22nd. edition, 1995-/96

The complex interweaving of different Western visions of China had a profound impact on artistic exchange between China and the West during the nineteenth century. Beyond Chinoiserie addresses the complexity of this exchange. While the playful Western “vision of Cathay” formed in the previous century continued to thrive, a more realistic vision of China was increasingly formed through travel accounts, paintings, watercolors, prints, book illustrations, and photographs. Simultaneously, the new discipline of sinology led to a deepening of the understanding of Chinese cultural history. Leading and emerging scholars in the fields of art history, literary studies and material culture, have authored the ten essays in this book, which deal with artistic relations between China and the West at a time when Western powers’ attempts to extend a sphere of influence in China led to increasingly hostile political interactions.

THE FAIR IMPERIA THE VENIAL SIN THE KING'S SWEETHEART THE DEVIL'S HEIR THE MERRIE JESTS OF KING LOUIS THE ELEVENTH THE HIGH CONSTABLE'S WIFE THE MAID OF THILOUSE THE BROTHERS-IN-ARMS THE VICAR OF AZAY-LE-RIDEAU THE REPROACH THE THREE CLERKS OF ST. NICHOLAS THE CONTINENCE OF KING FRANCIS THE FIRST THE MERRY TATTLE OF THE NUNS OF POISSY HOW THE CHATEAU D'AZAY CAME TO BE BUILT THE FALSE COURTESAN THE DANGER OF BEING TOO INNOCENT THE DEAR NIGHT OF LOVE THE SERMON OF THE MERRY VICAR OF MEUDON THE SUCCUBUS DESPAIR IN LOVE PERSEVERANCE IN LOVE CONCERNING A PROVOST WHO DID NOT RECOGNISE THINGS ABOUT THE MONK AMADOR, WHO WAS A GLORIOUS ABBOT OF TURPENAY BERTHA THE PENITENT HOW THE PRETTY MAID OF PORTILLON CONVINCED HER JUDGE IN WHICH IT IS DEMONSTRATED THAT FORTUNE IS ALWAYS FEMININE CONCERNING A POOR MAN WHO WAS CALLED LE VIEUX PAR-CHEMINS ODD SAYINGS OF THREE PILGRIMS INNOCENCE THE FAIR IMPERIA MARRIED

Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West examines how the contact between China and Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed the arts on both sides of the East-West divide. The essays in the volume reveal the extent to which images, artifacts, and natural specimens were traded and copied, and how these materials inflected both cultures’ visions of novelty and pleasure, battle and power, and ways of seeing and representing. Artists and craftspeople on both continents borrowed and adapted forms, techniques, and modes of representation, producing deliberate, meaningful, and complex new creations. By considering this reciprocity from both Eastern and Western perspectives, Qing Encounters offers a new and nuanced understanding of this critical period.

Eighteenth-century consumers in Britain, living in an increasingly globalized world, were infatuated with exotic Chinese and Chinese-styled goods, art and decorative objects. However, they were also often troubled by the alien aesthetic sensibility these goods embodied. This ambivalence figures centrally in the period's experience of China and of contact with foreign countries and cultures more generally. David Porter analyzes the processes by which Chinese aesthetic ideas were assimilated within English culture. Through case studies of individual figures, including William Hogarth and Horace Walpole, and broader reflections on cross-cultural interaction, Porter's readings develop new interpretations of eighteenth-century ideas of luxury, consumption, gender, taste and aesthetic nationalism. Illustrated with many examples of Chinese and Chinese-inspired objects and art, this is a major contribution to eighteenth-century cultural history and to the history of contact and exchange between China and the West.