Provenance
A globetrotting screen
Made in Japan, bought in China, altered in Europe – the biography of a well-travelled dividing screen, a ‘paravent’, can tell us much about Switzerland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This panel from the 18th and 19th centuries was restored by the Musée Historique de Lausanne for the exhibition ‘Exotic?’ under the direction of the conservator Claude-Alain Künzi. | Photo: Musée historique de Lausanne
Prosperous merchants at leisure, reading, and noble courtesans penning a poem: the Japanese scene on the blue-and-gold upper portion of this panel awakens notions of a culture both intensely sensual and intellectual, sublime and delicate. The European bourgeoisie of the 18th and 19th centuries was especially enthusiastic about Japan and China, because large parts of these exotic countries had not merely managed to evade the imperial ambitions of the great powers of Europe, but were also largely closed to visitors from the West. The handicrafts of the Far East were also of financial interest: merchants sensed an opportunity for doing big business with the techniques, styles and motifs of these unknown artists. Imitations were avidly made, though they mostly fell flat when in direct competition with the original artworks from South-East Asia. One example of such an imitation is the lower, black section of this panel.
Imitation as dialogue
Black and shiny: the lower section of the paravent was only added in the 19th century, in Europe, by artists who endeavoured to imitate materials and motifs from China in a style that was called ‘chinoiserie’. “They here tried to create an optical imitation of lacquer”, explains Noémie Étienne, a professor of art history at the University of Bern. “Lacquer comes from the Asian lacquer tree and does not grow here in Europe”. But this imitation makes the paravent especially interesting to researchers: “It proves that an object can pass through many hands, and bears their traces within it. Craftsmen from Europe have here entered into a dialogue with Japanese artists”. By contrast, the African style was never imitated in Europe for the European market, only for the African market. As Chonja Lee explains: “Europeans didn’t want any African goods”. This in itself is a sign of how Europeans looked down on their African colonies, but had a more romanticised view of distant Asia.
Delicate textiles on thick paper
The men and women depicted at leisure here were made using the so-called oshi-e (padded collage) technique. This was an old Japanese tradition for making textile pictures. Patterns for people, animals, flowers and landscapes were cut out of thick pieces of paper that were then covered with delicate textiles. Details such as faces were then drawn using paintbrush and ink. The kimonos and hairstyles of the figures here were typical of the Japanese style of the early 18th century, says Thomsen – which is a clear indication of the time when the paravent was made.
Too precious for Europe
Already back in the 18th century, craftsmen in Japan were busy making objects specifically for the Western market. The merchants reading and the courtesans writing seem at first glance to be typical of such a work, because literary pleasures were regarded as an essential element of Japanese culture, even if Westerners could not understand their script. All the same, despite its stereotypical motifs, this paravent was not originally intended for export, as Hans Bjarne Thomsen explains. For one thing, to depict people reading and writing was an old Japanese tradition; and for another, items for export were usually made more cheaply. The blue material here is silk, and it has many patterns worked into it in gold. So these were precious materials. “This paravent brings together an exceptional number of textiles that were rare at the time”.
Hidden in the entertainment district
There is also a paravent on the paravent here. The art historian Hans Bjarne Thomsen of the University of Zurich is an expert in things Japanese, and was engaged as a consultant by the curators of the Lausanne exhibition. He explains the background to this doubling: “Screens were traditionally employed as room dividers in Japanese architecture, because there were only very few other pieces of furniture”. They were especially popular in the entertainment districts of towns. “The single-panel screen in the top left serves to cordon off the interior of these pleasure quarters”, says Thomsen. The screen within the screen is decorated with a pair of phoenixes and a foxglove tree, while the chrysanthemums in the vase to the right of it signify the autumn. Flowers in Japanese pictures designated the season back then, just as they also do today.
A globalised world of the 18th century
Charles Constant de Rebecque from Lausanne became acquainted with the value of Asian objects when he worked as an import merchant for a trading company based in Holland and France. He soon decided to set up his own business, so he travelled to the Portuguese settlement of Macau on the coast of China, and from there sent various objects to his sister back in Switzerland. These included the upper section of this paravent, which was later found among his belongings when he died. De Rebecque returned home in 1793. Although his business did not flourish as he had hoped, he nevertheless offers an example of “the global dimensions of the Swiss business world of the 18th century”, according to the Bernese art historian and exhibition designer Chonja Lee.
This panel is part of what presumably was originally a six-part, foldable Asian paravent or screen, which was intended as a decorative element of interior design. It has now been restored for the exhibition “Exotic? Switzerland Looking Outward in the Age of Enlightenment” currently being shown at the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne. The upper, blue-and-gold section is from the 18th century, the lower, black section from the 19th century.
Illustration: Bodara | Photo: Musée historique de Lausanne
This hybrid paravent demonstrates the intercontinental network that already existed in Europe at the time of the Enlightenment. But the state of this screen reflects how it has suffered over the centuries. The researchers hope that its other panels might be restored after the exhibition in Lausanne, which lasts until late February 2021. Besides its artful scenes from Japan and Europe, this well-travelled object also bears within it many a hidden story from the 18th and 19th centuries: the padding material inside the panels comprises written documents and letters. “Paper was valuable back then”, explains Lee, “so it wasn’t just thrown away”.
The exhibition ‘Exotic?’ only shows foreign objects that were already in Switzerland before the Congress of Vienna of 1815. In order to track down these objects, the researchers Étienne, Lee and Claire Brizon – all of them from the University of Bern – trawled through museum depots throughout Switzerland. Constant De Rebecque returned from China in 1793, and we know that no one else from his family went there; what’s more, he mentions this paravent in a letter to his sister. So it fulfils the criteria for the exhibition. “Examples such as this show how objects too can have a biography: they travel, are changed, and in the process alter the material culture of Switzerland”, says Brizon.
