The Chinese Style in Europe

"Chinoiserie" is usually taken to mean the Chinese influence that affected European art and decoration, especially during the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet scholars and critics take different views on just how much chinoiserie really came from China.

According to the encyclopedia definition, "the arts of China were the chief source of inspiration for chinoiserie." Yet to call chinoiserie a "Chinese" style is not really complete.

Professor Leonard Blusse of Leiden University's History Department thinks that the critic Hugh Honour has arrived at the best conclusion concerning the nature of chinoiserie. Honour says that actually chinoiserie is a kind of European art style rather than an artistic attempt to emulate Chinese models as some sinologists assume. Just as 19th century Gothic and neo-Classical styles are both the products of imagining a world distant in time, so chinoiserie is produced by the imagination of a world remote in space.

Apart from practical items of porcelain, textiles, and in gardens, the so-called "Chinese" style also influenced politics, history, theology and philosophy. At that time there were many wars in a chaotic Europe, but a remote and unchanging China was seen by travellers and great writers as governed by philosophers in a state of serene and eternal stability.

The best way to understand chinoiserie is to go and see some. This is not hard because items are not confined to museums but still exist in the daily life of Europeans. Although for the Chinese these objects and ideas sometimes look strange and mistaken, they can still remind us to examine our own lives in which there is probably some similar form without much substance.

In this issue we introduce the Royal Pavilion, established by Prince George, later to be King George IV, in the coastal town of Brighton in the South of England. It is a late example of chinoiserie and not an example of its highest point, but it is on a huge scale and contains a wide variety of interesting objects. There is probably no better example in Europe.

[Picture Caption]

Hindustan-Gothic? George sought to escape convention. (photo courtesy of Royal Pavilion)