Research Catalog

Title

Collecting and displaying China's "Summer Palace" in the West : the Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France / edited by Louise Tythacott.

Publication

• New York ; London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Tythacott, Louise
• University of Manchester.
• Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France: Representations of the "Summer Palace" in the West (Conference) (2013 : University of Manchester)

Description

xiii, 172 pages : illustrations, map; 25 cm.

Summary

In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted and destroyed one of the most important palace complexes in imperial China-the Yuanmingyuan. Known in the West as the "Summer Palace", this site consisted of thousands of buildings housing a vast art collection. It is estimated that over a million objects may have been taken from the palaces in the Yuanmingyuan-and many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums. With contributions from leading specialists, this is the first book to focus on the collecting and display of "Summer Palace" material over the past 150 years in museums in Britain and France. It examines the way museums placed their own cultural, political and aesthetic concerns upon Yuanmingyuan material, and how displays-especially those at the Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, the National Museum of Scotland and the Musée Chinois at the Chateau of Fontainebleau-tell us more about European representations and images of China, than they do about the Yuanmingyuan itself. Book jacket.

Series Statement

Histories of material culture and collecting, 1700-1950

Uniform Title

Histories of material culture and collecting, 1700-1950.

Subject

• Art objects, Chinese > Collectors and collecting > Great Britain
• Art objects, Chinese > Collectors and collecting > France
• Antiquities > Collectors and collecting
• Art objects, Chinese > Collectors and collecting
• Yuan Ming Yuan (Beijing, China) > Antiquities > Collectors and collecting > Great Britain
• Yuan Ming Yuan (Beijing, China) > Antiquities > Collectors and collecting > France
• China > Beijing > Yuan Ming Yuan
• France
• Great Britain

Genre/Form

• Congress
• Conference papers and proceedings.
• Actes de congrès.

Note

• "This volume emerged from papers presented at a conference at the University of Manchester in July 2013 - The Yuanmingyuan in Britain and France : Representations of the 'Summer Palace' in the West,"--Page xiv.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Overviews -- The Yuanmingyuan and its Objects / Louise Tythacott -- The Afterlives of a Ruin: The Yuanmingyuan in China and the West / James L. Hevia -- From the Summer Palace 1860: Provenance and Politics / Nick Pearce -- The Yuanmingyuan in Britain -- The Yuanmingyuan and Design Reform in Britain / Kate Hill -- "True Beauty of Form and Chaste Embellishment": Summer Palace Loot and Chinese Porcelain Collecting in Nineteenth-century Britain / Stacey Pierson -- "Chinese Gordon" and the Royal Engineers Museum / James Scott -- "Rose-water Upon His Delicate Hands": Imperial and Imperialist Readings of the Hope Grant Ewer / Kevin Mclougiilin -- The Yuanmingyuan in France -- Henri Bertin (1720-1792) and Images of the Yuanmingyuan in Eighteenth-century France / John Finlay -- Empress Eugénie's Chinese Museum at the Chateau of Fontainebleau: An Unusual Décor in the "House of the Ages" / Vincent Droguet -- Yuanmingyuan on Display: Ornamental Aesthetics at the Musée Chinois / Greg M. Thomas.

ISBN

• 9781138080553
• 1138080551

OCLC

• ocn975370560
• 975370560
• SCSB-8914955

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library