DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16633#0259
China and Japan
239
of the Christians, which were carried on with deliberate intention by the Emperor Kien-
lung, whose long reign extended into the last two-thirds of the century. He kept at Peking
the Jesuits who were so useful to him, got all the good he could out of their
learning, gave them tasks of a lofty scientific character, paid great honour to the
Italian painter Castiglione, and made European houses and gardens; but in respect to
their own calling he left them severely alone. Thus it came about that China was com-
pletely closed to foreigners in the eighteenth century, for even the famous embassy of
Lord Macartney was economically fruitless. All the same, there arrived an uninterrupted
stream of news from the interior of China. Indeed, it was the eighteenth century that
first brought about some real understanding and some sort of comparison with the West.
This short sketch indicates the sources from which the nature of garden art in the
countries of Eastern Asia came to be known by Europeans. This art, with its own tech-
nique and its own sentiment, is perhaps easier for us moderns to understand, despite its
marvellous foreign nature, because we are able to place it among other kinds of art in
Eastern Asia. We have passed out of a period of the picturesque style in Europe, and we
are able to compare it with a similar effort made in Asia, taking into account the great
difference in the means at the disposal of the two, and in their aims. For Europeans in
the seventeenth century both the name and the nature of "Landscape Gardens," about
which travellers spoke, were something quite foreign and unfamiliar.
Sir William Temple writes of it with some surprise in his Essay in 1685, in which he
collects with much discrimination the various tendencies of gardening art in his time.
What I have said of the best forms of gardens [he writes] is meant only of such as are in some sort
regular; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty
than any of the others. . . . Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from
others who have lived much among the Chinese, a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of
ours in Europe, as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly
in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer
one another, and at exact distances. The Chinese scorn this way of planting. . . . Their greatest reach
of imagination is employed in contriving figures where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but
without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed. . . . And whoever
observes the work upon the best India gowns, or the painting upon their best skreens or purcellans, will
find their beauty is all of this kind, (that is) without order.
A comprehension, however slight and imperfect, of the true Chinese feeling was a
great help to the next generation, which brought the picturesque style to the front.
People laughed at Sir William Temple's concern lest the difficult job should be attempted
of imitating a Chinese garden, and nobody suspected how right he really was. His idea
that people should study Chinese gardening by way of their paintings ought to have been
a fruitful one, for the two are connected very closely.
This new and peculiar kind of art came into our circle of vision as a complete, per-
fected thing—a style built upon a distant tradition, which is disengaged from what we call
garden architecture, and from any of those useful purposes that we found to be funda-
mental elsewhere. From one point of view Chinese art is the purest of all, and the questions
of origin and history are most enticing. But there are difficulties which we cannot overcome,
since there is no country that shows fewer traces of old historic gardens. The curious
etiquette of Chinese emperors, and indeed in a great degree of other important men,
forbids them to live in the home of their predecessor; moreover, each new dynasty is apt
11—R
239
of the Christians, which were carried on with deliberate intention by the Emperor Kien-
lung, whose long reign extended into the last two-thirds of the century. He kept at Peking
the Jesuits who were so useful to him, got all the good he could out of their
learning, gave them tasks of a lofty scientific character, paid great honour to the
Italian painter Castiglione, and made European houses and gardens; but in respect to
their own calling he left them severely alone. Thus it came about that China was com-
pletely closed to foreigners in the eighteenth century, for even the famous embassy of
Lord Macartney was economically fruitless. All the same, there arrived an uninterrupted
stream of news from the interior of China. Indeed, it was the eighteenth century that
first brought about some real understanding and some sort of comparison with the West.
This short sketch indicates the sources from which the nature of garden art in the
countries of Eastern Asia came to be known by Europeans. This art, with its own tech-
nique and its own sentiment, is perhaps easier for us moderns to understand, despite its
marvellous foreign nature, because we are able to place it among other kinds of art in
Eastern Asia. We have passed out of a period of the picturesque style in Europe, and we
are able to compare it with a similar effort made in Asia, taking into account the great
difference in the means at the disposal of the two, and in their aims. For Europeans in
the seventeenth century both the name and the nature of "Landscape Gardens," about
which travellers spoke, were something quite foreign and unfamiliar.
Sir William Temple writes of it with some surprise in his Essay in 1685, in which he
collects with much discrimination the various tendencies of gardening art in his time.
What I have said of the best forms of gardens [he writes] is meant only of such as are in some sort
regular; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more beauty
than any of the others. . . . Something of this I have seen in some places, but heard more of it from
others who have lived much among the Chinese, a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of
ours in Europe, as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly
in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer
one another, and at exact distances. The Chinese scorn this way of planting. . . . Their greatest reach
of imagination is employed in contriving figures where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but
without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed. . . . And whoever
observes the work upon the best India gowns, or the painting upon their best skreens or purcellans, will
find their beauty is all of this kind, (that is) without order.
A comprehension, however slight and imperfect, of the true Chinese feeling was a
great help to the next generation, which brought the picturesque style to the front.
People laughed at Sir William Temple's concern lest the difficult job should be attempted
of imitating a Chinese garden, and nobody suspected how right he really was. His idea
that people should study Chinese gardening by way of their paintings ought to have been
a fruitful one, for the two are connected very closely.
This new and peculiar kind of art came into our circle of vision as a complete, per-
fected thing—a style built upon a distant tradition, which is disengaged from what we call
garden architecture, and from any of those useful purposes that we found to be funda-
mental elsewhere. From one point of view Chinese art is the purest of all, and the questions
of origin and history are most enticing. But there are difficulties which we cannot overcome,
since there is no country that shows fewer traces of old historic gardens. The curious
etiquette of Chinese emperors, and indeed in a great degree of other important men,
forbids them to live in the home of their predecessor; moreover, each new dynasty is apt
11—R