity, Romanticism also requires an investigation of nationalism, particularly as the Other had become increasingly catalogued and categorized in this period. As Andrew Hemingway explains, Romanticism “…was intrinsically linked with the emergence of the modern nationalisms that resulted from the revolutionary anticolonial struggles and European wars of the period circa 1750–1850…” and that it “often vaunted the particularities of what were claimed to be distinctive national cultures and artistic traditions grounded in common

333 Rosenthal, p. 40.

334 Saree Makdisi, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 9-10. 335 Ibid. Page 144! of 300 language, common histories, and even common racial stock, however mystificatory these claims were.”336 The notion of commonalities extends, in this example, to the landscape. Before investigating British modernity and industrialization, I turn once again to Constable. If artists were launching an opposition to the ‘culture of modernity,’ what would that look like on canvas? In Constable’s case, a profound love of the natural English landscape manifests in paintings of well-known locales and places of high import to the artist—he continued this practice to such a degree that the neighboring counties of his birth and life, Suffolk and Essex, are together known as

‘Constable Country’ to this day.337 Working en plein air, Constable’s work functions essentially as a visual metonym for all that is believed to be the rural and suburban English landscape, but how English is that landscape? Furthermore, to what extent is the landscape imbued with political aspirations—both domestic and global—and what of the waxing British Empire? As the above sections demonstrate, our contemporary reading of the English landscape has been informed by a contentious narrative in which nation-building requires, according to those like Walpole, the systematic purging of all non-native signifiers, or at the very least, the re-naming and re- appropriation of those signifiers. (By 1800, Chinese tea, which was drunk from Chinese porcelain, had reached unparalleled popularity, for example. These signs, though, had been sufficiently ‘absorbed’ into British culture so as to not exude foreignness.) Constable’s landscapes, as captured in oil and as we imagine the countryside actually looked, transcend metonymy in becoming a Barthean myth. Establishing ‘the English landscape’ as a myth in the same sense as Barthes’ French wine, wrestling, or detergent is essential in establishing its connection to China and pre-Walpolean notions on this intercultural relationship. Barthes explains that “… what must be firmly established at the start is that myth is a system of communication, that it is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form.”338 An object, concept, or idea can be a semiological system, wherein an object, for example, serves as a signifier communicating a signified. However, a myth is a second-order semiological system, wherein the first sign (comprised

336 Andrew Hemingway, “Capitalism, Nationalism, and the Romantic Weltanschauung,” in Transatlantic Romanticism: British and American Art and Literature, 1790-1860, eds. Andrew Hemingway and Alan Wallach. (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015), 8-9.

337 Peter Bishop, An Archetypal Constable: National Identity and the Geography of Nostalgia. (London: The Athlone Press Ltd, 1995), 1-2. 338 Roland Barthes, Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation, trans. Annette Lavers. (London: Paladin Books, 1972), 107. Page 145! of 300 of signifier/signified) serves as the signified to the second-order sign.339 This all-encompassing schema is the myth. In the myth of the English landscape, Constable’s landscape painting is the first-order signifier. What is signified has been taken up by myriad volumes,340 and as Bermingham states in introducing Constable, “…by restricting itself to humble English rural scenery, [early eighteenth- century landscape artists, including Constable] represented a landscape both familiar and accessible.”341 At the heart of the matter is that Constable’s landscapes occupy a special place in British cultural consciousness, wherein the impressionistic meadows, steeples, and mills form the “fantasies of an idealized ‘selfhood.’”342 They are the rural counterpoints to the imperial metropole, thereby devoid of cosmopolitism: it is England in its ‘purest’ version. As Bishop pinpoints, “Englishness was overwhelmingly imaged as a monoculture, as an organic totality, supported by a land that was itself basically benign.”343 This perceived British monoculturalism—the belief in the ‘Virgin birth’ of British culture, language, technology, et cetera—is what orthodox readings of Constable’s paintings demonstrate. Taken together, this sign system—landscape is signifier/chaste rural England is signified—forms the second-order system signifier. What meaning this signifier communicates entails the myth: England, and eventually the British Empire, is at the center of the world, with London serving as metropole. Outside of its productive, urban, industrial cities, the English countryside-cum-landscape nurtures, sustains, and refreshes its people. The countryside, increasingly subject to enclosure and urban encroachment in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was simultaneously exalted in art and poetry; as Ann Bermingham notes, “Precisely when the countryside … was becoming unrecognizable, and dramatically marked by historical change, it was offered as the image of the homely, the stable, the ahistorical.”344 This homeliness, stability, and ahistoricity, however, required that foreign influence in sculpting and modeling the landscape into gardens be excised.

339 Ibid., p. 110-115. 340 See, for example, Bishop, p. 3.

341 Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 85. 342 Bishop, p. 6.

343 Ibid., p. 178-179. 344 Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, 10. Page 146! of 300 While Kenneth Pomeranz, John M. Hobson, and Andre Gunder Frank have recently sought to problematize the ‘rise of the West’ paradigm,345 David Porter complicates our Eurocentric understanding of modernity in an artistic and literary context. In “Sinicizing Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism,” Porter argues not only for finding parallels between Chinese and European early modernity, but to question the assumption of the existence of this strict binary in the first place. Furthermore, he states that the flowering of early modernity simultaneously in both regions may not be coincidental when global trade is accounted for; however, Britain’s inability to deal with a rival on the world stage during and after this period must be re-examined. Porter writes, “… at a time when Britons were first forging their identity as a nation, the Middle Kingdom loomed large on the horizon as a rival claimant not only to the spoils of international trade but also to the laurels of cultural achievement.”346 While it was too late by the end of the eighteenth century to remove all signs of China entirely, particularly tea and porcelain, it could still be possible, following Horace Walpole, to eradicate China from the landscape. Porter “suggest[s] that writing China out of history was an act of instrumental amnesia: a deliberate occlusion of rival claimants to exemplarity, and of the memory of a more truly cosmopolitan early modern past.”347 To take this one step further, to occlude China from exemplarity also gave Britain the justification it needed to defy the Canton system (that is, to smuggle opium into China) and ultimately, to provoke war. Yu Liu, in Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal, offers an interpretation of English gardens which incorporates Pope, Addison, and Shaftesbury rather than relying solely on Walpole. Liu makes several important observations: in the first instance, he notes that “English garden historians have often confused [landscaping] with chinoiserie or English continental fantasies about China.”348 Conflating garden designs with trends in interior decoration results in overlooking key European texts on Chinese landscapes. And, as I have noted above, Walpole instigated this conflation. Therefore, in reading visual sources in Britain

345 See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Andrew Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). 346 David Porter, “Sinicizing Early Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism.” Eighteenth- Century Studies 43, no. 3 (2010): 305.

347 Ibid. 348 Liu, Seeds, p. 1. Page 147! of 300 in the aftermath of Walpole’s miscontruals of landscape design history, it is necessary to return first to the debates in which he took part to remove the layer of misinterpretation that endures. In explicating the scholarly debate on the degree of Chineseness in English landscape gardens, my aim is to challenge the notion that hallmarks of English culture are either entirely native to the British isles, or that those markers are descendants of Antiquity (with Europeans the rightful heirs of Greek and Roman culture)—a pedigree especially touted in the face of nationalization and an apparently liberalizing embrace of democracy. Hobson writes that “… Eurocentric thinkers not only fabricated Europe-as-democratic but also sought to retrospectively draw such a notion back through time so as to (re)present Europe as the home and birthplace of democracy … . European thinkers suddenly elevated Ancient Greece to the birthplace of European civilisation, given its alleged democratic institutions and scientific rationality.”349 By insisting that the landscape garden is purely English, thinkers such as Walpole and his descendants also insisted on the purity of their democracy and connection to Ancient Greece. Bending describes the attribution to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Virgil’s The Aeneid—the perfect combination of an English and Antique origin.350 Any connection to China, then, threatened this supposed genesis. The pure ‘Englishness’ of the English landscape and garden, then, is a myth: a semiological system which crowns artists such as Constable as the divinely-appointed composer of such scenes. While scholars may fervently debate the origins of the irregular English garden, the aforementioned myth leaves no room to explore Chineseness in national emblems like Constable. It is problematic to characterize Constable as some sort of soothsayer of the English landscape without examining the context for that landscape. With Sinophobia reaching its zenith in his lifetime, it is necessary to remember that writers and artists see the landscape for what it is, but also for what it is not. This notion of what the landscape—and therefore what the British people—is not would have included foreign, exotic attribution. My assertion is not that Constable painted anglo-chinois gardens, but rather that his landscapes embody the early-to-mid-nineteenth century tension between embracing and rejecting Chinese influence in art: the push-pull, as I call it. Rather, Constable’s landscape paintings hint at the irregularity espoused by eighteenth century sinophiles such as Chambers while simultaneously eradicating obvious signs like pagodas from the finished work. Porter explicates the idea of cultural

349 John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 226-227. 350 Bending, p. 384. Page 148! of 300 translation rather than imitation,351 and it is that approach which I apply to Constable. That Constable did not paint mythological scenes but the ‘real’ English countryside helps reinforce that countryside as a myth in the Barthean sense. The lens to view that countryside had been, and continues to be, altered by contact with and eventual disdain for the East. Constable’s paintings share similarities with Capability Brown’s schema, but China acts as foil; an Other is required to confirm a national myth. Ultimately, Constable’s landscapes, whether borrowing from Chambers or Brown, have been irreparably altered because of contact with China and the ensuing need to define an English landscape. Constable’s paintings say: this is an English landscape. It is a landscape which must become a myth once Britain asserts itself on a global stage and has sustained a tense relationship with China and other ‘Eastern’ countries. I have included two examples of Constable’s work. The first is Hampstead Heath, Branch Hill Pond (fig. 6.2), which I have juxtaposed to a Qing-era painting, Spring Comes to the Lake (fig. 6.3), and Claude Lorrain’s, Landscape with Apollo Guarding the Herds of Admetus and Mercury stealing them (fig. 6.4). While Constable’s painting fits into a Romantic picturesque category, Wu Li’s painting correspondingly represents a Chinese pleasing scene as Chambers detailed. They share a varied but subtle topography, an off-center composition, and well-balanced fore-, middle-, and backgrounds. Trees are sparse but native, and humanity is present but not predominant. Constable, like Wu Li, depicts a humble, natural scene rather than a grand historical or mythological narrative. Regarding Claude and Rosa, my point is to demonstrate that while he and others that preceded Constable were crucial figures in nineteenth-century European landscape painting, they were not the only progenitors of English Romantic visual culture. Claude and Rosa would have been ‘acceptable’ non-British models because of their perceived shared ancestry in a democratic Greece, and that is why figures like Walpole and those who succeeded him did not go to the same trouble to eradicate their influence in British art as they did Chinese examples. Claude’s Landscape, in contrast to both Constable’s Hampstead Heath and Wu Li’s Spring, subordinates the landscape to the figure; the terrain is also largely flattened, with perspective rather than a receding diagonal delineating the background’s distance. In addition, both Constable and Wu Li appeal to emotion— the picturesque/pleasing response352—rather than to erudition, as Claude’s reference to Apollo, and by extension, a classical education, is wont to do.

351 David Porter, “Beyond,” p. 141. 352 This is not to suggest that classical Chinese paintings were bereft of their own symbolism, erudition, and intellectual responses, or to neglect the significance of the role of the Scholar-Painter. Instead, it is the translation of Chinese aesthetics into the Western imagination that has lost these symbols and connotations. In the next chapter, I demonstrate this case more thoroughly through the example of the pagoda. Page 149! of 300 A similar pattern can be found when comparing Water-meadows near Salisbury (fig. 6.5) to Wang Hui and Wang Shimin’s Landscapes After Ancient Masters (fig. 6.6). Again, we see in both Constable’s and Wang Hui’s and Wang Shimin’s paintings a controlled irregularity—a version of nature that is most perfect—picturesque and pleasing, respectively. There are no figures, only a finely-tuned balance of land, sky, and still water. Constable wrote in 1821, “painting is but another word for feeling.”353 While this assertion, that painting can conceivably be the ultimate expression of—and indeed, can be conflated with— feeling, of emotion, rather than of intellect and erudition, is the Romantic aesthetic in a pithy quotation. It is the influence of Chambers, of the Chinese gardens which elicit emotional responses, that paved the way for this to manifest itself in painting as well. Constable, like Macartney, is able to straddle allusions to Chinese landscape and garden aesthetics. Macartney acknowledges the similarity of anglo-chinois gardens to the Chinese models before him, but he also disassociates his country’s examples from those models. In the same manner, Constable embraces the controlled irregularity advanced decades earlier by sinophilic writers, but creates a wholly and distinctively English self-image. The anglo-chinois gardens’ embodiment and promulgation of experience and feeling in addition to irregular beauty is what resonates most vividly in Constable’s work. Thanks to figures like Walpole, those connections have been obscured, but it is my hope in this and future work to identify the aesthetic links between the British and Chinese empires.

353 “John Constable—an introduction,” from the V&A: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/john-constable-an- introduction. Accessed May 2017. Page 150! of 300 Chapter VII Domesticating Orientalism: Chinoiserie Interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton

One of the primary themes of this dissertation is the ways in which Chinese aesthetics and imagery—or what was contemporarily perceived to be such—impacted late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century art and visual and material culture. I have examined anthropological drawings of cultural conduits such as William Alexander and have also analyzed gardens, which were the sites where exchanges in design ideas notably manifested. But it would be remiss to entirely exclude architecture and interior design. Indeed, it is often not the ‘classical,’ or ‘high,’ media—specifically paintings and sculpture—which best demonstrate the ways that British artists, patrons, travelers, and everyday people were thinking about, picturing, and interpreting China. Instead, chinoiserie wallpapers of the mid-eighteenth century, for example, and the China rooms of country houses offer visual clues to how Britons understood Chinese signs. For those reasons, this chapter will examine the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. The Royal Pavilion offers a unique case study: rather than a travelogue or trendy country house decor, it is a palatial site which boasts a monarch, the future King George IV,354 as its patron. Accordingly, it is not exactly a litmus test of what the Grand Tour set was commissioning, but it is a testament to the imperial urges and anxieties that the British Crown may have faced during this crucial period. As I will describe below, this was a period that allowed Britons access to an increasing degree of information about China, while the political relationship became destabilized. As Peter Kitson describes in the introduction to Forging Romantic China (as discussed in the literature review), the period between the height of eighteenth-century chinoiserie and anglo-chinois gardens and the pernicious, Victorian Orientalism that came after the Opium Wars was a time in which Chinese signs were apprehensively employed: still prevalent in the British visual consciousness, but not so innocent and idyllic as decades before.355 This makes the Brighton Pavilion an especially suitable study. Additionally, I assert that the Chinese-inspired interiors at Brighton must be considered as works of art on their own terms. Perhaps due to a lingering art-media hierarchy, when considering European interior design and furniture as a work of art, “outside” (e.g., non-European) influence is typically summarily dismissed or overlooked with the justification that it was a purely

354 Born 1762, prince regent 1811-20, reigned as king 1820-30. In this chapter, I will primarily refer to the king as George IV regardless of time period so as to maintain continuity for the purpose of clarity. 355 Peter Kitson, Forging Romantic China: Sino-British Cultural Exchange 1760-1840. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 1-25. Page 151! of 300 “fashionable” and “superficial” endeavor—merely a trend. Certainly, much of the previous discourse on chinoiserie, outside of full-length monographs such as Sloboda’s,356 treat the movement cursorily. Or, on the other hand, it has been assumed to be an expression of imperialism, with collectors and decorators keen to boast of their colonial prowess within their homes.357 However, nuanced scholarly approaches to spaces such as the Royal Pavilion, Brighton’s, Chinese- style interiors are scarce. Greg M. Thomas has recently contributed a detailed case study of some of the material objects housed within these interiors, including the popular ormolu porcelain mounts, but his text is again not a holistic analysis, nor does it comment in much detail on the issues of chinoiserie as a reinterpreted aesthetic category. This chapter, then, examines the chinoiserie interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, as complex and highly codified works of art within a proto-Orientalist and Romantic paradigm.358 Even the term ‘chinoiserie’ must not be taken for granted, as I will argue that the Pavilion’s chinoiserie differs starkly from that of its Rococo antecedents. I seek especially to explicate how the wallpapers, ‘follies,’ furniture, and architectural accents function as signifiers of Britain’s imperial aspirations. Unlike Rococo chinoiserie, the Pavilion’s decorators sought out a degree of visual legitimacy; William Alexander’s ‘anthropological’ engravings from the Macartney embassy were popularized and informed the aesthetic atmosphere at Brighton. How, then, did designers such as the Crace family and Robert Jones, with George IV’s involvement, make sense of China in the period of 1802-1823, when China could not quite yet be subjugated, but was no longer exalted as a fantastical source of Confucian wisdom and benevolent despotism? I wish to demonstrate that the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, exemplify the simultaneous anxiety that Britain felt towards a once-great rival empire and the imperial impulse it felt towards a politically-weakened place which crown and capitalism wished to colonize. If the work of art can elucidate a history of intercultural relations and hegemony, then Chinese-inspired interiors such as those at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, must be brought into art historical scholarship as works of art in their own right. The interiors mark a transition point when Britons began to cultivate Orientalist sentiments, which deserve to be further examined.

356 Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in Eighteenth-Century Britain. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2014).

357 This is an assumption that David Porter describes as “dangerous.” See David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 24. 358 The notion and tenets of the emerging Romantic movement have been discussed in the previous chapter. Page 152! of 300 George IV

That the historical backdrop to the building of the Royal Pavilion is a diplomatic and economic kaleidoscope has been established by existing literature, but what of its patron? In this section, I will explore the pertinent details of George IV’s life to further elucidate the motivations behind the construction of his magnum opus by the sea. I wish to demonstrate that he had a familiarity with porcelain and chinoiserie beyond what may be evident at first glance at the Pavilion. For example, his mother and sisters were avid collectors in their own right, and their influence on his taste must be taken into consideration. I wish to complicate the typical narrative about Orientalist—or in this case, proto-Orientalist—decor being simply imperialistic. After all, few architectural marvels ever come to symbolize their patrons the way that the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, is so inextricably linked to King George IV, and for this reason, his tastes and background offer clues into the palace’s essence. Because of the Pavilion’s uniqueness, both in its time and its style, the story of its creation offers vital information about the relationship between two empires, China and Britain. It would, of course, be completely redundant to revisit all the biographical minutiae of a monarch, so I will only discuss what is relevant to the Royal Pavilion. The boy who would become king was born George Augustus Frederick to King George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1762, coincidentally the same year that William Chambers’ pagoda in Kew Garden was erected. His father had become king only two years earlier, and was young for such an ascension; he was the first of the Hanoverian kings to have been born in England, while Queen Charlotte was German-born. The time around his birth was an optimistic period: “It seemed to be the beginning of a new era, with a stable dynasty truly identified with the national interests of the most dynamic country of the world.”359 This alignment of the Monarch to the Nation is reminiscent of what philosophers praised about China, that the Nation and the Ruler were one. For this reason, George IV’s Royal Pavilion offers an apt case study in which monarch and nation may have more taste in common than in previous or later decades. In 1765, Johan Joseph Zoffany painted the queen and her two young sons, George and Prince Frederick (future Duke of York and Albany), in ‘costume’: George in Middle-Eastern garb and a turban, and Frederick in a Greco-Roman soldier’s uniform (fig. 7.1). Charlotte wears a typical Rococo dress, thus visually uniting the Rococo, the Neoclassical (via the soldier’s uniform), and the ‘East,’ (represented by George’s costume)—a scheme which would have some resonance for

359 John Dinkel, The Royal Pavilion, Brighton. (New York: Vendome Press, 1983), 11. Page 153! of 300 George’s future aesthetic preferences. In this painting, Zoffany also includes two nodding Chinese figures in the background—a subtle allusion to Charlotte’s collections—which Loske notes are nearly identical to those later displayed in the Long Gallery of the Pavilion.360 She also notes the inclusion of Chinese blue and white export ware and the Persian rug in the center; there is also a French-made clock. All of these elements inform George IV’s own later taste. Besides the formidable pagoda in Kew Garden, and his mother’s collections, George would have grown up familiar with every other manner of eighteenth-century exotica. Also at Kew were the ‘Alhambra’ (built in 1758) and a ‘Mosque’ (built in 1761). Loske notes that these buildings were depicted in a 1763 watercolor by William Marlow, which was titled The Wilderness, (fig. 5.8) and this was likely George’s first exposure to non-European styles of architecture.361 While the pagoda does remain intact today, “it is worth noting,” for purposes of referring later to the pagodas at the Royal Pavilion, “that the Pagoda young Prince George would have seen in the 1760s was a much more colourful and ornamented building than what survives today. Its ten roofs were once varnished in different colours and from each of the eight corners of each roof were suspended [glazed] dragons… .”362 The young royal would have likely drawn inspiration from these glittering spectacles for his own work at Brighton later. The dragon motif, for example, can be found in the Music Room and the Banqueting Room. There also existed in ‘the wilderness’ a House of Confucius, attributed to Joseph Goupy; William Chambers, who also designed a House of Confucius, described this one thus: “‘Its walls and ceiling are painted with grotesque ornaments, and little historical subjects relating to Confucius, with several transactions of the Christian missions in China.’”363 What is so intriguing about this particular House of Confucius, which no longer stands, is Chambers’ assertion that there were historical subjects within it. Having twice traveled to China in his youth, Chambers would have been particularly sensitive to scenes such as those that he described. He was among the earliest travel writers after the Jesuit missionaries, and while his penchant for authenticity has been doubted in the present day, he nonetheless brought an authoritative flair to his projects such as the pagoda at Kew. It is unknown exactly what these scenes in the House of Confucius depicted or what influence

360 Alexandra Loske, “Inspiration, appropriation, creation: sources of Chinoiserie imagery, colour schemes and designs in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton (1802-1823),” in The Dimension of Civilisation. (Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, Yinchuan, China, 2014), 327-8. 361 Ibid., p. 325.

362 Ibid., p. 325-6. 363 William Chambers, quoted in Loske, p. 326. Page 154! of 300 they may have had on a young George IV’s mind or his future imagining of China. It is possible, though, that these scenes inspired in him a desire to break away from the fantastical chinoiserie he inherited from the eighteenth century. While his own iteration at Brighton was no less a deviation from ‘authentic’ Chinese decoration and architecture, he nonetheless may have been a more discerning patron than has previously been suspected. It is likely that Queen Charlotte also had a tremendous impact upon George IV’s tastes. Loske details four sites—Windsor Castle, Buckingham House, Frogmore House, and Carlton House —which exemplify the queen’s chinoiserie tastes and serve “… to some extent [as the] predecessors of the extreme oriental approach at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion.”364 For example, at Windsor, the main background color of the queen’s bedchambers was red—foreshadowing the Music Room— and she displayed there at least four black lacquer cabinets, making these among the first chinoiserie elements of the Palace.365 At Buckingham House, Charlotte’s breakfast room was furnished with black and gold painted panelling, and the “…room was further embellished with some of Queen Charlotte’s collection of oriental and European china on shelves and on the chimneypiece.”366 Dinkel also highlights this aspect of Buckingham House. He writes:

Mrs Lybbe Powys, describing the Queen’s House (later extended as Buckingham Palace) in 1767, said … ‘The Queen’s apartments are ornamented with curiosities from every nation that can deserve her notice. The most capital pictures, the finest Dresden and other China; cabinets of more minute curiosities.’ Queen Charlotte had a collector’s instinct of considerable refinement, and it is significant that she was particularly partial to oriental works of art.367

By this time, Europe, via Dresden in Germany and the nascent workshops in Britain, had become great producers of porcelain for the first time, so China’s role as an important source for wares was diminishing.368 However, Charlotte nonetheless favored Chinese works, as George IV would later. Notably, all of the rooms that Queen Charlotte decorated in a chinoiserie style or ornamented with blue and white export ware seem to have been private rooms.369 Typical British

364 Loske, p. 328. 365 Ibid.

366 Ibid. 367 Dinkel, p. 12-13.

368 On the prevalence of porcelain among middle-class consumers, see for example Maxine Berg, “Britain’s Asian Century: Porcelain and Global History in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in The Birth of Modern Europe: Culture and Economy 1400-1800: Essays in Honor of Jan de Vries, eds. Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr. (Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010). 369 The small selection I have referenced here is only a representative sample. Queen Charlotte’s daughters, Charlotte (the Princess Royal), Elizabeth, and Augusta all participated in chinoiserie decorating. They furnished several more rooms in as many houses each. See Loske, “Inspiration.” Page 155! of 300 country homes which boasted a chinoiserie room would have displayed their wares in a more public sitting room; display was the natural successor to collecting. This dual act of collecting and displaying was part of a codified social behavior in which the upper-classes needed their objects and ornaments to be seen; when their objects and ornamentation were seen, the patrons could be endowed with the desirable cosmopolitan status which was in vogue.370 Charlotte, however, rejected this tradition. Bedchambers and breakfast rooms are not typically associated with public spaces, and this designation may also have inspired the young prince. The Royal Pavilion at Brighton is a palace that was situated away from his most public persona, and was built for his pleasure and for entertainment. By shifting chinoiserie from public interiors to private or semi- private ones, George IV, following in his mother’s footsteps, also brought China into the imperial fold. As I will suggest in the section on domesticating orientalism, this public-to-private shift represents the fact that China is metaphorically no longer part of the exotic wider world, but has become something that can be known and even potentially conquered. As for the future king’s character, it is tempting to conflate his persona with the Royal Pavilion. All too often, it seems, individual patrons’ idiosyncrasies are cited as singular sources for the outcome of specific building projects or artworks. However, considering how much influence George IV had on the final appearance of the Pavilion, his temperament must be taken into account. For one thing, the very purpose of the Pavilion seems contrary to the traditional functions associated with chinoiserie interiors. Thomas writes that the Pavilion “… served as a country pleasure home, where George could throw lavish dinner parties in a setting far more fun and less formal than his stately Neoclassical London residence, Carlton House.”371 That the royal required an entire palace dedicated to entertaining is no coincidence. In his youth, George IV failed to live up to his father’s high expectations. Rather than having an impressive command of military tactics or political policy, “[t]he Prince himself admitted to being ‘rather too fond of wine and women.’ It was becoming clear that the Prince was not to be forced into the mould of conscience and high principle designed for him, and that he craved excitement and loved everything to do with display.”372 The themes of display and performance come up over and over again with George IV. John Morley writes that “A prominent element in his

370 See for example Porter, Chinese Taste.

371 Greg M. Thomas, “Chinoiserie and Intercultural Dialogue at Brighton Pavilion,” in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West, eds. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, with Lidy Jane Chu. (Los Angeles, CA: the Getty Research Institute, 2015), 233. 372 Dinkel, p. 11. Page 156! of 300 character was that of the masquerader; it is likely that he saw himself, as an actor sees himself, filling the role of a prince or king.”373 One must ask, then, to what degree was he ‘acting out’ the oriental impulse? By that I mean, how does he employ chinoiserie as a way of expressing his perceptions of China, of empire, of himself? Under his patronage, chinoiserie transforms from something noble, elegant, and understated to something bold and ostentatious. But its purpose has also transformed, from adorning quiet countryside sitting rooms to the future king’s music hall. In this sense, it is possible that he cloaks himself—cloaks the architectural work most closely associated with his persona—in an oriental costume of sorts; this oriental costume, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, allows him to bask in unprecedented luxury and sumptuousness for which traditional European styles would have been deemed inappropriate. His desire for a pleasure ground is permitted—so long as it looks vaguely Chinese. The future king also chose to surround himself with notable men with their own flair. He filled his social circle with francophiles and other types of which his father did not approve. It has been observed that:

Many of the Prince’s associates were men of brilliant gifts[, including] … the most dazzling of all … Charles James Fox, the greatest of Whig orators … . Primarily through Fox, the Prince associated himself with Whig circles. At their stronghold, Brooks’ Club in St. James’s, the intoxicants were not merely vinous. The heady mixture of libertarian politics, sophisticated aesthetic interests, and Francophile orientation was highly congenial to the Prince.374

The Whig ideas to which George IV was exposed within these circles may have influenced his aesthetic preferences just as much as his politics. For example, although Chambers was still active during the early years of the Pavilion’s construction (and also during the renovations to the chinoiserie interiors of Carlton House), the architect never attracted the patronage of George IV. Morley suggests that “His long avoidance of Chambers … may have been the result not only of the latter’s involvement with his father; he [also] probably found him too sober and masculine in style, despite his essays.”375 However, George IV had a talent for bending designers to his taste, so stylistic differences (and familial discord376) cannot be the only point of difference. Indeed, Chambers was engaged in a longstanding and notorious feud with Horace Walpole, a noted Whig

373 John Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Designs and Drawings. (Boston, Massachusetts: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., and New York, NY: Octagon Communications International, Inc., 1984), 20. 374 Dinkel, p. 14.

375 Morley., p. 23. 376 George IV’s father, with whom he had a strained relationship, George III, employed Chambers. Morley suggests that this is one of the reasons for George IV’s avoidance of him. See Morley, p. 23. Page 157! of 300 politician and son of the first British Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, also a Whig. I posit that in addition to these aforementioned conflicts, that George IV simply could not employ a political adversary in designing interiors that were so closely connected to his personage. Furthermore, Megan Aldrich notes that John Crace had enjoyed the patronage of both George III and George IV, so Chambers’ connection to his father must have been secondary to Chambers’ politics.377 One reason that I assert that George IV could not separate his politics from his patronage is because of precedent. Before the transformation at Brighton, “… the prince embarked upon his career of palace-building by calling in the Whigs’ favourite architect, Henry Holland, to transform Carlton House in Pall Mall. In its magnificence and Louis-Seize stylishness, it was to make all existing Royal establishments staid and dowdy by comparison.”378 George IV wanted to employ architects who understood his Whig politics, but who could also, by extension, understand his personal affinity and connection to Louis XVI-style ornateness, and China. It is not coincidental that George IV nurtured a lifetime fondness for both French and chinois design, and the comparison between the two states and their respective art and architecture was not the future king’s own invention. Indeed, in his time, Versailles palace and Yuanmingyuan palace in Beijing were seen as antipodal architectural and cultural twins.379 Also, as Dinkel outlines, the Duc de Chartres, brother of King Louis XVI, made an important impression on the prince early in his career as a patron.380 But France was only one source of stylistic inspiration. It is possible that his Whig politics drew him to what was increasingly seen as a despotic place, but it also offered a stage on which he could act out his oriental fantasies; performing, after all, was an important part of his persona.

Between an overbearing father, his personal poverty (relatively speaking),381 and the brewing of the Napoleonic Wars, China had a special appeal: “For George IV the allure of Chinese civilization had much to do with its capacity to provide a model of a stable escapist world, where everything could be sumptuous, colourful, tinged with magic, and best of all, different from familiar reality.”382 As I

377 Megan Aldrich, “The Georgian Craces, c. 1768-1830,” in The Craces: Royal Decorators, 1768-1899, ed. Megan Aldrich. (Brighton, UK: John Murray Publishers Ltd., 1990), 9. While George IV’s politics indeed changed over the course of his life, I am concerned with his political positions at the time of the Pavilion’s decoration. 378 Dinkel, p. 14.

379 See, for example, Greg M. Thomas, “Yuanming Yuan / Versailles: Intercultural Interactions between Chinese and European Palace Cultures,” Art History 32, no. 1 (2009): 115-43. 380 Dinkel, p. 16.

381 Ibid., p. 17-18. 382 Ibid., p. 8. Page 158! of 300 will outline in my analysis of the Music Room and the corridors, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion do not reveal a patron’s imperialist impulse, but rather demonstrate a more nuanced interpretation of a previously-outmoded aesthetic category which offered him an opportunity to simultaneously reject what he inherited and to create his own aesthetic brand.

The Building of the Royal Pavilion

Despite its status as one of Europe’s most ostentatious architectural sites, the Brighton Pavilion can actually claim a modest past. Unlike other royal playthings, the Pavilion was not built from the ground up, but was rather a farmhouse that was expanded and elaborated upon over several decades. There were a few periods during which construction and decoration intensified. The first decision that George IV was responsible for was the location of a new pleasure house. His paternal uncle, Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn, favored the seaside town of Brighton and helped to popularize it as a resort locale; he enticed his nephew to come visit with promises of its excitement.383 Just after his twenty-first birthday, he relented and paid his uncle a visit; so began a lifetime affinity that the future king had with the town.384 Despite his royal station, George IV’s financial affairs were in shambles, due to a combination of factors: his father, George III, provided him with a limited allowance, he had a proclivity to spend without restraint, he boasted luxurious taste, and he had work done to refurbish his inherited mansion, Carlton House. By 1786, his debts amounted to a quarter of a million pounds, and dramatic measures led him to choose to live like a private gentleman until his accounts could be settled.385 For these reasons, he chose to lease the modest farmhouse that would grow into its grandeur over time. Though simple, the house at the very least offered George IV the opportunity to begin to establish a base outside of London. By the summer of 1787, George IV had enlisted the aforementioned Henry Holland to begin the refurbishment; Holland had already proven that he understood his royal patron’s taste when he rebuilt Carlton House in a French Neoclassical style beginning in 1783, the year that the former inherited it. It took only three months for the transformation to become apparent; the former

383 Dinkel, p. 15-16.

384 Ibid. For an account of George IV’s forming a relationship with the town, his acquaintances, activities, and interests in the period, see Dinkel. 385 Ibid., p. 17. Page 159! of 300 “‘… respectable farmhouse’ found itself but a single element in a villa of Palladian dignity, linked to a duplicate of itself by a striking domed rotunda, half encircled by Ionic columns, and surmounted by classical statues in Coade stone, a new and successful artificial material.”386 The Marine Pavilion, as it was called, was still wholly European in design, and it was “not yet a great house.”387 Slowly, the prince became more deeply entrenched in life in Brighton, especially when the Marine Pavilion opened in 1787. Dinkel writes that “The more he enjoyed himself in Brighton[,] the more prosperous the town became, and the more he was appreciated. He pleased everyone there by having fun. Brighton knew him as a generous patron, one who was glad to join in the cricket games, the ox-roasts, and the town sports on the level ground of the central valley.”388 It is intriguing that this should be the impetus, at least in location, for a chinoiserie revival of sorts. In the eighteenth century, the connection to the chinois style was primarily to a form of sober Confucianism. The French economist François Quesnay, for example, looked to Confucius as a source of inspiration, and he particularly lauded the Chinese notion of meritocracy and giving scholars political power.389 Artists such as Watteau exulted the Cult of Confucius.390 Thus, juxtaposing chinoiserie interiors with great parties and sports turns the previous connections upside down. But as I will argue below, this could be the beginning of the emerging connection between the Chinese style of decorating and the idea of the Romantic-era opium dream and den. The Marine Pavilion remained in this Neoclassical state until the summer of 1801, when Henry Holland was once again commissioned to design the expansions and alterations to the overall scheme. Dinkel suggests that George IV’s personal life was the catalyst for such upgrades391—his legally null marriage to Maria Fitzherbert had received Papal confirmation of its validity at this time —but it is also possible that the ascension of Napoleon and the recent French Revolution made the Pavilion’s Neoclassical façade seem distasteful and out of date.

386 Ibid., p. 19. 387 Ibid., p. 21.

388 Ibid., p. 22. 389 Dawn Jacobson, Chinoiserie. (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1993), 79-81. See also Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003) and Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian Trade, Exoticism and the Ancien Regime. (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2008). Quesnay published Le Despotisme de la Chine in 1767, which describes and supports his interpretation of Chinese society, politics, and economics.

390 Jacobson, p. 62-63. His Divinité Chinoise recreates the mysterious Chinese rites performed in French salon circles, not as a parody but as a serious spiritual exercise. This image, as described in Jacobson, affirms the sober status of Confucianism in Europe prior to the construction of the Royal Pavilion. 391 Dinkel, p. 25. Page 160! of 300 In July 1801, Holland proposed a new façade: though completely unprecedented and ultimately unrealized, the proposed Chinese-style exterior (fig. 7.2) corresponded to the vision which would be executed in the interiors. These interiors were first installed between 1801 and 1803, when the prince hired the Crace firm to bring his fantasy to life. This was the first time that chinoiserie motifs were brought into the Pavilion, as will be discussed below. Finally, between 1815 and 1823, the Pavilion underwent one final round of renovations, when architect John Nash was brought on board to design the India-inspired exterior (fig. 7.3)—an exterior which foreshadowed the Indo-Saracenic Revival movement—and the younger Crace and the now-obscure Robert Jones finished the Chinese-inspired interiors. Though my primary focus is not the Indian-esque façade, it is indeed curious that the exteriors should appear to be so disconnected from the interiors. Taken at face value, it could seem to be a quasi-Linnaean exercise in imperialism: collecting, cataloguing, and displaying the art and objects of every part of the world. Morley suggests that this is possibly not an attempt at homogenization, but instead a manifestation of the varied choices on offer during the period matched by the patron’s, George IV’s, diverse tastes. On the separation of the Indian façade from the interior decoration, he asserts:

An eclectic period like that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gives the patron more choice, and therefore more power, than one in which the rule of taste is stricter. The first and most influential choice exercised by the patron is that of an architect, and perhaps a decorator, to carry out his wishes (it was during this period that the two became separate—Thomas Hope was the first to use the term ‘interior decoration’). The architects patronised by George IV were not, Holland excepted, amongst the most discriminating of their period, but they were flexible and open to suggestion.392

Perhaps, then, George IV did not seek to essentialize non-European aesthetics, nor was it a deliberate homogenization of oriental motifs which manifested later in the century, but it possibly foreshadows this movement. It is unknown if George IV had plans to turn the once-modest farmhouse into an oriental spectacle from the outset, although as noted above, he did have an interest in collecting for a significant portion of his life. The transformation, however, did begin to incorporate chinoiserie rather early. Dinkel summarizes it as thus:

The thirty-five years between the leasing of Brighton House and the completion of George IV’s oriental palace show a gradual and even cautious development from romantic simplicity, through French-inspired neoclassicism in Henry Holland’s enlargement[,] then the exciting strangeness of full-blooded chinoiserie in the interior, to John Nash’s final

392 Morley, p. 22. Page 161! of 300 remodeling of the exterior in a picturesque Indian style. The final stage gave the Pavilion its position as one of the great monuments of the picturesque… .393

I must rebut, however, Dinkel’s unreflective use of the terms ‘romantic,’ ‘full-blooded chinoiserie,’ and ‘picturesque.’ I will make a case for classifying two separate, distinct categories of chinoiserie below, while also asserting that the Pavilion assumed Romantic characteristics in its last two periods of decoration.394 I also believe that Dinkel meant the term ‘picturesque’ in its current vernacular form, but as this was an aesthetic category in its own right at the end of the eighteenth century, greater attention must be paid to how that word is applied to the Royal Pavilion. In that regard, the former Neoclassical façade and Palladian dome are not typically associated with the picturesque, but would perhaps better coincide with the analogous term beautiful.395 Lastly, Morley suggests that George IV and his team of architects and interior decorators “… conjure[d] up an opium dream beside the English Channel … .”396 This is an extremely loaded term which Morley does not elaborate upon. The opium dream as a metaphor for China itself does not exist in eighteenth-century chinoiserie, nor does it exist in any pre-nineteenth century manifestation of contact with the East, from the kunstkammer to the China rooms in English country houses. Indeed, it is only in the nineteenth century that the sober, yet idyllic, Confucian fantasy could be transformed into the opium dream, aided by Coleridge and de Quincey.397 I will take up this issue in the sections on the Music Room of the Royal Pavilion and later in the analysis of Rococo and post-Rococo chinoiserie.

Decorating the Pavilion and the Crace Family

Having successfully transformed his formerly modest seaside farmhouse into a glittering luxury escape, George IV required a team of decorators able to bedeck the interiors to his exacting standards. The role of his decorators should be clarified. The Craces and others in the future king’s

393 Dinkel, p. 7.

394 I acknowledge that Dinkel chooses the term romantic, uncapitalized, but he has not clarified what exactly he means by this. 395 While the picturesque is not the primary focus of this chapter, I have discussed it in in Chapter Four.

396 Morley, p. 22. 397 One must be careful to differentiate between the opium dream and the opium den, a difference which often goes unacknowledged. The opium den proliferated in English literature from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Elizabeth Hope Chang covers this in-depth in chapter three of Britain’s Chinese Eye. See Elizabeth Hope Chang, Britain’s Chinese Eye: Literature, Empire, and Aesthetics in Nineteenth Century Britain. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 127-35. Page 162! of 300 service would have been considered ‘upholsterers,’ which meant that “… a considerable amount of the work of the Crace firm consisted of supplying and installing wallpapers, textiles, and upholstery for fashionable interiors, as well as arranging furniture and decorative objects and re-hanging collections of paintings.”398 In this sense, the Craces, with their patron’s unwavering involvement, would have been able to have a totalizing impact on the final scheme of the interiors. After all, it is the combined effects of the wallpaper, furniture, follies, chandeliers, porcelain, faux-bamboo railings, and even stained glass that make the Royal Pavilion’s interiors so affecting and overwhelming. The two Craces involved at Brighton, John and Frederick, were part of the the design dynasty bearing their name. John, and his son Frederick, would have been familiar with Queen Charlotte’s prodigious Chinese export ware collection, and they also knew of the chinoiserie interiors at Carlton House.399 There is no evidence to suggest that either of them traveled to the East, but they did possess a keen personal interest in the world outside of Britain. Loske notes that “John Crace himself owned a large collection of oriental artefacts and the firm supplied clients with Chinese export ware. This allowed the Craces to study the design, ornamentation and colouring of

Chinese art from the actual objects.”400 Their familiarity with export porcelain401 may have inspired the bold primary color scheme in the Music Room, which was a deviation from the pastels popular within Rococo chinoiserie rooms. Additionally, the elder Crace amassed a formidable collection of travel books, which certainly influenced his aesthetic ideas. Aldrich writes that after his death:

The catalogue of the sale of his library … by Sotheby’s documents an outstanding personal collection of books on the art, topography, and the inhabitants of oriental countries. Crace owned fourteen books on China alone, besides books on Japan, Oceania, and Asia

398Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 3. 399 Loske, p. 338.

400 Ibid. 401 While it is generally assumed that the Chinese export porcelain produced for the European market would not have been what was in vogue with a contemporary Chinese audience, David Porter writes, “the first porcelain wares to reach the English marketplace and to stimulate the imaginations of consumers were bona fide Chinese goods reflecting contemporary Chinese rather than European tastes. The significance of this distinction is that it allows us to regard Chinese porcelain as something more like a genuine tabula rasa when it first enters the British semiotic field.” Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 136. It was only later (from the eighteenth century) that European designs began to find their way onto Jingdezhen-produced export porcelain, as the populace beyond the aristocracy and nobility had access to the porcelain market. This is an important distinction when considering whether the Craces’ porcelain-inspired designs were “authentic” or not. Page 163! of 300 generally. His books on China included Duhalde’s History of China, Kircher’s China Illustrata of 1667, and the Earl Macartney’s Embassy to China of 1797.402

Crace also collected books on British antiquities and works by Horace Walpole,403 the Whig politician who would have ideologically connected him to his patron, George IV. That same 1819 sales catalogue also records that he owned a copy of William Alexander’s 1805 Costume of China, from which figures were directly copied in some spaces of the Pavilion’s interiors, as I will discuss below. Besides the figures, “… the colours chosen by the Craces, bright and mostly primary or secondary tints, copy the colour schemes of the engravings.”404 While the Royal Pavilion is often seen as the manifestation of the imagination of one man, George IV, the Craces’ tastes found their way into the decorative scheme as well. Aldrich outlines the ways in which Holland’s work at Carlton House influenced John Crace. The Chinese Drawing Room there, for which work began in 1789, was known to Crace. Some of the details include “the suspended temple bells and Chinese figures beneath the cornice of the room, the painted chinoiserie wall panels framed in trompe-l’oeil bamboo, and the painted trellis patterns to ornament the dado of the room,”405 which all “appear later in the interiors at Brighton.”406 Holland and Crace, besides contemporaneously working on the Royal Pavilion, worked together in 1787 on the Chinese Dairy at Woburn Abbey, Holland as architect and Crace as decorator. Although just a small garden structure—reminiscent of structures popular during the mid-eighteenth century—it included “bold, abstract, almost primitive…trellis patterns and…arabesques…[which were] entirely consistent with the designs in the Chinese style produced by John Crace shortly afterwards for the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.”407 Taken together, the Chinese Drawing Room of Carlton House and the Chinese Dairy at Woburn Abbey greatly inform the emerging chinoiserie of the Royal Pavilion. However, while these sources likely informed the final outcome of the Pavilion, it is important to recall that the prince was also a keen collector whose possessions also found their way into the rooms at Brighton. Like his lead decorators, George IV valued authentic artifacts from both of his favored locales, France and China. Writing on the material culture of the Royal Pavilion, Thomas states that “George, a lavish spender and extreme Francophile, amassed the world’s greatest collection of

402 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 14. 403 Ibid.

404 Loske, p. 339. 405 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 15.

406 Ibid. 407 Ibid. Page 164! of 300 Sèvres, which he displayed alongside Chinese porcelains at Carlton House, effectively designating the two equal in value—and superior to the products of England’s own ambitious ceramics industry.”408 Furthermore, the Craces supplied Chinese porcelain and decorative objects for George

IV to use in the Pavilion.409 As he eschewed native porcelain, so too did he eschew any sort of national iconography within the interiors. The wallpapers, furnitures, and decorative motifs all draw on these dual French and Chinese sources. It is also likely that George IV was keenly aware of the relatively recent Macartney diplomatic embassy, and would have been sensitive to the visual data resulting from the trip. As I mentioned, Alexander’s figures appear, unaltered, in the Pavilion’s interiors. Loske writes that “Some of the numerous oriental objects seen in [Charles] Wild’s watercolour [of the Green Closet interior at Frogmore House] may have been presents given by the Emperor Qianlong to George III in 1793, suggesting that most of the interior consisted of authentic oriental materials and objects.”410 While it is unknown whether any of the Qianlong emperor’s gifts made their way to Brighton, it is possible that George IV felt a sort of connection to him. He may have admired the status and authority of the emperor, which were increasingly stripped away from European monarchs. Dinkel suggests that “the experience of France sharpened his desire for the endangered splendor of monarchy and all the pomp and circumstance in which he shone. If princely glory was dead in its native land, it could be reborn in England, with the added benefits of modern comforts and ingenuity.”411 Like the French king that George IV so admired—Louis XVI—the Chinese emperor would have had absolute power over his dominion. The British prince’s Chinese interiors may signify the absolute power that he craved in his own land, especially following the French Revolution. Indeed, George IV did not shy away from creating his seaside palace in the image of Versailles or Yuanmingyuan: “The hostility aroused by the ostentation he thought fitting to his dignity deterred him not at all. He made a virtue of it by increasing the ceremonial and architectural grandeur of the Crown.”412 Within his own realm, the Chinese emperor was permitted the grandiosity that George IV was denied. By bedecking his interiors in a bombastic chinois style,

408 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 243.

409 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 19. 410 Loske, p. 330.

411 Dinkel, p. 23. 412 Dinkel, p. 10. Page 165! of 300 George aligns his persona with that of the emperor. This was not lost on satirists: the 1829 print, The Great Joss and his Playthings (fig. 7.4), conflated George IV with a despotic Chinese emperor.413 It is also possible that the Chinese style granted him a license to be ostentatious in a way that other styles would not. Morley writes:

His buildings and interiors have every virtue save that of nobility. This last quality might have been given by the major styles that he did not employ—the Egyptian, the extreme neo- classic, and the full-blown French Empire. All may have been open to some political objection, for him if not for others. The fact that he was alive to such meanings is apparent in his often quoted witticism to Lady Bessborough, that he chose the Chinese style at Brighton because he was afraid that his French furniture would be accused of jacobinism.414

As noted above, the future king had a flair for theatrics and performance; his chinoiserie interiors offered him the chance to express the station he thought he, as monarch, deserved, but without the overt political criticisms that the aforementioned styles would have invited. He was able to exude regality, but without the accusations that a purely French form would elicit. This would have been especially important following the French Revolution, the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. It is clear that Crace, father and son, among others involved such as Henry Holland, exerted their own influence on the final outcome of the Royal Pavilion. However, the ultimate form was left to the Prince Regent. It is likely that George IV was closely involved with every detail pertaining to the designs at Brighton. E. Maurice Bloch, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Cooper Union Museum, writes that he had “… an active and personal interest [which] overshadowed and influenced every detail of the work created there… ”415 and likens him to “… a kind of Royal impresario about to embark on operatic production, the staging envisioned over a long period, every detail planned in his fertile mind with relation to the final effect.”416 Again, the theater proves to be an unwavering and evocative parallel. More so than the Neoclassical, Louis XVI French style, or any other theme that George IV could have chosen, the chinoiserie revival stood in as the ultimate stage on which the prince could perform his act as a splendid monarch. Additionally, following the failed Macartney mission, the notion of “China” and “Chineseness” became open for reinterpretation and projection in a way that would not have been possible when the Jesuits and the

413 For more satirical prints, see The Brighton Museum, http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discover/2015/02/26/ george-iv-and-his-friends/. Accessed March 2017. 414 Morley, p. 23.

415 Quoted in Loske, p. 334. 416 Ibid. Page 166! of 300 export porcelain market largely retained a monopoly over that imagery. Because Qianlong rebuffed Britain’s first major diplomatic attempt, the fantasy ended to make way for an increasingly unpleasant reality.

Chinese Motifs in the Music Room

Fittingly, George IV ensured that his Music Room—the grandest of those aforementioned Chinese stages—was bedecked from top to bottom in the Chinese theme; indeed, it seems no corner has gone unnoticed or unadorned. Lotuses, dragons, and structures reminiscent of temples are all represented. While I wish to take up these motifs later in this section, I first turn my attention to the most enduring of Chinese signs: the pagoda. As noted above, George IV owned a copy of William Alexander’s Costume of China,417 and his engravings greatly inform the interiors of the Pavilion, as I will demonstrate in the section on the corridors, where this connection is most direct.418 However, one of the greatest contributions of Alexander’s Costume (among its many) is that, according to Sloboda, it served to reinterpret and reinforce the pre-existing status quo in Chinese imagery. She posits:

Like William Chambers, whose significantly less authoritative 18th-century treatises on the jardin anglo-chinois claimed to put an end to chinoiserie extravagances through documentary evidence, Alexander’s works seemed to promise pictures of all aspects of Chinese culture to a British public eager for authentic Chinese imagery. In practice, however, he did so by emphasizing recognizable visual signs already associated with China through the language of chinoiserie, an earlier 18th-century European decorative style that fictionalized the idea and the image of China.419

Among these signs are pagodas, temples, mandarins with parasols, hilly landscapes, and junk boats.420 What Sloboda and other scholars do not address is whether the original intended audience accepted Alexander’s images as more authoritative than those of his predecessors. What is important is not whether his images are ‘true,’ but whether they were viewed as such by his contemporaries. In the case of the Royal Pavilion, George IV seems to have been among the throngs of British public ‘eager for authentic Chinese imagery.’ Additionally, this was the period during

417 It is unclear, however, whether he owned a copy of the 1814 Picturesque Representations or other similar works. 418 For an in-depth analysis of Alexander’s two books of engravings, see Chapters Three and Four of this dissertation.

419 Stacey Sloboda, “Picturing China: William Alexander and the visual language of Chinoiserie,” The British Art Journal 9, no. 2 (2008): 29. 420 Ibid. Page 167! of 300 which Orientalism as an instrument of imperialism began to take root, so there was a shift in the political stakes of this ‘authentic imagery.’ In this sense, the actual signifiers of China may have remained the same—the pagodas, temples, et al—but what they signified would not have been the same in 1805 as it would have been in 1755. Like Alexander, George IV gravitates towards those signs—the icons such as the pagoda— which were already part of the aforementioned standard visual vocabulary. In the Music Room, there are no fewer than six sculptural pagodas, and they also feature quite prominently on the wallpaper. Despite the redundancy that Sloboda suggests, George IV employs these signs in an unprecedented way, giving them new life and meaning. It was not always destined to be this way; Morley’s detailed and vivid history of the designs of the Royal Pavilion notes that earlier drafts were more akin to traditional Rococo chinoiserie. He writes that the designs for the Music Room “make up the most coherent series of all that still exist; they are also the most fully developed and striking.”421 Besides this coherence, “They divide neatly into two groups: the first a group of rejected designs in what may be described as the Chinese- rococo manner, with its characteristic wit and shimmer; the second a group of (more or less) accepted designs…[which were] more grandly sumptuous, in what may perhaps be described as the De Quincey / opium dream manner.”422 To clarify, the latter—the opium dream style—is what we see today in the Pavilion, but this was not, as Morley describes, an inevitability.423 Morley attributes the decision to reject the Rococo style of chinoiserie to that of weight; he implies that the Music Room was somehow less ‘frivolous’ than mid-eighteenth century sitting rooms. He does not elaborate upon this point, and I am inclined to argue that there was more to it than this. Indeed, one fact that Morley completely overlooks is that, unlike the sitting rooms of the previous generations, the Music Room was a pleasure room situated within a pleasure house. Thus, the ‘weightiness’— e.g., a shift to saturated colors rather than pastels—ascribed to the Music Room must be accounted for elsewhere. Instead, I propose two factors that Morley has overlooked: first, the implied weightlessness and frivolity of Rococo chinoiserie which George IV rejected was closely associated with female space. I will address the conflation of female spaces and Eastern styles in a later section on Rococo and post-Rococo chinoiserie. The second issue at hand is that the royal patron was more interested

421 Morley, p. 200.

422 Ibid. 423 See, for example, Patrick Conner, “Unexecuted designs for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton,” Apollo 107:193 (March 1978):192-9. Page 168! of 300 in instigating a new brand of chinoiserie for his magnum opus; this would be a chinoiserie to herald the dominance of the Romantic movement. His chinoiserie would depend upon strategically deploying recognizable signifiers of China, like the pagoda, and they would need to elicit a reaction unknown to the whimsical chinoiserie of the previous century. In the first subsection, I will detail one of the most ubiquitous signifiers of China present in the Music Room: the pagoda. The presence and purpose of these pagodas will be contextualized within a greater history of the structure’s appearance in the West. In the second subsection, I will turn to the broader chinois scheme within the Music Room.

The Pagoda Unlike chinoiserie, Chinese export porcelain, or even the spode willow pattern, no survey, whether comprehensive or not, seems to exist on the presence or depiction of pagodas in Europe. While it is not my aim here to correct this deficiency, I would like to take a moment to identity a few of the most significant examples of pagodas in Europe. Although there is no formal typology of pagodas, so to speak, constructing one informally offers the chance to trace the repurposing of the same icon over time. Examining the historical precedent for pagoda representations allows for a more complex and thorough understanding of the pagodas of the Royal Pavilion. As I have noted, George IV was an avid student of history, as were his designers, the Craces. Hugh Honour, the progenitor of modern chinoiserie scholarship, observes that “The word pagoda was brought to Europe by the Portuguese, who used it to describe any form of Oriental temple and also the idols enshrined therein.”424 He also describes Johan Nieuhof’s oft-referenced drawing, The Porcelain Pagoda at Nankin (fig. 7.5; see also fig. 5.7) from An Embassy of the Dutch East Company of 1669. For the purposes of a chinoiserie genealogy, this would be the ancestral drawing and description from which many descendants sprang. Honour reproduces an important (translated) part of Nieuhof’s description of the pagoda:

The outside is all Glazed over and Painted with several Colours as Green, Red and Yellow. The whole Fabrick consists of several Pieces, which are so artfully Cemented, as if the work were all of one Piece. Round about all the corners of the Galleries, hang little Bells, which make a very pretty noise when the wind jangles them. The top of the Tower was Crowned with a Pine-Apple, which, as they say, was made of Massy Gold.425

424 Hugh Honour, “Pagodas for the Park,” Country Life (1959), 192. 425 Nieuhof, quoted in Honour, “Pagodas,” p. 192. Page 169! of 300 The colors are especially relevant to George IV’s program at Brighton. Loske notes the trichromatic palette that Crace and George IV use—red, yellow/gold, and blue—which is nearly identical to Nieuhof’s description of the pagoda of Nanjing. She asserts that this is informed both by Chinese export porcelain, and also by contemporary color theory, which would restrict the number of colors in use in order to “achieve a particularly vibrant effect.”426 However, the Craces and the Prince Regent shared an interest in history and travel books. I posit that one motivation behind George IV’s brand of chinoiserie is that he strove, to some degree, to seek out an ‘authentic’ Chinese style that circulated in drawings and descriptions before the purely European Rococo version became popular. George IV was moving forward by moving backwards. In that regard, Nieuhof’s drawing of the Porcelain Pagoda is a potential source of inspiration for the prince and his team of designers, especially considering that it is considered the ‘original’ pagoda drawing in early modern Europe. Honour notes that the drawing sparked a trend in which engravers added the Nanjing Pagoda into their Eastern landscapes, whether Chinese or not, and even Fischer von Erlach used Nieuhof’s plates for his significant 1721 history of architecture.427 Pagodas would have also appeared on porcelain, lacquerware, and textiles being exported, particularly by various East India companies, but Nieuhof is among the first to interpret the structure specifically for European audiences. Although I am primarily concerned with chinoiserie in Britain, it is worth noting that the Trianon de porcelaine, commissioned by Louis XIV in 1670-1, was among the first of (if not, in fact, the very first) actual pagoda-esque structures in Europe; it was also modeled on Nieuhof’s porcelain pagoda.428 I am including a reference to this particular structure—when, indeed, there are numerous non-British European structures worthy of consideration—because George IV found in the Sun King a kindred spirit. The French king’s taste in decor and architecture greatly influenced the British monarch. George IV was a lifelong francophile, and Louis XIV was a particular source of inspiration. The connection between the Trianon de porcelaine and the Porcelain Pagoda of Nanjing is one which also predates Rococo chinoiserie, so this may have been appealing to George IV as he sought to establish his own chinois expression. If he were seeking a pre-Rococo way of reviving the chinoiserie movement, the Trianon de porcelaine would have been an apt model.

426 Loske, p. 339-340.

427 Honour, “Pagodas,” p.192-3. 428 Ibid., p. 193. Page 170! of 300 Joseph Goupy’s House of Confucius, which was described above, was erected in Kew in the 1730s, and in the 1750s, pagodas were featured in John and William Halfpenny’s builders’ books. The Jesuit missionary Jean Denis Attiret had his account of Yuanmingyuan Palace translated into English in 1752, providing yet more material for Britons to work with, and of course Chambers’ three treatises began appearing in 1757, with the pagoda at Kew erected in 1762. Perhaps uncoincidentally, the Anson brothers, George and Thomas, commissioned a pagoda to be built on the family estate at Shugborough in the same year Father Attiret’s account was translated.429 William Alexander’s pagoda drawing, which greatly influenced the interiors of the Pavilion, was published in 1805, allowing plenty of time for Frederick Crace to make use of it. (I will elaborate upon this point below.) John Nash, who had enjoyed the patronage of George IV, was commissioned to build a pagoda for St. James’s Park in London in 1814, which was meant to commemorate a military victory.430 Though it burned down almost immediately during a fireworks display gone wrong, its short-lived existence demonstrates how the chinoiserie style was revived in the Romantic period beyond the Royal Pavilion. Besides Nieuhof’s porcelain pagoda drawing, which inspired a lineage of pagodas which were built throughout Europe prior to the Royal Pavilion, pagodas found their way into many drawings and engravings as well.431 The pagoda became visual short-hand within landscapes for the Chinese topography. What many of the pagoda drawings of the period from Nieuhof (1669) up to (but excluding) Alexander have in common is that they situate the pagoda far off in the distance. The pagoda serves as a way to signify the Chinese landscape, which would otherwise appear to be a generic anyplace. This is the pagoda as sign during the eighteenth century, even during the height of Rococo chinoiserie. There are no statuesque pagodas in Rococo chinoiserie comparable to the ones at Brighton. The Kew Gardens pagoda is different from those depicted on paper in that it is front and center, but apart from its botanical environs, it is essentially devoid of context. The lack of context arose as pagoda imagery was transported from China to Europe. As Qinghua Guo notes, “Archaeological evidence reveals that tower architecture pre-existed pagodas,

429 Admiral George Anson (1697-1762), commanding the HMS Centurion, landed in Macao in 1742. See “East India Company At Home, 1757-1857: Shugborough Estate, Staffordshire,”: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ eicah/shugborough-hall-staffordshire/. Accessed December 2017.

430 Honour, “Pagodas,” p. 193. 431 Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè’s China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century features the drawings and engravings from the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, which had acquired a significant collection of rare books in 1989. The works illustrated in China on Paper constitute one of the best modern catalogues of such prints. There is no central theme, such as ‘pagodas’ or ‘religious life,’ but many more drawings featuring pagodas than what I can describe in this dissertation are included. See Catalogue Numbers: 4, 7, 9, 10, and 34. Page 171! of 300 and Chinese architectural historians have proposed that Buddhist pagodas adapted indigenous towers in China.”432 The pagoda came into existence in China when Buddhism was introduced from India, and Indian philosophy and architecture merged with the pavilion towers that already existed in China.433 Guo elaborates: “For several reasons the pavilion tower was considered to denote the Buddha: first, for its symbolic nature; second, for its cosmic form; third, for its landmark quality, and fourth, for its social function as a place for admiring the landscape.”434 Furthermore, although there was a variety of styles that early pagodas could take, the common feature was “… a miniature stupa on top of the roof.435 It is reasonable to surmise that the pagoda was created by decorating the Chinese tower with an Indian stupa on the roof as a religious symbolic icon.”436 Chinese pagodas, then, emerged initially as religious structures. When Buddhism arrived in China, the pagoda architecturally marked this new era: “The pagoda is a part of the material manifestation of this new ideological movement. It is a kind of public building used for religious worship that had not existed before in China … . The exotic finial and the magnificent podium functioned as iconological identities to distinguish the tower as a religious building at a distance and close-by, respectively.”437 While pagodas were well-known and well-established visual signifiers of the Chinese landscape in Europe by the end of the eighteenth century, Alexander’s engravings brought a new authority to what had been absorbed into the Rococo chinoiserie style. Although his 1814 Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese features a multitude of pagodas in the background of landscapes—akin to the many far-off pagodas of engravings of the preceding centuries—it is his 1805 pagoda in Costume of China (fig. 5.9) that purports to be an anthropological rendering. He describes their size and shape, and notes that they may have had several purposes, but that they are indeed outdoor, multi-story structures. That he acknowledges their possible myriad purposes is important: this recalls Guo’s analysis of the origins of the pagoda

432 Qinghua Guo, “Tower to Pagoda: Structural and Technological Transition,” Construction History 20 (2004), 3. Guo brilliantly analyzes the archaeological record and juxtaposes it with many different terms to describe tower structures existing in China from the Eastern Han dynasty (206 BCE - 8 CE) to the Qing dynasty. Her essay provides depth into the history of tower structures in China. 433 Ibid., p. 12.

434 Ibid., p. 12-13. 435 The stupa, which predates Buddhism, acquired religious significance when they came to symbolize various aspects of the Buddha and Buddhism, and they also served as reliquaries, burial mounds, commemorative sites, et cetera. Thus, the Indian Buddhist stupas entering China would have had religious connotations. See for example The Stupa Information Page: http://www.stupa.org.nz. Retrieved January 2017. Guo’s essay also explains how Chinese pagodas adapted the symbolism of Buddhist stupas.

436 Guo, p. 13. 437 Ibid. Page 172! of 300 in China, and how “…the importance and life of towers was prolonged by the infusion of Buddhist symbolism.”438 However, visual sources which predate Alexander disregard the pagoda’s origins and purposes, thus stripping them of an ‘authentic’ context. It is rather ironic, then, that George IV should go so far away from Alexander’s attempt at documentary accuracy. The interiors of the Music Room demonstrate no new visual ‘awareness’ of China, and are instead exaggerated, flamboyant, and repurposed manifestations of signs that were already known to British audiences. The pagodas of the Royal Pavilion are of their own category. No longer is the pagoda a fantasy on a porcelain vase nor the marker of an idyllic scene one might like to walk into on a wallpaper. It is also not an attempt to duplicate what might be native to China, as in Kew—even if Kew denies its pagoda any real purpose or context. There are several types featured at Brighton: firstly, the pagodas on the wallpapers; secondly, the four, twelve-foot tall porcelain pilaster/caryatid-like pagodas along the east wall; and finally, the removable and changeable sculptural pagodas that flank the fireplace. While the wallpaper pagodas are ostentatious, they share the medium with many pagoda depictions of the past. The novelty at Brighton is to be found in the sculptural pagodas; the Nash drawing (fig. 7.6) refers to four pilaster-style pagodas along the exterior edge of the interior wall, and two other pagodas. The four are pilaster/caryatid-like in the sense that, although they are free-standing, they occupy the vertical space between the windows with the same presence that columns would. But they are also an object much like a freestanding sculpture (although they are not load-bearing). This had not been seen before in the China Rooms of country houses, and it is also not a native Chinese device. These pagodas were not functional, and did not serve as lighting devices or incense burners, for example. Thus, the religions context has been removed, but has not been substituted for a new purpose. Thomas takes an optimistic stance, that these are intercultural—indeed, ‘hybrid chimera’— objects (fig. 7.7). He observes the sheer expense allotted for each pagoda: the original, Chinese porcelain pagodas would be imported and purchased for £100, and another £500 was spent on the embellishment (including adding ormolu mounts to pedestals)—an expense which “… placed these objects on a par with the finest European paintings and decorative objects.”439 Besides the financial investment, Thomas notes,

438 Ibid. 439 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 239. Page 173! of 300 Even more telling is the technical and creative investment, networking five elite suppliers to embellish the Chinese originals with the best European craftsmanship across multiple materials. Orchestrating such a multimedia production not only affirms value for the Chinese original but uses it as the inspiration for a creative aesthetic performance positioning Chinese and European decorative arts as equivalent, mutually understandable forms of elite cultural production. Enacting such dialogue resulted again in hybrid meanings, blending echoes of authentic Chinese iconography with fanciful significations derived from chinoiserie.440

What Thomas does not clarify, however, is whether the original porcelain pagodas were created for the domestic or export market—an important difference in meaning and signification. David Beevers reveals that they were indeed created in Canton for the export market; no analogous pagodas existed in China for domestic use.441 Furthermore, Thomas suggests that this is an intercultural aesthetic dialogue between two equal producers, but the supposed dialogue is one- sided. The pagodas—again, created entirely for foreign consumption—were sent to Britain, where they would be denied their religious purpose, and presented as an object for secular visual consumption. There is no evidence that a corresponding phenomenon was occurring in China, with British originals the subject of appropriation, which would be more of the dialogue that is suggested. Thomas rebuts:

We can criticize the willful ignorance that allowed George and his artisans to trivialize the pagoda’s authentic religious function. But emptying the porcelain miniatures of their foreign ideology also made it possible to appropriate them for a new, more universal function, evoking the kind of abstract aesthetic pleasure that George could imagine being shared by cultural elites in China.442

The universality that he suggests is a problematic, Eurocentric one; the kinship in pleasure purely imagined, speculated. George IV appropriates the pagoda for his own purposes: in order to suggest that he has the status of an emperor, and should be accorded the pomp and circumstances afforded to those of his station. In this sense, there is the essence of kinship. But it is not one of dialogue; indeed, the 1816 Amherst embassy, which transpired during the last phase of the Pavilion’s decoration, was a disaster.443 Furthermore, the act of ‘emptying the porcelain miniatures of the foreign ideology’ also meant that the king and his decorators could ascribe whatever value to the

440 Ibid., 239-240. Emphasis mine. 441 “Pavilion Contemporary: The Lost Pagodas, an Installation by Geraldine Pilgrim,” from The Brighton Museum: http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/royalpavilion/history/past-exhibitions/pavilion-contemporary/ pavilion-contemporary-the-lost-pagodas-an-installation-by-geraldine-pilgrim/. Interview with David Beevers is featured in an embedded interview via YouTube. Accessed March 2017.

442 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 241. Emphasis mine. 443 William Amherst refused to kowtow for the Jiaqing Emperor, which other trading partners, such as Russia and the Netherlands, would perform. The refusal to kowtow denied him access to Beijing. Page 174! of 300 pagodas that they saw fit. This is in stark contrast to the earlier European pagodas, which, on wallpapers, retained some version of their Chinese settings, or in Kew Gardens, where the pagoda was meant to imitate a Chinese one, and was placed outside and designed to scale. The two last pagodas in the Music Room (seen in Nash’s aquatint) were the same size (twelve feet tall) and flanked the fireplace. As an addendum to this section, the problematic nature of the pagodas in the Pavilion is ongoing and not contained within the nineteenth-century: the diffusion of Chinese imagery is enduring. While the original sculptural pagodas were sent to Buckingham Palace when Queen Victoria sold the Royal Pavilion,444 new pagodas to flank the mantelpiece were purchased in 1950 (they are currently undergoing renovation), and in 2012, the Pavilion opened a new exhibition: Pavilion Contemporary: The Lost Pagodas featuring contemporary artist Geraldine Pilgrim’s installation. Her pagodas imitate George IV’s original pieces, but ‘reinterpret’ them (or, assign new signification) for a modern audience. This includes bedecking them in lace, giving them a fluorescent glow, and even placing a carnivalesque tier in the middle. The carnivalesque tier features carousel horses racing around the pagoda’s circumference—a true adulteration. In the artist’s interview on the Brighton Museum website, Pilgrim says she was inspired by pagodas in her grandmother’s garden and the famous structure at Kew Gardens.445 There is no mention of Chinese inspiration, nor even their Chinese origins. Pilgrim follows in George IV’s footsteps, but clearly the dialogic ties to the East have been severed. Rather than partaking in a dialogue with the Qing emperors, George IV processes old chinoiserie signs for his own new, Romantic purposes. Whether because he was denied the glory he thought was his birthright or because the decades after the French Revolution brought a greater anxiety for monarchs aspiring to Versailles-style opulence, the Music Room became a place to embrace a foreign sign for a new purpose. I agree with Dinkel’s assessment of what, exactly, this proto-Romantic brand of chinoiserie entailed. He posits,

The Pavilion’s oriental character is in fact the greatest of its illusions. Inside and out, beneath the selected oriental characteristics which, by evoking appropriate associations, suggest the Far East (as Gothic windows and pinnacles were made to suggest the Middle Ages) it is thoroughly European in function and in general shape. A romantic yearning for exotic excitement is there, but against the background of social ferment there was an even more powerful force at work, a growing nostalgia for the old order and the glories, privilege,

444 “Pavilion Contemporary: The Lost Pagodas, an Installation by Geraldine Pilgrim,” from The Brighton Museum: http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/royalpavilion/history/past-exhibitions/pavilion-contemporary/ pavilion-contemporary-the-lost-pagodas-an-installation-by-geraldine-pilgrim/. Interview with David Beevers is featured in an embedded interview via YouTube. Accessed March 2017. 445 Ibid. Page 175! of 300 and separateness of monarchy, which George IV considered that his dynasty had never fully claimed, and which were seen to be struggling against extinction in Europe while they thrived in China.446

The ‘romantic yearning for exotic excitement’ and a ‘growing nostalgia for the old order’ more closely align to the design scheme in the Music Room than does the suggestion of intercultural dialogue. The old signs of China are present, but they exemplify a new manifestation of chinoiserie which longs for the past rather than the timeless parallel despotism which eighteenth-century chinoiserie sought.

The Wallpaper and Furniture of the Music Room The most ‘traditional’ pagodas in the Music Room are found on the wallpaper. They are depicted in gold-yellow tones against a vivid red background. There, they share the wall with other signs of China: joss houses / temples, bridges, exotic trees, cranes, and mandarins (fig. 7.8) In Crace’s realized design sketch of 1817 for the west wall of the Music Room, the design features many trompe-l’œil effects, including the Chinese trellis work at the bottom and the serpents encircling the colonnades. The serpents are new to the repertoire of Chinese imagery in Europe, having not been a feature of Rococo chinoiserie or export porcelain. They are also not derived from authentic Chinese imagery.447 Additionally, the dragons facing away from each other more closely resemble villainous European versions rather than auspicious and aquatic Chinese dragons. In particular, their bodies are more solid than serpentine and their wings are highly stylized and dominant. They are also composed more vertically than the horizontal (again, serpentine) Chinese versions. The smaller dragons in the two corners, perched atop their respective vertical panels, also find more in common with sinister European counterparts. Aldrich suggests that they have been modeled on an imitation black and gold (or japanned) cabinet, which was attributed to Frederick Crace448—thus confirming the dragons’ European origins. However, it is possible that this was George IV’s design choice rather than Crace’s. Gordon Lang meticulously outlines Crace’s interest in Chinese sources, noting, “… much of the work of Frederick Crace shows a very close, almost slavish adherence to original Chinese sources, using motifs from eighteenth century ‘famille-rose’ exportware porcelain, Canton

446 Dinkel, p. 9.

447 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 240. 448 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 24. Page 176! of 300 enamel or even Mandarin robes.”449 Indeed, Lang reproduces Crace’s drawing of a Chinese-style dragon based on a Manchu robe, among other images.450 However, there is no easy explanation as to why George IV may have requested that the dragons resemble those from the cabinet, except perhaps personal taste. The doors resemble Alexander’s joss houses (fig. 7.9), which were places of ancestral worship. Titled A Small Idol Temple, commonly called a Joss House, in Costume, they are depicted as slender, vertical, hexagonal structures with niches (or hollowed gaps) for idols, but lacking the upturned roofs of the more stereotypical buildings nearby. The upturned roof was associated with gardens and leisure pavilions,451 which explains the plainness of the roof in Costume. The joss- esque doors, meanwhile, feature a double-tiered upturned roof, while the niches have been removed in place of embellishment. In this sense, the sacred qualities have been denied in order to appropriate the structure. Indeed, Alexander was a direct source of inspiration: Morley notes, “An abstract of expenses incurred at Brighton during the year 1818 gives the largest sum, £453, to ‘Mr. Lamberlet’, and a sum of £116 to ‘Mr. Fox’; a book of tracings by the latter after William Alexander exists still in the Royal Pavilion collections, and it seems likely that these were the two principal artists concerned with the execution of the wall paintings.”452 However, Morley suggests that the doors resemble the furniture from the Chinese Drawing Room at Carlton House,453 rather than acknowledge any of Alexander’s presence. This can be challenged. The interiors of the Pavilion are among the best examples of the diffusion of ethnographic imagery of China making its way into Europe via conduits such as Alexander—which the doors exemplify. However, unlike in the entrance hall and corridor—where figures are directly copied onto various surfaces—the joss house becomes the door. It is a symbolic transformation, that a sacred structure should become entirely flattened and serve as a gateway from one room to another. It is through the idol house that one must enter the Music Room—the most elaborate of the China Rooms within the Pavilion. By crossing the threshold of flattened, invalidated Chinese spirituality, one can fully immerse oneself in the Chinese

449 Gordon Lang, “The Royal Pavilion Brighton: The Chinoiserie Designs by Frederick Crace,”in The Craces: Royal Decorators, 1768-1899, ed. Megan Aldrich. (Brighton, UK: John Murray Publishers Ltd., 1990), 43.

450 Ibid., p. 48-49. 451 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 240.

452 Morley, p. 204-5. 453 Ibid., p. 205. Page 177! of 300 interiors. The final form of the doors in the Pavilion is taken directly from the Crace drawing, except the gold and red palette are more pronounced. The wall also features trompe-l’œil bamboo, while the dome is meant to be decorated with ‘dragon scales.’454 The south wall’s red and gold wallpaper could also not be further removed from Rococo antecedents. The decorative motif is primarily nature-inspired: there is a river with small rocks and wispy trees along the banks, and on the vertical panels at the far ends, the soft-leaved trees and dainty rocks appear once again. Along the banks of the main section, there appears to be a pagoda, though it is not clearly delineated. While Crace made use of the bold red for both the water and the sky, he does hint at some clouds. However, the mainstays of typical Rococo chinoiserie wallpapers —birds, flowers, and mandarins under parasols, in addition to the pastel palette—are completely absent. One aspect of the composition had been directly inspired by Chinese designs: the fretwork. It is not at all unique to the south wall, and indeed, features prominently throughout the Pavilion. Oliver Impey notes, “Chinese fret, one of the few hallmarks of chinoiserie to be genuinely and directly Chinese, was another god-send to the park planner and architect. Chinese rails were considered particularly suitable for bridges and also for railings, balustrades and balconies, and could without question be used in conjunction with other styles … .”455 While many bridges and other structures made use of fretwork as a type of railing (as the Chinese did), in the Music Room, they are painted onto the wallpaper. Again, Crace et al take a Chinese sign and recycle it for a British audience. There is one detail of the south wall’s wallpaper which is derived from Alexander: a scene derived from Costume, entitled The South Gate of the City Ting-Hai, in the Harbour of Tchu-san (figs. 7.10 and 7.11). The decorators seem to have been inspired by the scene, but they take their liberties as well. The gate seems to be compressed on the wallpaper, and gatekeepers have been replaced with soldiers, and a laborer carrying goods has been replaced by a more established sign, a fisherman. Notably, Alexander comments in the accompanying text that this city lies at the port of Tchu-San (Zhoushan), “into which the English were formerly permitted.”456 By the time Alexander and company would have passed the city, the Canton system would have long been in effect,

454 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 25.

455 Oliver Impey, Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration. ((New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), 152. 456 William Alexander, The Costume of China, illustrated in forty-eight colour engravings. (London: W. Miller, 1805), no page. Page 178! of 300 thereby blocking the East India Company from this port. It was also not a port which the Treaty of Nanjing opened. In taking the impenetrable gate and recreating it as a wallpaper, George IV re- opens the port, figuratively. As Dinkel notes, “The details of the landscapes, partly taken from Alexander’s Views of China, have some pretensions to accuracy, but they present not a surrogate China so much as a true realm of the imagination.”457 And in this imagining, China is primed for British penetration. The scheme of the west wall (fig. 7.12) of the Music Room is largely the same as that of the south: serpents wrapped around colonnades, intimidating dragons along the top, a fireplace framed and topped by a joss house design. The wallpaper, however, is more forthright in its imagery. While the colors are the same, the pagodas on either side of the chimney are clearly delineated and closely match those of Alexander and Chambers. The stony joss house claims a predominant place along the banks of the waterway. The trees are more tropical rather than resembling the typical willow. Loske attributes these to Robert Jones via William Chambers: among Chambers’ buildings was a mosque that he constructed in 1761 (just prior to the pagoda at Kew); inside this mosque were stucco palm trees.458 Loske goes on to suggest that it is likely that the Pavilion’s decorators (the Craces and Jones) knew of Chambers’ description of his trees: “‘At the eight angles of the room are palm-trees modelled in stucco, painted and varnished with various hues of green, in imitation of nature; which at the stop spread and support the dome, represented as forms of reeds, bound together with ribbons of silk.’”459 Another Chinese sign that was reinterpreted for the west wall is the bridge. Within the left section, between the pagoda and the palm trees, is a small bridge; it resembles Alexander’s bridge, although it features a double archway rather than the singular one in Costume. Again, Alexander’s work is disseminating in Britain, although reinterpreted in the process. In the Royal Pavilion, the bridge retains the latticework popular in the Rococo period. Sloboda notes that bridges were among the most popular garden follies of the mid-eighteenth century: “The prevalence of Chinese bridges, in particular, indicated the style’s role as a vehicle for imaginative transport.”460 However, in the earlier period, they were typically built structures and actually conveyed spectators from one part of

457 Dinkel, p. 105. 458 Loske, p. 326.

459 William Chambers, quoted in Loske, p. 326. 460 Sloboda, Chinoiserie, p. 167-170. Page 179! of 300 a garden to another.461 Depicted in this manner on the wall, the bridge loses its functionality and seems to connect two areas that need not be separated by a small amount of water at all. Additionally, there are no figures in the scene who may hypothetically wish to cross from one area to another. The depiction therefore recycles the Chinese sign while denying it its function of conveyor; there is a loss of mobility reminiscent of the stagnation of which the Qing court was by now accused. Of the overall scheme of the wallpaper, Morley remarks, “Gone are the rococo gaiety and high spirits; in their place is an obsessively rich, intricately worked out … conception.”462 Thus, Morley anticipates my argument that this is a new form of chinoiserie devoid of its Rococo associations; while the signs are largely similar, this is a manifestation of a new era within Chinese- British relations. He elaborates on the design: “The colour scheme of ‘Carmine, Lake, Vermilion, Crome, Yellow and other expensive colours’ reinforces this impression; the scarlet and gold landscapes offer entrance into a fabled and disturbing world; the dragons and serpents are beginning to come alive.”463 Again, if “China” is an invented space in Britain meant for the projection of the Western idea of Chineseness, then it is hardly coincidental that the space becomes a disturbing one once the diplomatic relationship had soured. Aldrich’s interpretation connects the wallpaper design to furniture. She writes, “The wall and door panels of the room have been treated with a rich scarlet ground painted in gold to represent the landscape scenes found in oriental lacquer,”464 which means that “the Music Room features panels and doors which have been ‘japanned’ like some of the furniture supplied for the

Pavilion in about 1802 by the Crace firm.”465 This supports my hypothesis that George IV chose the European-style dragons because of their appearance on an imitation japanned cabinet. George IV’s enduring preference for furniture and other objects over and above fine art objects seems to coalesce in this interior design. Morley confirms, “As a collector, he preferred rich and elaborate objects and furniture [to oil painting]; the design of his interiors was influenced by these objects, which were often placed in context at an early stage … .”466 The furniture would have been especially important, considering, for example, the complete lack of oil paintings in the

461 Ibid. 462 Morley, p. 204.

463 Ibid. 464 Aldrich, “Georgian Craces,” p. 25.

465 Ibid. 466 Morley, p. 24. Page 180! of 300 Pavilion—an absence which is attributed to a desired uniformity in style.467 Incidentally, the furniture did not adhere to this strict ‘stylistic unity,’ as the “chinoiserie furniture made for the Pavilion between 1802 and 1822 ran the whole gamut of taste, and [George IV] did not hesitate to place” disparate pieces side-by-side.468 This can be read two ways: first, I posit that the eclectic furniture—including not least of all French, Indian, and Chinese styles; boulle, Rococo, and Neoclassical—represented the emerging Linnaean urge to collect and display objects from every corner of the world. This would coincide with the imperial project of cataloguing all the world’s potential markets and dominions. Thomas, while writing on George IV’s porcelain collection, again offers an alternative explanation; he suggests that George IV’s eclectic tastes actually equalized his diverse objects. By placing objects (in this case, furniture) of French, Indian, and Chinese origins together, with no distinctions or boundaries drawn between them, he imbues them with the same value.469 While this is an intriguing proposition, I maintain that this was actually in keeping with the urge to collect and display rather than to equalize. Beyond the sheer scope of furniture styles, one must note that these were not purely invented ‘copies’ or manufactured simulacra. George IV sought authenticity, to whichever degree one may use that term, and he wanted objects from the source. Morley provides a succinct summary:

A great amount of the furniture and decorative accessories for the early chinoiserie schemes at Brighton was imported directly from China, and one must admit that the lists of miscellaneous objects seen in the Crace accounts at this time give a sense of a wholesale and indiscriminate rage for acquisition. The means used were not always beyond reproach: ‘in bribing the Hoppos and their underlings in China, for conniving at the bringing out of pictures of their customs and particularly the Emperor’s Court—Armour of all kinds— Mandarine Dresses—flags…and wrought metal for every description—Lanterns, etc. etc.’ The use of such material declined as the schemes for the Pavilion became richer and more sophisticated, and the interiors finally shown in Nash’s Views contain only the scientist remains—the ivory ship models seen in the South Galleries, for instance.470

That the use of these materials declined over the period that the Pavilion was being decorated is telling. Perhaps once the future king had established a foundation of believable ‘Chineseness,’ it was acceptable to him to continue decorating in his own style—his own brand of chinoiserie revival.

467 Ibid. 468 Ibid.

469 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 243. 470 Morley, p. 25. Page 181! of 300 Chinese Motifs in the Stairwell, Banqueting Room, and Corridor

The myriad other rooms in the Royal Pavilion boast every manner of Chinese exotica as found in the Music Room, from pagodas to dragons to lanterns. However, as I have discussed these motifs above, I will not detail them again in this section. I do not intend an encyclopedic account of these objects and images. Instead, I am interested in exploring the designs which were taken directly from William Alexander’s books. In this manner, I wish to elucidate the way in which anthropological prints—the ‘authentic’ Chinese images of the day—have been understood in such a different context to that of the books from which they come. Sloboda notes that, “In the logic of the marketplace, truth is asserted through repetition, and the familiarity of chinoiserie’s often-repeated Chinese signs rendered those signs authentic.”471 The pairing of copies derived directly from Alexander’s volumes with “generalized exotic motifs”472 was an inventive way of asserting authenticity, while retaining some creative agency in the construction of a new signifier (that is, the interiors of the Pavilion).

The Stairwell Among the most curious uses of Alexander’s work comes from the stained glass windows in the stairwell (fig. 7. 13). Firstly, one will notice the rail of the stairway, which is iron cast and painted to resemble bamboo. On the three windows, there are individual figures in each space, creating what resembles religious niches. Originally, a lamp would have been lit and placed behind the window to illuminate the spaces.473 Each of the figures is depicted atop a pedestal, which is not original to Alexander’s images. These function in a similar fashion to the ormolu mounts which were routinely added to porcelain vases.474 By adding the simulated pedestals, George IV and his team of decorators translate the figures from mere anthropological print to work of art; it is an elevation of sorts, figuratively and literally. However, in casting these figures in a decorative rather than didactic role, the future king offers them as objects of visual, rather than intellectual, consumption. One element of Alexander’s imagery which is retained is the nondescript space; the

471 Sloboda, Chinoiserie, p. 201. 472 Ibid., p. 204.

473 “The Brighton Pavilion and the Dress for Excess Exhibition, Part Seven,” from Austenonly: https:// austenonly.com/2011/09/29/the-brighton-pavilion-and-the-dress-for-excess-exhibition-part-seven/. Accessed March 2017. 474 See Thomas, “Chinoiserie.” Page 182! of 300 figures are not situated in a landscape or domestic interior. Unlike past chinoiserie scenes, the spacelessness denies the figures any attachment to a particular locale or time. The most striking of the three is the central figure, taken directly from Alexander’s A Chinese Comedian (fig. 7.14), in Costume. This is also the most literal copy as the two female figures flanking him appear to be amalgamations of various types in Alexander’s work. There appears to be no existing explanation for the choice of this particular figure, although it is possible that George IV enjoyed the theatrical nature of the Comedian. In his textual account, Alexander writes that theatrical performances are among the most popular amusements for the Chinese, and that every mandarin had a stage built in his home so that dramas could be performed for the mandarins and their guests. On holidays, he notes, plays would be openly performed in the streets. All of the performances, public or private, would be accompanied by music. While this suggests that Alexander would have had any number of actors to choose from, his depiction comes from personal observation: “While the Embassador and his suite were at Canton, theatrical representations were regularly exhibited at dinner time, for their diversion. This character, which the Interpreter explained to be an enraged military officer, was, sketched from an actor performing his part before the embassy, December 19, 1793.”475 This is a compelling confluence of elements. The fact that this central figure is an actor who would perform in tandem with music suits the convivial social aims of the Pavilion, a glorified pleasure house; the character’s raison d’être is one and the same with the Pavilion, so he stands watch over the visitors as a sort of mascot. However, he has a dual function, which is the role he is meant to be playing in the first place: that of an ‘enraged’ military officer. Alexander depicts numerous soldiers, whose uniforms are similarly cumbersome, but less ornate and intricate.476 In the Royal Pavilion window, the Comedian’s uniform is slightly more simplified but the colours and silhouette are the same. He also keeps his countenance and weapons. Depicted as simultaneously fierce and tame, dynamic yet constrained, he indicates that the Chinese military has maintained its ranks and order, but that it is also no threat to a would-be British invader. The Chinese military is not an actual threat, but rather comprised of an entire fleet of pretenders acting out their part. The two females that flank the Comedian are convincingly Alexander-esque in treatment, but they are composite characters. The clothing most resembles the fine silks worn by the upper-

475 Alexander, Costume, no page. 476 For a description of Alexander’s military figures, see Chapter Three. The Comedian could be compared to Portrait of a Soldier in his full Uniform, A Soldier in his Common Dress, and A Soldier of Chu-San, Armed with a Matchlock Gun, &c. Page 183! of 300 class lady in A Chinese Lady and her Son, attended by a Servant, (figs. 3.23 and 4.8) an image which is presented and then reinterpreted in both of Alexander’s books. The hairstyle of the woman on the right resembles that of Alexander’s peasant women, most notably from A Nursery Maid and Two Children, (fig. 4.11) from Picturesque Representations. Although it is not known whether a copy of Alexander’s later work found its way into George IV’s possession, it is probable that his decorators knew of it. The head-dress worn by the woman at left resembles that of A Female Comedian, (fig. 4.15) (a eunuch dressed as a woman), again in Picturesque Representations. Alexander also includes a description of female dress in the textual accompaniment of the image: “The whole dress is supposed to be that of the ancient Chinese, and indeed is not very different from that of the present day.”477 Again, the timelessness-turned-stagnation is implied. He continues, “The young ladies of China display considerable taste and fancy in their head-dresses which are much decorated with feathers, flowers, and beads as well as metallic ornaments in great variety of form. Their outer garments are richly embroidered, and are generally the work of their own hands, a great part of their time being employed in this way.”478 It seems likely that Robert Jones, who was decorating this section of the Pavilion by 1816, read and saw Alexander’s textual and visual descriptions, respectively, and reconfigured them for the window figures. Besides the hairstyles and the suggested fabric (silk), the palette of muted primary colors is the same as in Alexander as well. One way in which Jones took artistic liberty is in the conflation of the right woman’s dress with that of the mandarins. The figure is definitely female—she lacks a queue and wears female clothing and hairstyling—but the front section of her dress features a symbol within a square, matching perfectly that of Alexander’s Portrait of Chow- ta-zhin (fig. 3.24). Alexander described it thus: “… the square badge on his breast … is also of rich embroidery, and contains the figure of an imaginary bird, which denotes the wearer to be a

Mandarin of letters … .”479 Chow-ta-zhin and the female figure also wear matching blue outer robes, although hers are shorter. Again, it is unknown why this artistic fusion has taken place, but one explanation may be that this version suited George IV’s personal taste better. It is also possible that all of these individual items—the head-dress, imaginary bird badge, silken robes—had become visual signs in and of themselves, so that they could be united in various combinations to create new signs for a new place and patron.

477 William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese. (London: John Murray, 1814), no page.

478 Ibid. 479 Alexander, Costume, no page. Page 184! of 300 The Banqueting Room and Corridor The Banqueting Room, another lavish interior saturated with George IV’s brand of chinoiserie, features several additional Alexander-inspired figures on the walls. They do not blend into an extravagant wallpaper, such as was installed in the Music Room, but are rather framed by fretwork and set apart like portraits or mythologies of earlier centuries. The original design (fig. 7.15) was intended for the Entrance Hall and was likely executed by Frederick Crace in 1815.480 In this original sketch, Alexander’s A Chinese Lady and Her Son, attended by a Servant is very closely adhered to. The woman’s dress is a different color, and the soft hilly outdoor setting has mostly been eliminated; the figures stand atop a patch of grass instead. There is also a stereotypical (blue and white), tall Chinese vase filled with flowers to the right side of the woman. The servant has been completely eliminated, and instead, the young son holds the umbrella above the woman. Like the source image, the woman wears an elaborate head-dress. Crace’s sketch also includes two side panels of Chinese figures, these corresponding much less to any of Alexander’s creations. The frames for the three segments are all topped with various Chinese signs wrapped around a pole: dragons for the central woman and son, and fish (good luck omens) for the side panels. The central segment also has a joss-style roof above the frame. Crace may have followed Alexander too closely for his patron’s taste: just as two of the three window figures in the stairwell are inventive assemblages of pre-existing parts, the final outcome of the Banqueting Room is something slightly different from that originally envisioned. Morley partially explains that “The Prince can hardly have disapproved of the paintings as such, for they were precursors of those later to be executed by Jones for the Banqueting Room; it may have been that he thought them too exclamatory for an Entrance Hall … .”481 While this may explain why they were moved from one space to another, it does not address the change in actual depiction that took place in the course of that move. The final design (fig. 7.16) in the Banqueting Room has two large framed segments, separated by a large mirror. The chinois frame of guilt moulding and red trellis borders is similar to the original conception. Both images feature an upper-class lady and a child, sans servant; they stand on a patch of grass, hinting at an exterior setting. The colors are different from one another, but the poses are complementary. Jones has not lost an opportunity to bedeck otherwise blank space with more ornate chinoiserie; indeed, the figures are surrounded by what resembles the

480 Morley, p. 160. 481 Ibid. Page 185! of 300 monochromatic (beige or ivory) design of an imperial robe, with what appears to be dragons or other icons swirling about.482 The visual effect results in the figures appearing to be part of a silken garment, damask wallpaper, or similar item, thereby firmly establishing their own decorative (rather than instructive) function. The final individual decorative object that I will include in this chapter is the skylight from the corridor. The corridor itself is saturated with all those Chinese signs I have outlined: real Chinese bamboo chairs were placed alongside imitation bamboo furniture, and faux bamboo accents are to be found everywhere, from the staircases to the ceilings to the walls. There are Chinese porcelain pieces and lanterns (whose authenticity is unclear). The blue-on-pink botanical- print wallpaper more closely resembles traditional Rococo chinoiserie than in other rooms. Dinkel observes, “The decorative scheme … remained essentially the same. The most prominent feature, the central skylight … has its glazing bars arranged in the shape of Crace’s Chinese devices, colourfully painted with dragons, flowers, and, in pride of place, the Chinese God of Thunder with all its associations of sublime and thrilling terrors tamed for the purposes of Europeanized decoration.”483 This description of the affect of viewing the skylight is among the only accounts (if not the only one) that reveals the decidedly Romantic sensibility that the Royal Pavilion’s interiors exemplify. While eighteenth-century Rococo chinoiserie is devoid of the ‘thrilling terrors’ found in the Pavilion’s corridor, George IV and his team embrace them.

Rococo versus Post-Rococo Chinoiserie

One of the points that I have alluded to throughout this chapter is the distinction between what I call Rococo and post-Rococo chinoiserie. This is a distinction that previous scholars have not yet established, but one that I find emphatically necessary. The conflation of all forms of British (/European) chinoiserie is the greatest factor in misinterpreting spaces such as those found in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. Thomas, for example, writes that “The Royal Pavilion at Brighton was one of the most extravagant—some would say outlandish—manifestations of what is broadly called chinoiserie.”484 Perhaps under the current paradigm, the Royal Pavilion is an ‘outlandish’ example of chinoiserie—that is to say, a Rococo-affiliated chinoiserie. Contrarily, I posit that it is possible

482 I must note that the Banqueting Room seems to be filled from wall to wall with other figures, but there are no extant reproductions of them available online.

483 Dinkel, p. 80. Emphasis mine. 484 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 233. Page 186! of 300 for the Royal Pavilion to epitomize a Romantic chinoiserie rather than being an ‘outlandish’ example of the former. Indeed, among the many things that makes the Pavilion unique is that it urges for a chinoiserie divorced from its Rococo roots. Chinoiserie’s peak coincided with the Rococo movement with which it is typically associated; they are both characterized by asymmetrical forms, pastel palettes, motifs derived from nature, and whimsical and idyllic scenes. Rococo chinoiserie, while propagating a fantastical and invented image of China, was not borne out of a sense of European hegemony. Rococo chinoiserie sought to evoke, but not imitate, Chinese styles. However, while the Rococo movement witnessed the eruption of chinoiserie’s popularity, the two styles are not one and the same, and nineteenth-century chinoiserie interiors (or gardens, bridges, etc.) cannot be assessed within the pre-existing Rococo classification. The chinoiserie of the Royal Pavilion is devoid of the earlier version’s softness, its whimsy, and its merry unawareness of and disassociation from authentic Chinese sources. One of the most important issues facing these diverging chinoiseries is that of cultural signification. I assert that the chinoiserie of the Pavilion must serve as a sign operating under a paradigm different from that of its Rococo antecedents. As I have outlined, in the mid-eighteenth century, Europe was largely sinophilic and chinoiserie evoked an imagined Cathay, a place from which Confucius and benevolent despotism arose. But the chinoiserie of the Pavilion cannot lay claim to such positive associations with the Middle Kingdom. This was the period during which tensions between the two empires intensified, during which China figured as a frustrated potential market for British wares, rather than a source of political and spiritual inspiration. Why, then, would the manifestation of chinoiserie remain the same? The future King George IV found in Chinese styles an aspirational grandiosity, an ornateness and regal reverence that could not be so forthcoming in native European styles following the French Revolution. David Beevers writes that, “… the sheer scale, the opulence of furnishings, the richness of colour, and the drama of plunging chandeliers and rearing dragons, evoke a ‘China’ of imperial extravagance and self-indulgence—something quite different from the gently whimsical realm of mid-Georgian rococo.”485 The supporters of eighteenth-century Rococo chinoiserie did not have the same imperial-assertive ambitions as George IV would have had as a royal patron. Their motivations would have been linked to imperial expansion, but as a means of expressing worldliness, not as a way of garnering the respect a monarch thought he was owed. This was again

485 David Beevers, Chinese Whispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 68. Page 187! of 300 tied to the knowledge brought back through the participants of the Macartney mission: “What the Prince heard [via the ambassadorial accounts] concerning the proud dignity of the Chinese court must have greatly impressed him and encouraged his own conception of the role of the monarchy.”486 This inspired him to revive chinoiserie to his own taste. Besides the regal station of the patron in question, there are several explanations for the divergence of chinoiserie from its Rococo origins. These are not mutually exclusive explanations, but rather are complementary. First, the Rococo movement was inextricably tied to France, and an Ancien Régime France at that. It is hardly surprising that George IV should find it necessary to distance himself from that polity, especially considering his reputation for excess and luxurious taste. Second, the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of a new aesthetic paradigm: Romanticism. With Rococo out of fashion, chinoiserie found a new movement from which to spring forth. I will describe this below. Finally, Rococo chinoiserie was considered a feminine endeavor for private, female-occupied spaces, and the Royal Pavilion was exactly the opposite: a masculine endeavor for a semi-public, male-occupied space. The issue of chinoiserie’s perceived femininity has been taken up in recent scholarship,487 and I will briefly address this issue in the last section of this chapter. One of the qualities which aligns the Royal Pavilion to an evolving Romantic aesthetic is that of experience: “In fact, romanticism is characterized by an euphoric commitment to experience.”488 By transforming a static, two-dimensional style of the previous century into a dynamic, three-dimensional style, George IV pushes chinoiserie into the Romantic domain. This also explains the unrelenting bombardment of Chinese signs within the Pavilion’s interiors: thus, when taken as an entire program rather than an amalgamation of innumerable individual objects or scenes, the experiential affect is fully realized. Romanticism witnessed “… an intensified concentration on psychological responses, the emotions and the emotional. This development of new interpretations of emotional response required the relinquishing of standardized illustrations and replacing them with that which is felt and observed.”489 That is to say, the standardized, two- dimensional Rococo chinoiserie of the eighteenth century needed to give way to a nineteenth- century chinoiserie which could be ‘felt and observed’; ‘observed’ here is an operative term. After

486 Dinkel, p. 30. 487 See for example, Sloboda, Chinoiserie, p. 108-158, Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 55-92, and Chang, p. 76-79.

488 Frederick Cummings, “Romanticism in Britain, 1760-1860,” in Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings 1760-1860, exhibition catalogue. (Philadelphia, PA: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1968), 17. 489 Ibid., p. 18. Emphasis mine. Page 188! of 300 all, it is because of Alexander’s personal observations that any kind of legitimacy could be granted to the plentiful reproductions within the Pavilion’s interiors.490 Furthermore, Chambers—whose pagoda at Kew Gardens George IV greatly admired—wrote in his dissertations the ways in which Chinese artists and garden designers depended upon diverse scenes to elicit the greatest response from viewers.491 Chang also analyzes Chambers’ contribution to the development of the notion of response which would be key to the Pavilion’s scheme; she writes, “Chambers’s catalogue of the vagaries of emotional response desirable in a garden visitor—curiosity, expectation, and disappointment—all represent temporally dependent moods … reliant on the subjective progress of the single passenger … .”492 While her focus is on the anglo-chinois garden, this notion of the visitor’s emotional response and of the temporal element would have been crucial for a monarch captivated by theatrics. Impey also details Chambers’ accounts. Following Chambers’ academic descriptions likening Chinese architectural features to Greek ones (such as the general form, columns, arcade, etc.), his readers could decide that:

… Chinese architecture was not only respectable, but that it could be easily assimilated into the European sense of proportion, and of suitability. It was therefore considered suitable for light, airy, colorful buildings where its ‘frivoloity’ was an asset, not a liability. And what could have been more perfect that this combination of features for garden pavilions? Clearly chinoiserie styles could never replace the classical or even the gothick, even in garden architecture, but could be allowed as subsidiary features.493

Impey, however, implicitly describes Rococo chinoiserie; the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, reverses this schema entirely, where classical and French influences are subsidiary to Chinese and Indo- Saracenic ones. That this schema could be entirely reversed is further testament to the utter detachment of nineteenth-century chinoiserie from its predecessor. Additionally, Impey elaborates that “Most chinoiserie garden buildings seem to have been more or less temporary structures… .”494 However, again, the Pavilion resists this ‘standardized’ medium, insisting upon its own permanence.

490 The concept of observation is among the subject of France Wood’s article, “Closely Observed China: From William Alexander’s Sketches to his Published Work,” which is discussed in my literary analysis.

491 Chambers’ work inspired the Picturesque theorist Uvedale Price, whose work on the sublime, picturesque, and beautiful foreshadowed the corresponding tenets of Romanticism. 492 Chang, p. 33.

493 Impey, p. 144. Emphasis mine. 494 Ibid., p. 150. Page 189! of 300 The style and medium are not the only factors to divorce early nineteenth-century chinoiserie from its Rococo predecessors: George IV has carefully minimized overt French connections. Rococo chinoiserie finds France at the heart of its origins, and the decreasing popularity of these gallic neighbors following the collapse of its monarchy and the Napoleonic Wars helps explain the parallel decrease in traditional chinoiserie’s popularity. This is not to suggest that George IV personally harbored anti-France sentiment; indeed, he was a lifelong francophile, as I have noted above. However, he was shrewd in his choices within the Royal Pavilion; Morley suggests “… that he chose the Chinese style at Brighton because he was afraid that his French furniture would be accused of jacobinism.”495 As the Royal Pavilion experienced a peak in its decoration, so too did Britain’s wars with France. George IV and his decorators chose to embrace Chinese-inspired interiors, but they bypassed France, its previous conduit. He was not personally interested in French Rococo painting,496 which would offer an additional explanation for its absence within the Pavilion. Another novel element in this newer chinoiserie is its affinity with the ‘Opium Dream,’ which may have also arrived by way of Romanticism—Romantic poetry in particular. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan, his opium-fueled poem about Kublai Khan’s summer palace Xanadu, in 1797, but only published it in 1816. Its publication coincided perfectly with the last phase of decoration at Brighton. Coleridge describes the fantastical, edenic pleasure grounds of Kublai Khan, which find parallels to what was known of contemporary China: namely, Qianlong’s

(and then Jiaqing’s) summer palace at Jehol.497 The conflation of opiates, pleasure grounds, and imperial grandiosity characterize George IV’s rule and his architectural magnum opus much more closely than whimsical Rococo willows could have. This is not to suggest that this neo-chinoiserie was unaware of its earlier iteration. Indeed, the aforementioned Banqueting Room features many figures and motifs which are not exact correspondents to those found in the more garish Music Room. Dinkel writes, “In their gentleness and charm they are descendants of Boucher’s rococo chinoiserie paintings, but unlike gallery pictures these tableaux are reserved against a luminous ground … .”498 Morley further connects Robert Jones’ wall paintings in the Banqueting Room to Boucher’s designs for the Beauvais

495 Morley, p. 23. 496 Ibid., p. 24.

497 These Qing emperors were outsiders within China, just like Kublai and Chinggis Khan were foreign rulers of a foreign dynasty (in their case, the Yuan Dynasty). 498 Dinkel, p. 86. Page 190! of 300 tapestry workshops.499 It seems as though George IV may have wished to connect some decorative aspect of his chinoiserie wall designs to Boucher’s tapestries, but without the cultural connotations that the earlier fantastical designs would have carried. The future king desired a degree of authenticity that Boucher and his Rococo peers could not offer. The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, offers a unique case study of the early nineteenth-century manifestation of chinoiserie. I posit that rather than signaling a vulgar demise to a singular chinoiserie, the Pavilion instead acts as a transition from one point of contact with China to another: a transition from Western sinophilia to sinophobia. Dinkel puts forth this summation:

It was George IV’s remarkable achievement to have cultivated with such tenacity the exotic seeds sown long before, to the point where a unique flowering took place, while the enthusiasm of others had already been spent. The Royal Pavilion in its own mature confederation of styles is the last and most thoroughgoing expression of the aristocratic fascination of an idealized Eastern world that blossomed with the rococo and that withered when exposed to the disillusionment of the nineteenth century.500

Dinkel’s analysis typifies current scholarship on the Royal Pavilion, and indeed on any version of nineteenth-century chinoiserie: the ‘gaudy’ chinoiserie paradigm which I have described. However, I suggest that it is only chinoiserie’s attachment to the Rococo that withered; the Pavilion’s interiors were a harbinger of a newfound interest in the Far East that emerged alongside the growth of the malign Orientalism that thrived following the Opium Wars.

Domesticating Orientalism

Hitherto, I have alluded to Orientalism without fully explicating its purpose in this chapter. There are a few issues at hand: first, the issue of gender and its relationship to chinoiserie dramatically alters how the Royal Pavilion can be read, and this is connected to Orientalism, as Orientalism carries with it an important yet under-appreciated gendered component. Second, imperial knowledge of the non-Western world became politicized on a scale not seen before in Europe. It is not possible that the emerging Orientalist discourse did not affect the outcome of the decorative schemes at Brighton. This is especially evident in the signification of objects such as

499 Morley, p. 196. Morley declines to elaborate, but among the possible sources for inspiration is Boucher’s collection of six chinoiserie tapestries, La Tenture Chinoise. This series, first woven in 1743, included: “The Chinese Repast,” “The Chinese Fair,” “The Chinese Dance,” “The Chinese Fishing Party,” “The Chinese Hunt,” and “The Chinese Toilet.” See, Gertrude Underhill, “Tapestries,” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 31, no. 6, Part I (Jun., 1944): 102-3, and Perrin Stein, “Boucher’s Chinoiseries: Some New Sources,” The Burlington Magazine 138, no. 1122 (Sept., 1996): 598-604. 500 Dinkel, p. 7. Emphasis mine. Page 191! of 300 pagodas, which I will elaborate upon. George IV seizes well-established Chinese signs and deploys them in an imperial decorative frenzy: he therefore domesticates Orientalism. The topic of gender and its relation to Orientalism is most famously discussed in Linda Nochlin’s “The Imaginary Orient,” and Reina Lewis’s Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation; the former analyzes late nineteenth-century French Orientalist painting and its ideological assertions of power,501 and the latter, in discussing George Eliot and Henriette Browne, contends that women must be viewed as having had agency in constructing Orientalist tropes.502 Porter devotes two chapters of Chinese Taste to the topic of ‘gendering Chinese exoticism.’ However, what is largely absent from this scholarly discussion is the way that chinoiserie spaces— or even remotely ‘Eastern’-inspired spaces and objects—are gendered as feminine or masculine, and what that conveys. As it pertains to the Royal Pavilion, the spaces are masculine, but private spaces, whereas chinoiserie rooms in eighteenth century country houses were typically feminine and public, or only semi-private. (These were rooms that were meant to be seen, so the patrons could boast of their great taste.) I am here designating the rooms of the Royal Pavilion as only private in the relative sense in that, unlike other royal residences, this was purely a pleasure house, and admittance would be more exclusive than the corresponding rooms in other palaces. Loske suggests that Queen Charlotte, George IV’s mother, acted as a source of inspiration for the future king, and this is one channel through which chinoiserie could pass from a feminine to masculine endeavor. She writes, “Collecting exotic export ware and furnishing rooms in a Chinoiserie style were associated with the female sphere, so Queen Charlotte’s tastes were not unusual, but they appear to have made a significant impact on those of her eldest son.”503 Charlotte was also among the first to shift her Chinese-style rooms from public to private; her bed chamber (described above) was among the most ostentatious of the rooms. As the style-maker rather than the style-follower, George IV may also have felt inclined to take more liberty in how he showcased (or did not showcase) his chinois interiors. As Charlotte transmitted her affinity for chinoiserie to George, so too could the transition from feminine to masculine space transpire. This is another key ingredient in the divergence of

501 Nochlin writes, “… Orientalist painting managed to body forth two ideological assumptions about power: one about men’s power over women; the other about white men’s superiority to, hence justifiable control over, inferior, darker races… .” Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in: Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History, edited by Kimberly N. Pinder. (London: Routledge, 2002), 76.

502 Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. (London: Routledge, 1996). 503 Loske, p. 328. Page 192! of 300 chinoiserie away from the Rococo style. But more than that, it is also indicative of the metastasizing of Orientalism that unfolded during the nineteenth century. Porter thoroughly explicates the misogynist criticism of Chinese porcelain collecting—that there was a ‘hysteria’ surrounding its popularity—but this depended upon porcelain being perceived as a foreign and exotic commodity. Orientalism as a hegemonic process (rather than a static, binary- dependent collection of knowledge and political endeavors) depended upon the perceived inferiority of the East to the West, and gendering Chinese wares offered a convenient method of projecting that inferiority. Porter succinctly writes,

… Chinese-style goods, as an art form that in its contempt for familiar formal principles exerted a notorious fascination for the ‘untutored’ female eye, dramatically disrupted the sexual politics of the gaze as imagined by contemporary aesthetic theorists, for many of whom—Hogarth and Burke among them—the emblematic experience of beauty was that of the learned man of taste looking upon a well-proportioned female form. Within the intimate, domestic spaces of eighteenth-century china rooms, by contrast, it seems largely to have been women who did the looking, judging, admiring, and possessing … .504

This reveals chinoiserie’s feminine origins, and how it eschewed an adherence to contemporary masculine taste. However, over time, the Chinese objects themselves took on a female gender, so that China (and France) became “…purveyors of effeminizing foreign luxury.”505 This was a necessary step so that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, men could begin participating in collecting as well; I have noted above that the Crace family were avid consumers of Chinese wares. This also signals the change in signification. As the objects themselves became feminine— rather than merely the act of collecting and displaying being coded feminine—China became more open to British dominance. Edward Said wrote, “The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony … ”506 and the Pavilion’s interiors embody an urge to dominate. At the time of the Pavilion’s completion, the British crown and public alike were still restricted to one trading port, as the as-yet impenetrable Canton System remained in place despite the two (failed) diplomatic embassies. Simultaneously, China’s most ubiquitous exports, tea and porcelain, had been sufficiently absorbed into British culture by the beginning of the nineteenth century, so China’s presence as an exotic Other would need to be reinterpreted. This explains the need for the Royal Pavilion to create and embrace a new chinoiserie devoid of its Rococo roots; China would need to be re-exoticized, and the garish interior

504 Porter, Chinese Taste, p. 33.

505 Ibid., p. 20. 506 Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 5. Page 193! of 300 decorative scheme accomplishes that goal. Morley suggests that George IV rejected Chambers’ potential involvement at Brighton because his œuvre was too ‘sober’ and ‘masculine’ in style, again suggesting a masculine/feminine dichotomy within the paradigm of Chinese-derived motifs. One of the objects—or signs, rather—that most clearly articulates the Orientalization of nineteenth-century chinoiserie is the pagoda. As I have described, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion are teeming with pagodas, from their more traditional representation on wallpapers to their newly- created interior sculptural forms. These sculptural pagodas exemplify the domestication of Orientalism, a process which was necessary to embark on the warfare that came later in the century. A key issue in the many pagodas of the Music Room is that they have been completely stripped of their origins and appropriated to accommodate the future king’s vision. They have been transformed from signifiers of an admirable empire to trinkets to be brought inside, to be brought into the interior of the Pavilion, and more symbolically, to be brought into the interior of Britain’s nascent informal empire. By bringing the pagodas inside, shrinking them in size, and bedecking them with all manner of European decoration (including the ormolu, described above), George IV is able to simultaneously embrace a design motif that he had some fondness for while also subjugating an empire that became increasingly antagonistic. George IV is able to bring the signs of the Chinese landscape inside and assert a type of domination over that space. Earlier pagodas did not share this fate; for example, the pagodas featured on Rococo chinoiserie wallpapers were situated within idyllic landscapes. Although it was a fantasy landscape, it was nonetheless an attempt to place the pagoda within its rightful context, while still serving contemporary aesthetic preferences. The pagodas, within their imagined landscapes, were outside and to scale. Rococo chinoiserie did not attempt to diminish pagodas, literally or figuratively. Similarly, Chambers’ pagoda at Kew Gardens, while similarly devoid of the context it would have had in China, attempted authenticity. It was modeled on a similar structure in Nanjing, and its denial of context was one of benign ignorance, not willful appropriation. Thomas suggests that, “Taken as a jumbled whole, these ornamental motifs in varying shades of authenticity constitute a collective pool of signs signifying intersections and affinities between Chinese and European culture and rulership.”507 But it is more than mere ‘intersections and affinities’; it is an emerging aesthetic of subjugation and domination. The Pavilion’s ‘varying shades of authenticity’ further complicate the understanding of the chinoiserie interiors. By laying claim to authenticity in a way that was not seen previously, the

507 Thomas, “Chinoiserie,” p. 240. Page 194! of 300 interior decoration asserts itself as a kind of knowledge of China: a new, Orientalist knowledge. An important consideration is that this was the period during which a latent Orientalism began to metastasize, when knowledge production—including visual knowledge—became a means of controlling and justifying potential colonial targets such as China. Said posits that the Orient is an imagined nonspace created for the perpetuation and justification of Western power,508 and I maintain that in Britain, the post-Macartney era would have marked the beginning of the creation of that nonspace in imperial terms. David Luddens elaborates upon this point:

Orientalism as a body of knowledge drew material sustenance from colonialism but became objectified by the ideology of science as a set of factualized statements about a reality that existed and could be known independent of any subjective, colonizing will. Thus detached epistemologically from politics by a culture that objectivized the world as a collection of scientific observations with universal validity, orientalism floated free of its original moorings; it could therefore serve diverse political purposes and receive new sustenance from many quarters.509

Knowledge production by means of interior decoration—what would appear otherwise non- threatening and merely ornamental—would be the most pernicious and penetrative method of shifting the contemporary view of China to justify the military intervention that was to come. The interiors of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, speak volumes about its royal patron, his team of designers, and the society in which he lived. There is no easy way of denoting the spaces as harmlessly chinois or as imperially Orientalist, if such a binary could even exist. I also wish to avoid a teleological interpretation by implying that the spaces and objects occupy a middle-ground between these two points. However, what I can propose is that the interiors epitomize a new chinoiserie divorced from its Rococo origins; what this new chinoiserie aspires to—imperial knowledge-formation, perhaps—is as-yet up for further debate and discussion. Regardless of the outcome of such a hypothetical debate, the interiors signal an emerging Orientalist aesthetic that would flourish in the century to come. These spaces signify that, in a post-Macartney and later, a post-Amherst Britain, Chinese-inspired motifs come to offer a different understanding of their place of alleged origin.

508 Said, Orientalism, 3. 509 David Luddens, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, eds. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer. (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 252. Page 195! of 300 Conclusion

Throughout this dissertation, I have demonstrated the myriad ways in which Britain interacted with China, artistically, during a century of transition. By maintaining a semiotic analysis of otherwise disparate media, the preceding case studies reveal subtle but significant shifts in the British perception of the Middle Kingdom. From the establishment of the first Catholic mission in Beijing in 1601, to the ambitious Macartney embassy of 1793, and up to the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century, British artists, designers, and decorators deployed the familiar signifiers of China for new purposes and audiences. These manifestations were sometimes literal depictions, as William Alexander’s travelogue images and Thomas Allom’s adaptations demonstrate. Other times, the signifier was more amorphous, such as the irregularity in garden design that became popular during the eighteenth century. In the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, designer Frederick Crace, among others, looked to Alexander’s illustrations to inform the new style of chinoiserie that George IV initiated. The primary question I have sought to address is, how does the deterioration in the relationship between China and Britain manifest in art? Because of conduits such as the Jesuit missionaries, Johan Nieuhof, William Chambers, and William Alexander, Britain became increasingly aware of the imagery associated with China, including pagodas and mandarins. But, as I have argued, the changing signification of these images reveal concomitant shifts in attitudes towards China. I have also been concerned with the corollary concepts of depiction and diffusion: that is, how did British artists depict China and the Chinese, and then, how do these depictions diffuse into British visual and material culture more broadly? While George IV and his designers actively sought Chinese inspiration, or at least what they interpreted that to be, others such as Horace Walpole rejected Chinese attribution in the creation of the anglo-chinois garden. Through this series of case studies, I have examined how artists and audiences negotiated increasing contact with China. Evocations of familiar signs belie a deteriorating relationship, which was hastened by Britain’s rapid industrialization and the unabating desire for Chinese goods. As art history embarks on an intercultural turn, connections between China and Britain in the early modern, proto-global world must be included in this field. This dissertation serves as one such point of departure.

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Blakley, Kara Lindsey

Title: From diplomacy to diffusion: the Macartney mission and its impact on the understanding of Chinese art, aesthetics, and culture in Great Britain, 1793-1859

Date: 2018

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/213981

File Description: Redacted Thesis_Blakley

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