Chinoiserie

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Landscape with a mandarin tree (1757), fresco by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo , Villa Valmarana ai Nani Vicenza, Italy
William Chambers Pagoda (1762) in Kew Gardens

Chinoiserie (from French chinois = Chinese ) is the name for a direction in European art that was based on Chinese or other East Asian models and was particularly popular in the late 17th and 18th centuries . The enthusiasm for China was fed both from an interest in exoticism and from the idea of ​​a peaceful and cultured gigantic empire whose large population was literary and philosophical up to the simple classes .

Important elements of Chinese fashion were above all the centuries-old enthusiasm for Chinese porcelain and lacquer work , silk and paper wallpaper were also very much in fashion . All of these products became known primarily through the increased overseas trade in Europe.

definition

In the broadest sense, the term chinoiserie includes forms of design in art, handicrafts and architecture that are inspired by Chinese art , but also by other exotic countries such as Japan , India or America . In the 17th-18th In the 19th century, the term "Indian" for chinoiseries was sometimes used. On the one hand, real and very valuable objects from China or Japan - such as B. porcelain, lacquer or silk - used and combined with European arts. On the other hand, copies or objects or structures based on the originals in a broader sense were also created.

Basically, three periods can be distinguished, but they overlap. The first phase from around 1650/1670 to around 1730 is the copying or imitating chinoiserie . From around 1720 to 1760, i.e. in the late Baroque and Rococo epochs , the freely imaginative chinoiserie was created , which has little or nothing to do with Chinese reality, but is instead humorous, bizarre and subtly caricaturing (e.g. Meissen porcelain ). The third phase from around 1760 to around 1820 is known as romanticizing chinoiserie and roughly coincides with the epoch of classicism . At this time, the chinoiserie in porcelain went out of fashion. Landscapes became modern and Chinese gardens emerged; also has Chinese architecture imitated such. B. Pagodas and Pavilions .

China from a European perspective

Tile painting with a “Chinese” landscape, 63 × 92 cm, faience from Delft , approx. 1680–1700

For the people of Europe, China (and other countries in East Asia) have long been a distant, almost inaccessible place that very few have ever seen. This and the exquisite, sometimes fragile beauty and enormous quality of the highly refined luxury items known in Europe such as silk, porcelain or lacquer, the manufacture of which was still a mystery for a long time, nourished the idea of ​​a fairytale- like exotic kingdom.

Marco Polo's travel reports conveyed the first, more specific knowledge about China, some of which were also tinged like a fairy tale or, from the Europeans' point of view, looked like that. After the discovery of the sea ​​route to India by the Portuguese in the 15th century, further knowledge about China, India and Japan came through merchants and ambassadors to Europe, from the middle of the 17th century mainly through Jesuit missionaries . They concretized the image of China and presented the Chinese empire in an ideal form, as highly cultivated and highly civilized. China was influenced by this. For example, for Leibniz an empire "that adorns the opposite end of the earth like a Europe of the East" ("Novissima Sinica").

In 1735, Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde published the four-volume China encyclopedia Déscription de la Chine , in which du Halde describes a flourishing empire whose internal trade is more developed than that within Europe. For a century, the book was required reading for every conversation about China and also animated Voltaire to enthusiastic comments. He wrote about China in 1756 as a utopia ruled by enlightened scholar officials .
In 1767 the French physiocrat François Quesnay was so impressed by the (alleged) harmony between agricultural production and state rule in China that he wanted the Despotisme de la Chine as a model of society for Europe as well. The fact that public offices were awarded in China according to an examination system also exerted a great fascination on the educated bourgeoisie in Europe, which wanted to assert itself against feudal hereditary structures.

It was not until the second half of the 18th century that a counter-movement set in, which cast doubt on, and even mocked, unconditional China fashion and worship. But the Confucian state was still considered exemplary until well into the 19th century .

Porcelain and faience

Asian porcelain elephants, which have been converted into a clock and chandeliers with the help of gilded fittings, mirror cabinet of the Munich Residence

Besides and beyond concrete knowledge of China, especially Chinese porcelain and faience have been a great fascination for the cultivated world of Europe since the 16th century . It was valued for its beauty and as a precious and exotic rarity and by wealthy people who afford it could, collected, and graced the castles, palaces and villas of the aristocracy across Europe. Small statuettes or vases and plates were sometimes decorated with gilded fittings in the European style to make them even more precious; In this way, figures were occasionally converted, and an original Chinese porcelain elephant was then turned into a B. a candlestick or a clock (see picture).

However, the original products were so expensive and the demand was so great that attempts were made to imitate the blue and white porcelain in Europe, which the Dutch first succeeded in doing in the Delft faience factory around the middle of the 17th century with artistically convincing solutions. Not only were blue and white China porcelain imitated, but Japanese Imari porcelain as well . Entire tile pictures in the chinoise style were also produced, not only in blue and white, but also in multiple colors (blue, green, red, yellow and black on a white background), and Chinese or East Asian figures could be mixed with black and African figures.

As a result, numerous faience factories emerged in Germany, which were also based on Chinese models in terms of shape and decor, the most important of which were those in Hanau (founded in 1661) and in Frankfurt am Main (founded in 1666). The manufactory in Ansbach , founded in 1709, also tried to imitate dishes from the so-called Famille verte and Japanese Imari porcelain. In Bayreuth , too, attempts were made to imitate Meissen porcelain with chinoiserie from 1719.

The Trianon de Porcelaine in the Park of Versailles, 1670–1687

The fashion of Chinese faience and Delft tiles reached a high point when, from 1670 , Louis XIV of France had a small summer palace built for his maitresse Madame de Montespan in the park of Versailles , which was completely clad and equipped with "porcelain" - the so-called Trianon de porcelaine . The wall decorations were designed entirely according to "Turkish and Chinese motifs" and were made in a faience factory in Saint-Cloud . The porcelain trianon was torn down in 1687 for various reasons (the king no longer wanted to have anything to do with the Montespan) and replaced by the “marble trianon”, but it nonetheless became a great model for similar castles and room creations throughout France and Europe . The Mercure gallant wrote as early as 1673: “The Trianon near Versailles awakened the desire in all private individuals to have something like that too. Almost all of the great gentlemen who own country estates have had something similar built in their parks… ”.

Another step was the successful attempt at porcelain production in the 18th century by Joh.Fr. Böttger in Meißen , where numerous creations of services or ornamental figures were invented, which were no longer direct imitations of East Asian models, but their own inventions, often with humorous ones Undertone (which, however, basically applies to rococo small art). The same applies to the products of other manufacturers in Europe, such as B. in Nymphenburg or Sèvres .

  • Faience and porcelain, copying or imitating chinoiserie (1st period)

  • Plate with chinoisem decor made of Delft faience , Adriaen Kocks (attributed), 1686–1701 (from the manufactory grieksche A )

  • Delft faience vase in Imari style , called: Delft doré , 1700–1720 (from the manufacture Griekse A), Museum Geelvinck-Hinlopen Huis

  • Faience plate with Kakiemon decor , Delft, approx. 1722–1750

  • Kakiemon-style vase with a gilded Rococo base, Meissen, c. 1730, Gardiner Museum, Toronto

  • Leaf-shaped plate, Meissen, around 1735 (Johann David Kretschmar?), Cleveland Museum of Art

Chinoise lacquer furniture

Rococo Secretaire , Bernard II van Risamburgh, ca.1737, Munich residence

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, furniture made with silk or lacquer imported from China and Japan was very fashionable. Often original objects from Asia were added by European artists and craftsmen, and later also their own furnishings and interiors were created. Occasionally, furniture was also made to order for European customers in China. In the simplest case you made z. B. for an original Asian lacquer chest or a cupboard a suitable frame in the current European style, that is in the forms of baroque , rococo or classicism . Lacquer furniture in the Rococo style (approx. 1720–1765) was much more complicated, as the original lacquer inlays had to be bent to a certain extent due to the curved surfaces, which required a great deal of skill and great craftsmanship. Such furniture also received sophisticated frames with richly ornamented gilded bronze fittings.

As with porcelain, attempts were also made to copy Asian lacquer, which encountered particular difficulties, among other things. a. because the East Asian lacquer tree ( Rhus vernicifera ) does not thrive in Europe . This led to the adoption of Persian techniques and to the invention of our own recipes based on alcohol and turpentine- soluble resins such as sandarak , shellac and turpentine , which, however, also required other techniques for further processing. In the first period from approx. 1670 to 1730, furniture was mainly manufactured, the design of which was strongly based on the East Asian models. Initially, the Dagly family from Spa (Belgium) were in the lead, some of whom came far: Gérard Dagly (1660 to approx. 1715) worked for Frederick I of Prussia and Jacques Dagly (1665–1729) for Louis XIV in France. In the 18th century, the Martin brothers succeeded in developing the so-called Vernis Martin (= Martin lacquer), which is mostly green or red, but was not necessarily used for chinoiserie.

The so-called white harpsichord by Michael Mietke with Chinoiserie lacquer decor by Gérard Dagly , 1702-04, Charlottenburg Palace , Berlin

In France and Germany, not only furniture was decorated with lacquer, but also harpsichords : the most famous are instruments by Vaudry (1681, black and red lacquer with gold, Victoria and Albert Museum, London), J. Chr. Fleischer (1710, Museum of Musical Instruments , Berlin), Christian Zell (1728, chinoiserie on a green background, Museum for Arts & Crafts , Hamburg) and Pascal Taskin (1787, black and gold lacquer, Museum for Arts & Crafts , Hamburg). The most famous harpsichords with Chinoiserie lacquer decor also include two instruments by Michael Mietke with lacquer decorations by Gérard Dagly, which were created for the Berlin court and are still in Charlottenburg Palace today, one entirely in white (i.e. actually in imitation of Chinese porcelain (!) , 1702–04), the other in black (like black and gold lacquer, 1703–1713).

  • Chinoise lacquer furniture

  • Chinese coromandel lacquer chest on European baroque frame with ceramic, Chatsworth House , Derbyshire, England

  • Japanese black and gold lacquer cabinet (ca.1690 ) on a gilded Chippendale frame (1720s), Shugborough Hall , Staffordshire , England

  • Lacquer chair from Warwick Castle, made in China for the English market, ca.1725, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco , California

  • Saxon cabinet made of red lacquer in the style of Gérard Daglys, chinoise vases and wallpaper. Wilanów Palace Museum , Warsaw

  • Rococo chest of drawers with inlays made of Japanese black and gold lacquer (curved) in an oak frame , gilded bronze, marble, Bernard II Vanrisamburgh , Paris approx. 1750–1760, Victoria and Albert Museum , London

  • Rococo dresser from Strawberry Hill House, Pierre Langlois, London, 1763, Chinese lacquer, gilded bronze , marble , California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco , California

Interior decoration

Mirror or porcelain cabinet (1705–1708) in Charlottenburg Palace , Berlin

Porcelain, faience and lacquer furniture could basically be placed in any room in a castle, often in combination, i.e. H. Porcelain objects were often presented on a lacquer chest of drawers.

In addition, however, entire room creations were created in which chinoiseries were used. It was not uncommon for consoles on which Chinese porcelain (or imitations) were placed in the carved ornaments of cabinets or salons, as in the mirror cabinets of Pommersfelden Castle (approx. 1715-1720), in the Munich Residence or in Charlottenburg Castle (1705 –1708) (see illustration).

A completely different effect was obtained when black and gold lacquer panels, which were often cut from parts of Asian wall screens, were incorporated into the paneling of cabinets or salons and framed with gilded carvings. A very famous example of this is the Vieux-Laque room in Schönbrunn Palace (1767–1770), where the original black and gold lacquer panels from China had to be supplemented with products from a Viennese manufacturer. Other examples are the Chinese Room in Hetzendorf Palace (Vienna), the Gabinetto cinese in the Palazzo Reale in Turin, and the Chinese Cabinet in Nymphenburg Palace (see images below).

Chinese wallpaper in the Gabinetto cinese of the Palazzina Stupinigi , Turin

Chinese paper or silk wallpapers were also popular . In the most exuberant case, the paper wallpapers showed entire landscapes, mostly populated with numerous Chinese figures. Well-known examples can be found in several rooms of the Palazzina Stupinigi near Turin and at Huis ten Bosch Castle near The Hague . Sometimes only smaller original Chinese paintings were embedded in the paneling, such as B. in the Chinese room of Lichtenwalde Castle . In Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna there is a very special space creation: the so-called Million Room was originally 1752-1757 for the Belvedere created and used in reality little Indo-Persian miniatures in rocaille frames in an Asian Rosewood embedded -Vertäfelung.

Chinese wallpaper, Hellbrunn Palace , Salzburg

Silk wallpapers could also be painted with scenes, but more often it was a decoration with plants, flowers and birds, as in Hellbrunn Palace near Salzburg or in the Chinese salon of Tsar Alexander I in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo (Fig. Below).

Sometimes original Chinese motifs were simply copied or imitated. For example, Christian Wehrlin painted the paneling in the playroom of the Palazzina Stupinigi with Asian motifs of flowering trees, herons, ducks, other birds and monkeys ( singerie ). In Pillnitz Castle , the walls were painted with Chinese figures (Fig. Below).

Sometimes lacquer and Chinese wallpaper were combined with each other (e.g. in Nymphenburg and Huis ten Bosch).

There were also pure fantasy decorations that were only very free from Chinese or Asian motifs (and less expensive). This already includes some decoration designs by Jean Bérain the Elder. Ä. , the z. B. in the grotesque framing of some tapestries with motifs from Roman mythology also Chinese figures, preferably with a parasol . Herons , birds and dragons , cherry blossom branches and chrysanthemums, as well as adventurous landscapes with high mountains, water, houses and people in the Asian style are also among the most popular motifs of the chinoiserie . Since most Europeans had of course never seen a real Chinese or other people from East Asia, these motifs were mostly taken from the imported goods, sometimes (especially from around 1720) but also implemented by the designers according to their own ideas.
The decoration designs by Bérain were very influential and inspired u. a. also Meissen porcelain figures and some paintings in the Pagodenburg of Nymphenburg which imitate blue and white porcelain painting; Otherwise, this little castle, based on the model of the Trianon de porcelaine, is equipped with non-Chinese, but almost inevitable blue-and-white tiles from Delft and Chinese wallpaper.
There were no limits to the imagination: the walls of a cabinet in Favorite Palace near Rastatt are adorned with Asian figures made of paper mache , and some rooms in Sanssouci were also decorated with imaginative chinoiserie décor for Frederick the Great . a. with carved tendrils and animals in the so-called Voltaire room . In the frescoes of the Sala terrena of Altenburg Abbey , bizarrely fantastic Chinese fly through the air with herons (Fig. Below), and in 1757 Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo painted frescoes in the Villa Valmarana ai Nani (Vicenza), which are particularly interesting because they are a Draw a less sweet picture than normal: next to the inevitable Chinese with umbrella (freely adapted from Bérain) you can see cunning Chinese traders and superstitious Chinese with fortune tellers or in front of the sacrificial altar of a goddess with huge ears (Fig. below).

In Great Britain, chinoiserie is most common in bedrooms and dressing rooms. A spectacular example from the late period is the so-called "Badminton Bed" by William and John Linnell (today: Victoria and Albert Museum , London), which has a pagoda-like canopy with dragons.
The Chinese room at Weesenstein Castle belongs to the romanticizing third period , with wall paintings that combine a Chinese landscape with European characters of the time.

  • Chinoiserie interiors with lacquer

  • Chinese Room , Hetzendorf Castle , Vienna. Original black and gold lacquer, fans and figurines in a precious and very imaginative baroque boiseried decor

  • Gabinetto cinese with panels made of real Asian black and gold lacquer in red and gold (European) lacquer paneling, Palazzo reale , Turin

architecture

→ See also: Gallery of Chinese Pavilions in Germany

Pillnitz Castle in the "Chinese" style

Smaller park palaces and pavilions were often designed in a “Chinese” manner: Joseph Effner , for example, created the Pagodenburg in the Nymphenburg Palace Park in 1716–1719 . From 1720, August the Strong had Pillnitz Castle near Dresden built entirely in the style of chinoiserie , which was later expanded and expanded. A late example from the Rococo period and in the free fantasizing style (the 2nd period) is the famous Chinese tea house (1755–1764) in Sanssouci Park .

The classical phase (3rd period) was initiated in 1762 with the construction of William Chambers' Chinese pagoda in Kew Gardens , which became the model for various similar structures, including the dragon house in Sanssouci Park from 1770–1772 and the Chinese tower in English Garden in Munich . The pagoda and tea house in the Chinese garden of Oranienbaum near Dessau were also built during the classicist chinoiserie phase .

In 1781 the "Chinese village" Mou-lang was built in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel. Even Chinese gardens were imitated in many cases.

Important figures in the Chinoiserie

Jean-Baptiste Pillement , who was born in France and moved to London in 1750, was one of the most influential designers of chinoiserie in Britain and the models from his book A New Book of Chinese Ornaments (1755) found their way into countless porcelain figurines, pavilions and fabrics.

William Chambers - who spent a long time as a merchant in China - wrote a book on East Asian architecture ( Designs of Chinese buildings ) on his return to England in 1757 ; In 1763 a work about the park he created in Kew with copper engravings of the oriental buildings there: pagoda, mosque, Alhambra and in 1772 a book about Chinese gardens in which he suggested the construction of Chinese parks. As a result, Chambers triggered a new "chinoiserie" fashion across Europe. His work was also used in the design of the Chinese pavilion in the Pillnitz Palace Park near Dresden. The pictures of his book adorn the interior of this pavilion.

See also

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • James Bartos: China, Chinoiserie and the English Landscape Garden Revisited . In: Die Gartenkunst , 28 (2/2016), pp. 244–257.
  • Alain Gruber et al. a .: Chinoiserie: the influence of China on European art, 17th-19th centuries: Riggisberg exhibition, May 6th - October 28th, 1984 . Abegg Foundation, Bern 1984.
  • Zhengxiang Gu: On the image of China in Zedler's Lexicon: Bibliography of the works discussed in his China articles or cited as sources . In: Stuttgart works on German studies , 423. Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, Akademischer Verlag, Stuttgart 2004 [2005], pp. 477–506. ISBN 3-88099-428-5 .
  • Johannes Franz Hallinger: The end of the chinoiserie: the dissolution of a phenomenon of art in the time of the Enlightenment = contributions to art history 66. Scaneg, Munich cop. 1996.
  • Bianca Maria Rinaldi: The 'Chinese Garden in Good Taste'. Jesuits and Europe's Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in the 17th and 18th Centuries . Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-89975-041-6 .
  • Gerd-Helge Vogel: Confucianism and Chinoise Architectures in the Age of Enlightenment . In: Die Gartenkunst , 8 (2/1996), pp. 175–187.
  • Gerd-Helge Vogel: Wonderland Cathay. Chinoise architectures in Europe .
    • Part 1 in Die Gartenkunst  16 (1/2004), pp. 125–172.
    • Part 2 in Die Gartenkunst  16 (2/2004), pp. 339–382.
    • Part 3 in Die Gartenkunst  17 (1/2005), pp. 168–216.
    • Part 4 in Die Gartenkunst  17 (2/2005), pp. 387-430.
  • Bianca Maria Rinaldi: Borrowing from China. The Society of Jesus and the ideal of naturalness in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European Gardens . In: Die Gartenkunst , 17 (2/2005), pp. 319–337.
  • Martin Woesler: Between exoticism, sinocentrism and chinoiserie, Européerie . 3rd edition, revised. and exp. New edition European University Publishing House, Bochum 2006, ISBN 3-89966-107-9 (Scripta Sinica, Volume 6).

Web links

Commons : Chinoiserie  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Chinoiserie . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 3. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 199-200, here: p. 199
  2. ↑ a b Chinoiserie . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 3. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 199-200
  3. ↑ a b Faience . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 4. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 233-237, here: p. 236
  4. ↑ Tile painting . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 4. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, p. 281 (illustration with tile picture from Delft, around 1700, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
  5. ↑ a b Faience . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 4. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 233-237, here: p. 237
  6. ↑ a b Palaces, castles, residences . Georg Westermann Verlag, 1971, pp. 107-109
  7. ↑ Palaces, castles, residences . Georg Westermann Verlag, 1971, p. 109
  8. ↑ a b lacquer art . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 7. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, p. 169
  9. ↑ Lacquer art . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 7. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 169-170
  10. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord . Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1994, pp. 168–170 (Vaudry, fig. Between pp. 206 and 207), p. 306 (Fleischer), pp. 316–318 (Zell)
  11. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord . Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1994, p. 324 f., Fig. Between p. 206 and 207
  12. ↑ Chinoiserie . In: Lexicon of Art . Volume 3. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, pp. 199-200, here: p. 200
  13. ↑ Elfriede Iby, Alexander Koller: Schönbrunn . Brandstätter, Vienna 2007, pp. 133-138
  14. ↑ Here: Chinese Cabinet and Salon. Andreina Griseri: The Stupinigi Hunting Lodge near Turin , Atlantis / Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching, 1989, p. 13, p. 33-37
  15. ↑ Huis ten Bosch has both a Chinese and a Japanese room. Palaces, castles, residences . Georg Westermann Verlag, 1971, p. 150 f., 158
  16. ↑ Elfriede Iby, Alexander Koller: Schönbrunn . Brandstätter, Vienna 2007, p. 139
  17. ↑ Andreina Griseri: The Stupinigi Hunting Lodge near Turin . Atlantis / Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching, 1989, pp. 28-29
  18. ↑ Palaces, castles, residences . Georg Westermann Verlag, 1971, pp. 195–198