Bibliographie
L’Art pour tous (1861). No. 16, 31 August 1861.
Badin Jules (1909). La Manufacture de tapisseries de Beauvais depuis ses origines jusqu’à nos jours. Paris, Société de propagation des livres d’art.
Bailey Gauvin Alexander (1999). Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Bernard Auguste (1867). Histoire de l’imprimerie royale du Louvre. Paris, Imprimerie impériale.
Bernard-Maître Henri, S.J. (1949). “Deux Chinois du xviiie siècle à l’école des Physiocrates Français.” Bulletin de l’Université l’Aurore: 151-197.
Bernard-Maître Henri, S.J. (1950). Les Tapisseries chinoises de Boucher au Palais Yuen-Min-Yuen de Pékin. Paris and Lille, Éditions Cathasia.
Bion Nicolas (1709). Traité de la construction et des principaux usages des instruments de mathématique… Paris, La Veuve de J. Boudot et al.
Breton de La Martinière Jean Baptiste Joseph (1811-1812). La Chine en miniature, ou Choix de costumes, arts et métiers de cet Empire. 6 vols. Paris, Nepveu.
Cordier Henri (1917). “Les Correspondants de Bertin.” T’oung Pao 18(4/5): part vii, Michel Benoist.
Dehergne Joseph, S. J. (1964). “Voyageurs chinois venus à Paris au temps de la marine à voiles et l’influence de la Chine sur la littérature française du xviiie siècle.” Monumenta Serica, 23: 372-397.
Dehergne Joseph (1965). “Les deux Chinois et Bertin: l’enquête industrielle de 1764 et les débuts de la collaboration technique franco-chinoise.” PhD diss., History, Paris, EPHE, VI sec.
Dehergne Joseph, S. J. (1973). Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800. Rome/Paris, Institutum Historicum/Letouzey & Ané.
Explication des peintures, sculptures, et autres ouvrages de Messieurs de l’Académie Royale… (1742). Paris, Jacques Colombat.
Félicité Indravati (2019). “Les présents diplomatiques entre Asie et Europe à l’époque moderne”. In the present volume, Des arts diplomatiques. Échanges de présents entre la Chine et l’Europe, xviie-xviiie siècles.
Hevia James L. (2003). English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China. Durham/London, Hong Kong, Duke University Press/Hong Kong University Press.
Hucker Charles O. (1985). A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press.
Kleutghen Kristina (2015). Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces. Seattle/London, University of Washington Press.
Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c. des Chinois: Par les missionnaires de Pekin (1776-1791). 15 vols. Paris, Nyon.
Monnet Nathalie (ed.) (2004). Chine. L’empire du trait. Calligraphies et dessins du ve au xixe siècle. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Rado Mei Mei (2017). “Qing Imperial Encounters with European Tapestries: The Tenture Chinoise and Beyond.” In Pascal-François Bertrand and Audrey N. Maupas (ed.), Arachné: un regard critique sur l’histoire de la tapisserie. Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Rado Mei Mei (2018). “The Empire’s New Cloth: Western Textiles and Imperial Identity at the Eighteenth-Century Qing Court.” PhD diss., New York, Bard Graduate Center.
Reed Marcia, and Paola Demattè (ed.) (2007). China on Paper: European and Chinese Works from the Late Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century. Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute.
Rinaldi Bianca Maria (2016). Ideas of Chinese Gardens: Western Accounts, 1300-1860. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rochebrune Marie-Laure (de) (2019). “Les porcelaines de Sèvres envoyées en guise de cadeaux diplomatiques à l’empereur de Chine par les souverains français dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle.” In the present volume, Des arts diplomatiques. Échanges de présents entre la Chine et l’Europe, xviie-xviiie siècles.
Roi Jacques, R.P. (1964) “Visite en 1764 de deux Chinois à la Manufacture royale de Sèvres.” Cahiers de la céramique, du verre et des arts du feu, 33: 29-42.
Silvestre de Sacy Jacques (1970). Henri Bertin dans le sillage de la Chine: 1720-1792. Paris, Éditions Cathasia/Les Belles Lettres.
Smentek Kristel (2016). “Chinoiseries for the Qing: A French Gift of Tapestries to the Qianlong Emperor.” Journal of Early Modern History, 20: 87-109.
Smentek Kristel (2017). “Tapestries for the Emperor: Taking the Tenture Chinoise to Beijing.” In Imagining Qianlong: Louis XV’s Chinese Emperor Tapestries and Battle Scene Prints at the Imperial Court in Beijing. Hong Kong, University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong: 27-39.
Thomas Greg M. (2008). “The Looting of Yuanming and the Translation of Chinese Art in Europe.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 7(2) (Autumn). On line [http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/autumn08/93-the-looting-of-yuanming-and-the-translation-of-chinese-art-in-europe], accessed on 23 February 2018.
Tythacott Louise (ed.) (2018). Collecting and Displaying China’s “Summer Palace” in the West: The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France. Abingdon/Oxford, Routledge.
Voyage et Séjour en France par Ordre du Roi de Deux Particuliers Chinois, les Sieurs Kô & Yang (1765). Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, MS 1520: fols. 50-55.
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Notes
Silvestre de Sacy 1970: 164-165.
There are a number of variants of the names Ko and Yang, and birthdates cited for the two men are also inconsistent. Ko is the equivalent of the pinyin Gao, and his Chinese name is given as Gao Ren (b. 1732) or Gao Leisi [Louis Gao]. Yang’s Chinese name is Yang Zhide (1733-98?) or Yang Dewang [Étienne Yang]. Dehergne 1973: nos. 425, 911.
The Compagnie des Indes was only briefly attached to Bertin’s ministry from 1763 to 1764, as cited by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF) [http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb124915923.public], accessed 28 October 2016. See Silvestre de Sacy 1970: 48-49; the author states that Bertin’s jurisdiction dated only to 1764. Ko and Yang had left Beijing in July 1751 but did not arrive in France until a year later, in July 1752, when they were taken by the Jesuits to the Collège Henri IV in La Flèche. See Silvestre de Sacy 1970: 159-160; the author based his research on Bernard-Maître 1949 as well as Dehergne 1965.
For the date of Ko and Yang’s request, see also Silvestre de Sacy 1970: 160. The incomplete, 12-page printer’s proof of the Voyage et Séjour is contained in a volume in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France (hereafter Bib. Inst.), MS 1520: f. 50-55; see p. 10 of the proof: “Au commencement de l’an passé 1764…” It also includes a hand-written note asking if the proof is acceptable, in which case the printer will produce 20 copies. La Chine en miniature, Breton de La Martinière 1811-1812: vol. I, Préface, xx-xxi and n. 1, notes that the French Revolution had cut off contact with the French Jesuit missionaries in Beijing and asserted that any broader circulation of the Voyage et Séjour than the 20 copies actually printed might have compromised Ko and Yang if the booklet had reached China. La Chine en miniature is based on previously unpublished papers from Bertin’s collections.
Transcriptions of French texts follow the spelling and punctuation of the original; all translations are my own. Voyage et Séjour en France, 10: “M[onseigneu]r Bertin, Minister and Secretary of State, disposed in our favour, wanted to make us useful to France and, at the same time, to China: consequently, we were committed to delaying our voyage by one year.” “Monseigneur” in this context is equivalent to the English honorific title “My Lord.”
This phase of Ko and Yang’s instruction is described in Bernard-Maître 1949: 151-197.
Mémoires 1776: vol. I, Préface, iii; much of the Preface is taken up with the story of Ko and Yang. See the discussion of the Mémoires concernant les Chinois below.
Mémoires 1776: vol. I, Préface, iii: “[…] the drawing of a machine, of a loom, of an instrument, or a plant would supplement what was missing in the most detailed descriptions, and indeed infinitely surpass them.”
The prints and drawings are bound into the beginning of Bib. Inst. MS 1520: f. 8-13.
The source for the Gengzhi tu images would be a late seventeenth–century edition of the album. See Monnet 2004: cat. 115, Yuzhi gengzhitu: 181-184. Bertin himself possessed two versions of the album, and both are inscribed with the same title: Culture et Récolte du Riz and Éducation des Vers à Soie; BnF, Département des Estampes et photographie Oe-89-4 and Rés Oe-90-Pet. fol. The first is a colored edition; the other black-and-white.
The text is found in Bib. Inst. MS 1520: f. 23-33; it is transcribed in Bernard-Maître 1949: 167-174. On many of the issues considered here, see also Smentek 2017. I would like to thank the author for generously sharing a draft of this essay.
Bernard-Maître 1949: 160. For the Imprimerie royale, which functioned from 1640 to 1797, see Bernard (1867).
The “Remarks on different manufactures” are found in Bib. Inst. MS 1520: f. 40-47; see Bernard-Maître 1949: 161-65, for a complete transcription of the manuscript. The descriptions of each of the manufactories is followed by comments entitled “Réflections.”
“Two or three tapestries from this country in the palace of the Emperor would perhaps give him more pleasure than all the magnificent thrones with which he decorates his court. He would be surprised by the brightness of the colors and the beauty of the design. Figures and flowers are preferable to all other subjects, but the figures must be decent, because the Chinese are very delicate on that subject.” Bernard-Maître 1949: 161; the author dates the document to 1764; the source is Bib. Inst. MS 1520: f. 40-47, as in the preceding note.
For Bertin’s complete “Instruction,” see Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 60-71; for the list, see f. 62, which notes the panes of glass, the tapestries, the porcelains, and the portable printing press. These and the additional items are cited in the Voyage et Séjour 1765: 11-12. Bernard-Maître 1949: 183-185, includes a list of most of the gifts, citing in n. 101 that it appears in the Department of Manuscripts of the BnF in the documents contained in the Fonds Bréquigny: vol. 1, f. 6-7. However, only a brief mention of the “présens [sic] précieux dont le Roi les avoit gratifiés”—not a complete list—is found on these pages. A document in Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118-119, contains a table in six columns entitled “Compte général des dépenses faites pour Mrs. Ko et Yang Chinois” (General accounting of the expenses for Messrs. Ko and Yang, the Chinese), giving the dates for various expenses incurred by Ko and Yang in 1764 and early 1765, including the gifts ordered by Bertin. Silvestre de Sacy 1970: 164, also provides the list of gifts, apparently citing Bernard-Maître 1949: 184. Other sources essentially confirm the list Bernard-Maître published. See additional notes below on sources for individual gifts.
Bernard-Maître 1949: 184, n. 103, cites Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118 verso, for the payment of 262 livres to the painter, who was surely Louis Vigée (1715-1767), the father of Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842).
The traditional French pouce measured approximately 2.7 cm; thus these large panes would have measured 81 x 64,8 cm or 31⅞ x 25½ in.
Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 11 verso-12 verso; see also the notes added in the margins of this document.
The list of Sèvres porcelains appears in Roi 1964: 29-43; see esp. 33 and n. 4, which cites the Archives de Sèvres, registre de livraison, Vy 4: f. 32v. My thanks to Kee Il Choi for bringing this article to my attention. See also Smentek 2017: 34-35.
On the Sèvres porcelains, see Rochebrune 2019.
Dehergne 1964: 372-397; see esp. 384, n. 46. Dehergne describes it as garnie de ses ustensiles et de 4 casiers de caractères françois, citing Bertin’s “Instruction” of 16 January 1765 for Ko and Yang, Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 60-71.
Bernard-Maître 1949: 184, n. 107, refers to the previous citation in his own article on 166, n. 52, in reference to Brisson’s letter to Bertin dated 7 September 1764, Bib. Inst. MS 1520: f. 17-18.
This type of microscope consisted of parts attached together by a screw mechanism, one of which held a lens. For an early eighteenth-century description, see Bion 1709: book III, chap. II, 111-114, and pl. 10, facing 114.
Bernard-Maître 1949: 183 and n. 100: “deux montres en or de chez Balthazar [à Paris] valant chacune 300 livres”; Bernard-Maître cites Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118. In the abbreviated list of the presents in Bib. Inst. MS 1521, Bertin’s “Instruction” of January 1765, f. 62rv, a note is added in the left margin: “à chacun une montre d’or de Balthazar horloger de Paris.”
Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118, notes a payment “à Saillant Libraire pour 23 Cahiers des arts.” For Saillant, see [http://data.bnf.fr/12335507/charles_saillant/], accessed 28 April 2017. These “Cahiers” are surely selections from the Descriptions des arts et métiers, faites ou approuvées par MM. de l’Académie royale des sciences, published by Saillant and, later, his nephew Jean-Luc III Nyon, between 1761 and 1789; see [http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb392175038], accessed 29 April 2017, and follow the link to “notices bibliographiques liées” for some 156 titles.
Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118; there is only a simple statement: “au S. Vallat libraire pour fourniture de livres.” See the basic information on Vallat on the BnF website [http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb123804194], accessed 29 April 2017.
Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 71 verso.
“The gifts that were made in France to Mr. Ko and to Mr. Yang are of a kind from which they would derive no personal use, as we had only intended that these gifts, appropriately and properly distributed with a particular knowledge of those persons, mandarins or nobles, to whom they would be given could secure for them esteem, support, and great advantages in their research…”
[Bertin’s note between the lines and in the margin:] “And as much as they can on those occasions and to those persons from whom we could hope that by doing this it would inspire a taste for the arts of France in China.” Bib. Inst. MS 1521: entry no. X, f. 69 verso-70 verso.
Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 62 verso.
Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 70 verso.
Ko and Yang expressed their gratitude to Bertin and the King of France in the Voyage et Séjour, but the text ends here in mid-sentence on 12: “[N]ous nous conformerons, pour ces présens [sic], aux Instructions que le Roi nous a données par son Ministre…”
For a detailed discussion of the second Tenture Chinoise along with Ko and Yang’s role in taking the tapestries to China, see Rado 2017: 119-135; see esp. 120-124. I am grateful to the author for providing me a draft of the essay. Boucher’s ten relevant paintings for the set are in the Musée des Beaux-arts et d’Archaéologie de Besançon. For their first exhibition, see Explication…, 1742: 8-9, no. 21. See also the catalogue information for Boucher’s ten designs in Besançon [http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/joconde/fr/pres.htm], accessed 18 April 2017, search term: “tenture chinoise.” (The two additional paintings appear to be incidental vertical compositions to fill spaces between larger designs.) There is an extensive literature on the tapestries, which were first produced under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755).
Bernard-Maître 1950: 5, “6 pièces des Chinois, livrées à M. Bertin pour envoyer en Chine”; see n. 17, citing Badin 1909: 84.
Badin 1909: 36; Badin refers to a “scholar” who has traced the history of Bertin’s set and their return to France—without citing any source.
For a recent discussion of the tapestries, which places them in international, inter-cultural, and diplomatic contexts, see Smentek 2016. See also Bernard-Maître 1950.
Rado 2017: 122; and see the listing with images for the designs on the website of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon.
The tapestry of “La Foire chinoise” is discussed again below.
A significant part of Bertin’s correspondence with the Jesuit missionaries is reprinted in eight selections published by Henri Cordier between 1913 and 1922, beginning with “Les Correspondants de Bertin, Secrétaire d’État au xviiie siècle,” in the journal T’oung Pao, Second Series, 14(2) (1913). Cordier identifies his source as the 12 volumes in the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, cited in the present paper as Bib. Inst. MSS 1515-1526.
Cordier 1917: 295-299. The tapestries are first discussed in this letter; the discussion continues in Benoist’s letter of 10 November 1767, Cordier 1917: 318-31; and ends with a brief reference in the letter of 25 November 1770, Cordier 1917: 332-340.
Cordier 1917: 303-304. For Zongdu, the Governor-General’s title, see Hucker 1985: no. 7158, tsung-tu.
Cordier 1917: 307. Such actions would also help preserve Ko and Yang’s anonymity and safety.
Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 10rv.
Benoist uses the word placet, a term for an official letter or legal document and the term used to refer to a Qing court memorial; Cordier 1917: 308-310.
Cordier 1917: 308-312, 316-318.
Cordier 1917: 318-331; the porcelains are briefly noted on 325.
Cordier 1917: 321-323.
For one concise summary of the European Palaces, see Rinaldi 2016: chap. 13, “Michel Benoist (1715-74)”; see esp. 135-136, n. 1, which includes a good list of sources.
The set of engravings, the “20 Views European Palaces,” is referred to by various titles (one common name is “Xiyanglou shuifatu”) and was completed in February 1787 under the supervision of the Manchu court official and artist Yilantai (act. ca. 1749-93). See Reed and Demattè 2007: Cat. 30. For a concise discussion of the 20 engravings and Yilantai’s role in their production, see Kleutghen 2015: chap. 5, “Staging Europe.”
Cordier 1917: 322.
For the details of the Qianlong Emperor’s reception of the missionaries’ gifts, see Cordier 1917: 323-325. On the question of diplomatic gifts as tribute, see Félicité 2019.
Benoist refers to the church as the “Église du Dieu du Ciel,” no doubt a reference to the Beitang, the French Jesuit Mission’s North Church, originally built in 1703 just to the west of the Zhongnan hai, inside the Xi’anmen gate of the Imperial City. For a brief summary of the Christian Churches in Beijing in the eighteenth century, see Bailey 1999: 109-111.
Cordier 1917: 325, “De tous les Tartares et les Chinois qui ont vu ces tapisseries et porcelaines, il n’en est aucun qui n’avoue que ces ouvrages sont inimitables en Chine.”
The best summary of the various tapestries ostensibly looted from the Yuanmingyuan appears in Rado 2017. For an introduction to the extensive research on the looting of the Yuanmingyuan, see Hevia 2003. See also Tythacott 2018, esp. the three essays in part I, “Overviews.” For an important article accessible online, see Thomas 2008.
L’Art pour tous 1861: no. 16, 63. On the “Foire chinoise” and it’s publication in L’Art pour tous, see Rado 2017: 10, nn. 50, 51. The reproduction in L’Art pour tous is also discussed in Smentek 2016: 88 and fig. E1.
The discussion of Chinese tapestries in European style is indebted to Rado 2017. For comprehensive research and analysis of the reception of European textiles in Qing China, see Rado 2018.
Rado 2017; see esp. the section entitled “The Whereabouts of the Tenture Chinoise and some other European tapestries in the Qing palaces”: 124-128.
These issues and related questions are discussed in detail in Smentek 2017.
A final volume based on Bertin’s collection was published in 1814; two additional volumes are described as “suppléments” to the Mémoires (1776-1791).
A number of the references here are cited in conjunction with the detailed list of the gifts above. For the books, see Bernard-Maître 1949: 183 and n. 98; for the publications from the Royal Academy of Sciences, see Bernard-Maître 1949: n. 99, citing Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118, dated 14 January [1765?]; for the maps, plans, and articles, see Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 71 verso; and note that this document contains the only reference to maps, plans, etc. For the articles, see Bib. Inst. MS 1526: f. 118, entry no. 22, “à Saillant Libraire pour 23 Cahiers des arts.”
See Bertin’s assertion of these goals in the text and his handwritten additions to Bib. Inst. MS 1521: f. 71 verso.
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