Chinese Influences in Polish Art & Life

ogrod_chinski_en.jpg, default, The Chinese Garden in the Royal Łazienki Park in Warsaw, photo: Arkadiusz Ziółek/East News, Chinese Influences in Polish Art & Life

#photography & visual arts

From the time of Marco Polo’s expeditions until the Opium Wars nearly five hundred years later, China continually captured the imagination of Europeans. Often, however, the ‘Chinese studies’ in royal and noble palaces said more about their owners than about authentic Chinese culture.

European barbarians

Like Persia and Japan, China initially struck Europeans as a fairy-tale land. This isn’t surprising, as it was texts such as Marco Polo’s fantastical accounts written in the late 13th century that triggered Europeans’ interest in China. The Venetian traveller added a great deal of colour to his observations, claiming, for example, that in Sumatra there were… unicorns as large as elephants. More reliable information about Chinese culture, as well as material evidence of it, began to reach Europe in the 16th century, thanks to Dutch and Portuguese merchants.

However, while China appeared to the inhabitants of the Old World as an exotic, Arcadian land, Europe seemed to be a land of barbarians in the eyes of the Chinese. Although Chinese goods began to be purchased in large quantities in the 16th century, knowledge of them was minimal – practically everything that came aboard ships from any corner of East Asia was considered ‘Chinese’. In the decorative arts, colourful processions of exotic animals and Chinese, Japanese and Indian people appeared, and images with symbolic meaning such as dragons, phoenixes, umbrellas and pearls became pure ornamentation.

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Chinese Studies, Museum of King Jan III’s palace in Wilanów, photo: Museum of King Jan III’s palace in Wilanów

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Since Western merchants were interested in all things foreign, it wasn’t the most valuable works of art that began to be exported, but rather inferior objects that local customers wouldn’t be interested in buying. European tastes were initially shaped by the third-rate products of provincial craftsmen. At the same time, many imports were attributed a beneficial and sometimes almost magical significance – Jan Kazimierz drank tea from China to cure his headaches, and green Chinese porcelain was said to protect against poison.

Not only European tastes, but also the tools and techniques they used were considered barbaric. Although many modern scientific discoveries reached China from Europe – the Chinese, for example, were unaware that the Earth was round before they made contact with Europeans – the situation was very different when it came to artistic techniques. The development of porcelain-making techniques was a particular challenge in Europe. From the very first attempts until Johann Friedrich Böttger declared success in the Meissen alchemical laboratory as much time passed as between the invention of the steam engine and the moon landing.

The Chinese dreams of the ‘Lion of Lechistan’

A significant contribution to Europeans’ knowledge of China was made by the Polish Jesuit Michał Boym, who not only meticulously described the country’s natural environment, but was also the first to translate the writings of Confucius into Latin. Another passionate amateur sinologist was Adam Adamandy Kochański, a friend of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a mathematician, physicist, astronomer and philosopher who, at the request of King Jan III Sobieski, became Prince Jakub’s private tutor as well as the court chaplain, watchmaker and librarian.

Thumbnail — Beer mug with a lid, decorated with gold chinoiserie motifs. Craftsmanship by Martin Schnell (decoration), Meissen 1710-1715. Red stoneware, glazing, gilding, ‘Saxon lacquer’, 19.2 x 11.4 x 15.7 cm, photo: Museum of King Jan III’s palace in Wilanów

The king himself also shared these interests to a certain extent. It was for Sobieski that the first of a series of Chinese studies was created in the royal palace in Wilanów, which can be reconstructed today from inventories. Although a large number of objects described as ‘Chinese’ are listed there, most of the objects ‘painted with Chinese figures and dragons’ were probably European wares inspired by Asian decorative crafts – the fashion for these reached the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by a circuitous route, primarily through Paris. It is not without reason that the French terms chinoiserie and goût chinois, i.e. ‘Chinese taste’, were used to refer to the popularity of Chinese products and styles here. Queen Marysieńka always kept up to date with French fashions.

However, the objects in His Majesty the King’s Chinese Study also originated from other sources. An important stop on the routes taken by Asian motifs was the Near East – the workshops in many of the countries there eagerly copied Chinese designs, while in China during the Wanli era (1563–1620), objects were produced for the Middle Eastern market, giving them the forms of Persian vessels and decorating them with Arabic inscriptions. Thus, the king’s collection also included Turkish wares made in a Chinese style, brought back as spoils after the victory at Vienna.

King Sobieski’s interest in China was also – or perhaps above all – political in nature. The ruler was tempted by the idea of a strategic alliance with China in order to keep Russia under his thumb. The Kangxi Emperor, who had been watching the actions of the ‘Lion of Lechistan’ with curiosity since the victory at Vienna, was also beginning to be concerned about Russia’s eastward expansion. In the end, however, he contented himself with signing the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia in 1689, and thus visions of a powerful alliance remained in the realm of geopolitical fantasy.

Dragons in manor houses & churches

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Landscape scenes and a view of commercial factories in Guangzhou (Chinese wallpaper), Drawing Room in the White Pavilion, photo: Czesław Czapliński/Fotonova/East News

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A real boom for all things Chinese occurred in Europe after the diplomatic visits of Siamese envoys to the court of Louis XIV in the 1680s. In some countries, especially England, the fashion for collecting chinoiserie spread widely throughout society, but in Poland, following the French example, it remained a purely elite pastime indulged in by rulers and magnates. The most beloved possession of King Augustus II the Strong during the expansion of his residence in Wilanów was another Chinese study, this time decorated in a Dutch style under the direction of Johann Samuel Mock of Dresden. Faithful imitation and unrestrained fantasy went hand in hand here, and dragons, exotic birds and imitations of lacquerware objects were placed next to late Baroque stucco and polychromes.

A panneau made for the private study of Augustus II in imitation lacquer by Martin Schnell is one of the most successful in modern European art. Not only was Schnell’s technique refined, involving the use of lacquer coated with silver-plated flecks of copper and, after hardening, painted with successive layers of amber-based lacquer, but also the iconography, faithfully depicting the poses, gestures and clothing seen in authentic Chinese wares. Similar technical refinement characterises the imitation lacquer wares by Dominik Estreicher, who was active during the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski. Nevertheless, as late as the beginning of the 19th century, Stanisław Kostka Potocki was still declaring that 'even our best works of this kind […] are weak Chinese imitations'.

Chinese studies could also be found in the residences of almost every self-respecting nobleman, for example in the palaces of Hetman Stanisław Rzewuski, Jan Klemans Branicki, and even such diehard Sarmatians as Prince Karol Radziwiłł. The Radziwiłłs also owned faience factories and embroidery workshops that produced items decorated with chinoiserie patterns, although domestic production was rather negligible in comparison with imports from Western Europe. The earliest known Polish ceramics with chinoiserie decoration, simple plates with rather modest ornamentation, date from the 1720s, from workshops in Pomerania, where Dutchmen arrived at the port with original Chinese wares on their ships.

In the 18th century, chinoiserie-style decorations could even be found in churches. Chinese architectural details, as well as vestments and baldaquins embroidered with dragons and phoenixes, carried a specific propaganda-like significance – they emphasised a commitment to the mission of converting East Asia to Christianity.

'Nature liberated from artistry'

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Jan Bogumił Plersch, 'Landscape Scenes', Drawing Room in the White Pavilion, photo: © The Royal Łazienki Museum

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In the following decades of the 18th century, the character of Chinese motifs gradually changed. In the Classical era, chinoiserie appeared mainly as ornamental details, closer to English than to French models and alongside other exotic or ‘ancient’ motifs, forming, for example, Chinese-Pompeian studies. The focus, however, shifted from interiors to the outdoors, and the position of porcelain and lacquer on the list of the greatest achievements by Chinese civilization now became occupied by the art of garden design.

After the French Baroque gardens that had prevailed in the previous century, which were extremely spectacular but arranged in straight, precise lines like the gardens of Versailles in which every blade of grass had to bend to the will of the Sun King, gardens that were created in the ‘Anglo-Chinese’ style offered a breath of fresh air.

Text

Rivers shouldn’t have straight banks because then they would resemble canals, a lake should be irregular, forming islands and promontories, there should be obstacles to a stream to diversify its course, and a river should branch and merge to form islands and run through a variety of terrains.

Author

Wrote August Moszyński in his 'Treatise on English Gardening' published in 1774, dedicated to King Stanisław August Poniatowski.

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View of commercial factories in Guangzhou and panorama of the Pearl River (not preserved), photo: Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw

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Although Chinese gardens were planned with great precision, they lacked European baroque ostentation. Unpruned trees, unregulated riverbanks, winding paths and scattered pavilions in the gardens rarely satisfied Europeans. In practice, the garden landscape, intended to give a natural impression, was often smothered by a multitude of attractions, as in the case of Princess Izabela Lubomirska’s garden in Mokotów, dotted with artificial grottos and ruins, Zofia Wittowa Potocka’s 'Zofiówka' and Kazimierz Poniatowski’s residence in Solec, where Chinese pavilions were adjacent to Middle Eastern-style buildings and pseudo-rural thatched cottages.

The fashion for Chinese pavilions reached the Republic of Poland very early – already in the early 1730s, there was a Chinese pavilion designed by Johann Sigmund Deybel in the garden of the Białystok palace of Count Jan Klemens Branicki, a well-known collector of chinoiserie. A few years later, a fully fledged English-Chinese garden was created in Głogow Małopolski for Ursula Lubomirska, née Branicka. Szymon Bogumił Zug, who gained experience in Dresden and during his travels in Italy, specialized in building Chinese-style garden pavilions for noblemen. In Warsaw, he designed numerous Anglo-Chinese gardens, the first of which was in Solec, for Kazimierz Poniatowski, the king’s brother. A more typical example of the new fashion can be found in the gardens of the king himself in Łazienki Park, the arrangement of which was supervised by Johann Christian Kammsetzer, who worked for King Stanisław II August.

The new faces of orientalism

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Johann Christian Kammsetzer, design of a carousel in the Chinese style, ca. 1778, drawing from the print collection of the University Library in Warsaw

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In the early 19th century, the fashion for chinoiserie began to wane. As with all ‘oriental’ trends in European art, its development was directly related to political conditions. The flourishing of ‘Chinese taste’ was triggered by regular interaction with China. After Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign there was a fashion for culture from the banks of the Nile, after the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum there was another wave of popularity of Greek and Roman artifacts, and after the opening of Japan’s borders in 1854, there was a mania for japonisme.

In the Wilanów residence, yet another Chinese room was created at the beginning of the 19th century at the initiative of Count Stanisław Kostka Potocki – no longer in harmony with, but rather despite the prevailing trends. In Potocki’s case, the emphasis had already shifted from European chinoiserie to the collection of authentic Chinese wares. History, in a way, had come full circle, because just like the merchants from the Netherlands and Portugal a few centuries earlier, Potocki – led by an ethnographic passion – bought many ordinary objects of everyday use in addition to works of art, and in his collection valuable screens, porcelain and woodcuts can be seen next to pipes and straw hats.

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