Chinoiserie in European painting of the XVII-XVIII centuries

Lun xingyang PhD in Art History Postgraduate, Department of Semiotics and General Art Theory, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119991, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1 longxingyang@mail.ru Other publications by this author

 1. The appearance of chinoiserie

 "The Dutch played an important role in early trade between China and Europe, with the Dutch shipping most Chinese goods to Europe for resale to other European countries." ^[1,121c] In 1604, the Dutch navy captured the Portuguese ship Santa Catarina and brought it to Amsterdam. The ship had 1,200 bales of raw Chinese silk and about 100,000 pieces of porcelain. "As merchants and dignitaries from all over the world fought for these goods and carried them around the Amsterdam market, the era of popularity of Chinese culture [2.98c] descended on Europe." After that, Chinese art, through Chinese goods, rapidly and widely penetrated into European society and had a profound impact on European art and aesthetics.

As Adolf Reichwein argued, "The soft and diverse culture of southern China, which shone behind the brilliant colors of Jiangxi porcelain and a light train of Fujian silk, inspired European society to love and admire it [3.21c]."During the century of popularity of everything Chinese in Europe, it was Chinese goods represented by porcelain and flowing silk that had the most direct attitude to people's lives.

2. Rococo and Watteau painting

In the XVII century, secular fashion for things from East Asia began in Europe, largely thanks to the Dutch, who pioneered this trend. The subsequent preference of Chinoiserie among the monarchs of European countries contributed to the fact that the whole of Europe was fascinated by these exotic and original Chinese and Japanese paintings for about a hundred years. From the second half of the XVII century to the second half of the XVIII century, European culture and art experienced a boom in Oriental art. For a certain period of time, major countries - the Netherlands, France, Germany and England - absorbed the best of Chinese, Japanese and other Arab art and contributed to changing the artistic landscape. A number of innovative artists began to change their traditional interests and methods of painting, creating many masterpieces with a Chinese flavor. Thus, a new page was opened in the history of Eastern and Western painting.

The culmination of the popularity of the entire oriental came at the beginning-middle of the XVIII century, during the period of art so different from previous European styles that it was called the "Rococo art" phase. In his "History of Modern Culture", the modern French scientist E. Frieddle gives a general overview of this period: "In the psychology of the Rococo era, China was an exemplary country not only in terms of art, but also in terms of intelligence. The popularity of Oriental subjects was so great that stories about China forced readers to imagine a mythical ideal state with happy, carefree people and the most educated political figures living a life of privilege, straight from Huxley's country. Historians led by Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778) also talked about China as an ideal world of supreme rule, superior to Europe in moral, religious and administrative terms" ^[4,203c].

After the death of Louis XIV (1643-1715), the Sun King, in 1715, rapid and dramatic changes took place in French society and artistic style. Under Louis XIV, the era of cultural absolutism began in France, when the classical Baroque style was officially promoted, gloomy, stormy and contradictory, in contrast to the pacifying, harmonious and calm style of the Renaissance.

With the end of the reign of Louis XIV, French history entered the era of the Orleans Regent Philippe II (1674-1723) and Louis XV (1715-1774), where the characteristic features of the new era influenced the new monarchs. The Baroque artistic style was quickly replaced by a completely different style in terms of worldview and aesthetic taste, which art historians call Rococo and which then influenced the whole of Europe.

Emile Molyneux, in The General History of Crafts, volume III, History of Furniture of the XVII-XVIII centuries, argues that Rococo art and crafts were formed exclusively under Chinese influence^[5,51c]. We already know that the rise of Rococo art was closely linked to the subtle, elegant and ornate style of crafts such as porcelain and silk. This was reflected mainly in crafts such as porcelain, textile design, lacquer, interior decoration and garden architecture, and this new aesthetic sensitivity, having formed, was to spread to other areas of plastic arts, including painting. Chinoiserie had a profound influence on the field of European painting, and painting played a pioneering role in the creation of fine art in general, providing a model for other fields. Jean-Antoine-Watteau (1684-1721) is the most famous French artist of the XVIII century in the Rococo style, considered the first Western artist who freed French painting from the Baroque style of the previous period and created a style with an oriental flavor.

Watteau came to Paris around 1702 to earn a living as an artist, and worked for a long time as a decorative painter. He created a large number of beautifully executed frescoes, almost all of which, unfortunately, have been lost to date. In 1709, the young Watteau painted the royal chambers in the Chateau de la Muette, and, although they have not survived to this day, "he is considered the ancestor of the Rococo chinoiserie"^[6,72c]. The first two decades of the XVIII century, the heyday of Watteau's painting and the last two decades of his short life were the time when Chinoiserie began to prevail in society, and, in addition to the field of painting, social trends, arts and crafts — all this began to focus on China. Living in the atmosphere of such a time, Watteau sought to capture the most popular fashion trends of his time, and "at the same time, it is not difficult to see the connection between Watteau's creative path and Chinese art" ^[7,39c]. So Watteau included Chinoiserie in his works, becoming the first artist in Europe to depict Chinese elements. "The earliest works in the Rococo Chinoiserie style seem to belong to Anthony Watteau. He created two eccentric decorative paintings "The Chinese Emperor" and "Chinese Gods", which were later turned into engravings" ^[8,113c].

During his lifetime Watteau created few paintings, but his rich, intimate subjects and the corresponding style of painting established him as one of the leading representatives of French Rococo painting in the history of Western art of the early XVIII century. For example, in his famous masterpiece (Fig. 1) "Pilgrimage to the island of Kifera", for the first time he shifted the theme from grandiose themes to solitary ones.

Fig. 1, Jean-Antoine Watteau, "Pilgrimage to the island of Kifera", collection of the Louvre, France

Most of Watteau's Chinoiserie paintings that can be seen today (originals and copies) depict Chinese figures in European style: the figures are dressed in Chinese costumes, which indicates their Chinese identity, the scenes are often made in Chinoiserie style, and the faces of the figures, although they remain European in character, have a rigid expression and are devoid of individuals, so they still point to China. This is the case with the Watteau fresco in La Muette (fig. 2).

Fig. 2, Jean-Antoine Watteau, panel on the wall of the Muette Palace

Image source site: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1681466035&ver=4468&signature=4Um6BKYLGVQcHJ7pQO9yg5KmkcGuRNUlyxT07qrXH95E4EXzl7i1HJrKnhBTck6X9AVqP*Q8nGY-fRnD3B*heXMN0MYTPmkq6DiDcCmlxP6y9qy5JC*qyxSJyXivC1V2&new=1

Watteau's perception of Chinese images must have been inspired by illustrations similar to those in Johan Neuhof's "Journey of the Dutch East India Company to China", who visited Europe in 1665 and arrived in Beijing with the Dutch East India Company in 1656, and whose depictions of Oriental objects were convincing to European eyes of that time.

As shown on the copper sheet with the image of Buddhist monks in Fig. 3, Buddhist monks have a European appearance, but are dressed in clearly Chinese clothes. Their behavior corresponds to the calm, stony expressions characteristic of early European ideas about the Chinese, who did not show their anger or joy. The towers in the background of the stage have a pronounced Chinese architecture.

Fig. 3, A copper illustration from the book "The Journey of the Dutch East India Company to China" by Johan Neyhof.

Image source site: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1681466035&ver=4468&signature = 4Um6BKYLGVQcHJ7pQO9yg5KmkcGuRNUlyxT07qrXH95E4EXzl7i1HJrKnhBTck6X9AVqP*Q8nGY-fRnD3B*heXMN0MYTPmkq6DiDcCmlxP6y9qy5JC*qyxSJyXivC1V2 & new=1

Although Watteau was a Western artist, he was influenced by the fashion of his time and his professional instincts as a painter, and he was inevitably associated with the introduction of China to Europe and the paintings he brought from China, so that his subsequent works will unconsciously bear the imprint of Chinese painting. The influence of this Chinese painting, although not dominant, is certainly present to a greater or lesser extent.

This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in his work of 1708, a decorative panel for a harpsichord with a painting (Fig. 4), which, in addition to Chinese-style objects and costumes, depicts a composition that differs from European three-dimensional conventions in that the whole picture is characterized by a top-down composition or several perspective points. This fully corresponds to the Chinese principle of three-point perspective in painting, was almost unprecedented in European painting up to that time. This fully corresponds to the Chinese principle of three-point perspective in painting, which was almost unprecedented in European painting up to that time. Of particular interest is the depiction of figures in the painting without obvious differences in facial features, which also corresponds to how the five facial features are interpreted in Chinese painting, and clearly differs from the characteristic and personalized outlines of individual figures in Western painting.

Fig. 4 Decorative panel for harpsichord with Watteau painting

Image source site: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?src=11&timestamp=1681466035&ver=4468&signature = 4Um6BKYLGVQcHJ7pQO9yg5KmkcGuRNUlyxT07qrXH95E4EXzl7i1HJrKnhBTck6X9AVqP*Q8nGY-fRnD3B*heXMN0MYTPmkq6DiDcCmlxP6y9qy5JC*qyxSJyXivC1V2 & new=1

One of the best preserved works of Watteau with a distinctly Chinese style is his "Chinese Musician and Chinese Woman", written around 1710 (Fig. 5), in which we can see a style of painting that is very different from the European beginning of the XVIII century. Although the composition still uses a three-dimensional spatial form, usually used in Western figure painting, brush strokes are clearly visible, and even the two legs of the musician sitting cross-legged in the painting do not have a structural or spatial shape, but are simply painted in color, as in Chinese ink painting. The appearance of this method of painting in the Chinese style of Watteau at the beginning of the XVIII century can only be due to the fact that he saw similar Chinese paintings somewhere, studied and borrowed them, most likely from various publications concerning China at that time, such as "Travels in China", "Illustrated China".

Figure 5, Watteau, a Chinese musician and a Chinese woman

Image source site: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7022102895466267150/

Being the first person in the history of European painting to create a new Chinoiserie style, there is still no historical information about how he joined this wave. Although Watteau was a proponent and practitioner of the new style in painting, his works were still at the research stage of representing China in a European manner, the elements of painting were tied to images and textual archetypes of China, which led to relatively rigid images in general. Despite this, Watteau's works occupy an important place from the point of view of studying the development of world culture, in which Western artists were influenced by Chinese art, and as a viable example of the influence that Chinese painting, in particular, had on European painting as a result of cultural exchange between East and West.

3. Sunset chinoiserie

In the XVII-XVIII centuries, after more than a century of chinoiserie, most Europeans perceived China as a country with huge wealth, exquisite crafts and a high level of civilizational development, which had to be accompanied by a well-regulated society. All these wonderful aspirations came together to make China a projection of the European utopian ideal.

The Europeans adapted chinoiserie to their practical needs, resulting in an exaggerated and distorted form of the European idea of Chinese style, different from the culture and art of the present ancient China. For example, when the East India Company imported a large number of artifacts from China, they customized them to meet certain customer requirements so that they would sell well in Europe, and as a result, a lot of export porcelain with figures on the background of Western landscapes and wallpaper with European-style motifs was produced in Guangdong Province, and these requirements were the truest expression European aesthetics.

The reason why Chinese style became so widespread and influential in Europe was not the result of China's initiative to export its culture to Europe, but rather the result of Europe's initiative to explore the outside world. In the process of discovering the world and conquering it, in the process of identifying and manifesting oneself through building an ideal image of the East, China has become an image of an alien, unexplored culture.

From the era of the great navigation, from the end of the XVIII to the beginning of the XIX century, Western countries were transformed by industrialization, and Europe rose rapidly in various fields, such as economics, military affairs, culture, science and art, becoming a capitalist industrial civilized society, as well as significantly surpassing most feudal countries.

With the colonial expansion of the West to the East, Europeans, having set foot on Chinese soil, found that the reality was not what they expected. The philosophical country of orderly rituals and civilized elegance turned into an eastern country of unruly, politically corrupt and tasteless people, which quickly destroyed the image of rich and glorious China and radically changed the idea of ancient China. This transformation is the story of both the rebirth of the European powers as they gradually entered the world stage, and the humiliation of the Chinese Empire as it moved from prosperity to decline. The illusion of the ideal country of the East, which initially enjoyed the great power and world influence of the ancient empire, was destroyed with the decline of the late Qing Dynasty. The popularity of China and the whole East, which covered the European continent, ended at the end of the XVIII century. 4. Conclusion

Although many supporters of the Chinoiserie style of painting were not actually in China and worked based on the imagination of popular Chinese materials of that time, and were far from the real traditional Chinese culture and art, it would be wrong to deny the scale of Chinese civilization and artistic achievements based on the fall of Chinoiserie. Chinoiserie, which preserved the illusion of the Oriental ideal in blue-and-white porcelain vases, wallpaper with flowers and birds, real lacquer furniture, Chinese tea rooms and Chinese gardens, entered the annals of the history of European art and still shines brightly. It was only in the XIX century that the artistic landscape of ancient China was truly discovered with the discovery and distribution on the European market of such valuable artifacts as Chinese bronze of the Shang and Zhou eras, brick art of Qin and Han, fresco art of Wei and Jin, porcelain and painting of the Tang and Song eras, but by this time on the European art scene the Japanese style came out, and the chinoiserie, which had existed for more than a hundred years, completely retreated.