The First British Embassy to China, 1793-1794
Part
II – The Art
William Alexander was one of only
two artists who were officially appointed to record Lord Macartney’s embassy to
China. Of the two he was the junior draughtsman, yet his artistic
impressions of China have since become the most familiar depictions of the
mission. He made over two thousand sketches and paintings whilst travelling
through China; and, rather like David Roberts, his near contemporary’s
paintings of Egypt made some 50 years later, Alexander’s sketches and paintings
of China have become quintessential as representations of the Western encounter with Asia. They were primarily done to illustrate Sir George Leonard Staunton’s
official report of the mission (1797), as well as Sir John Barrow’s Travels in China (1804), but Alexander also
published two notable books of his own, The
Costume of China (1805) and Dress and
Manners of the Chinese (1814), both of which proved to be very popular. Alexander
was apparently able to support himself for a decade after returning from the
mission on the proceeds of exhibiting and publishing his China works. Between
1798 and 1804 he exhibited thirteen watercolours at the Royal Academy. In stark
contrast, the principal artist of the embassy was Thomas Hickey, who was a
portrait painter and a personal friend of Lord Macartney, although noted as a
great conversationalist Hickey’s idleness has since been remarked by historians
as rather curiously he apparently painted only one picture in the entire course
of the trip – whereas his junior colleague had managed to draw and paint around
270 sketches of the voyage before the mission had even set foot on Chinese
shores.
William Alexander was born in
Maidstone, Kent in 1767, the son of a coachmaker. He moved to London at the age
of fifteen to study art and was later admitted to the Royal Academy Schools
where his talent was duly noticed by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was 25 years old
when the Macartney mission set out for China, and his diary of the mission
shows he was an energetic and engaged member of the party – yet he was rather
underrated and overlooked by Macartney himself. Indeed, much to Alexander’s
disappointment, Macartney left the two artists in Peking when he went to meet
with Qianlong for the first time at Chengde, and so it seems likely that he
only once, very briefly got to glimpse the august figure of the Emperor, and so
he had to rely on the descriptions furnished by other members of the party when
completing some of his more famous portraits and landscape views such as those
of the Great Wall. It is perhaps because of this reason that the accuracy of
some of his likenesses were later criticised by Sir George Staunton. This fact
not withstanding, the overwhelming majority of Alexander’s artworks are clearly
keenly observed; indeed, as were his diary descriptions too. The following is
an extract in which he describes glimpsing Qianlong on the occasion of the
Emperor’s return to the capital, Peking:
“As
soon as the Emperor and his retinue was seen in the distance, the Ambassador
and his suite moved toward the road and were placed within the line of
soldiers. Once the Royal procession was in earshot the Chinese band struck up a
martial air interrupted as ever by the most discordant percussion … His
Imperial Majesty was preceded by a body of horse. His sedan, surrounded by
Mandarins and cavalry, was of a rich yellow carried by 8 bearers … He looked
eminently towards us kneeling on one knee and bowing, and as he passed he sent
a message to the Ambassador regretting the Ambassador was not well, and as the
cold weather was approaching it would be better for him to return immediately
to Peking, rather than make any stay at the Yuan Ming Yuan … Next followed his
Chief Minister in a green sedan chair. He gave the Ambassador a very gracious
salute … The Mandarins employed and connected with the Embassy stood behind us,
dressed in their habits of ceremony, while we were kneeling when the Emperor
passed by. One of these, thinking my bow was not sufficiently respectful to his
monarch, actually put his hand behind my neck and lowered my head almost to the
ground. Perhaps my eagerness to see all that was possible of this splendid
sight might shorten the inclination of the head on this memorable occasion.”
The last few lines are fairly
striking in view of the fact that the ceremony of the kowtow was such a major point of contention for the British.
Indeed, Alexander had a similar run-in of his own with this particular matter
of court etiquette when he met a Qing official of the Imperial family on the
road whilst out on one of his trips to record scenes of Chinese country life,
he was forced to dismount but then refused to kneel and kowtow in the mud. On
the whole though, Alexander’s depictions of China and the Chinese speak for
themselves, and much as his verbal descriptions, they tend to be acutely observed,
largely accurate and even handed in their representation – and, as such, they
remain an invaluable record to modern scholars of the period. On his return to
England he went on to enjoy a successful artist’s career as a professor of
drawing, teaching at the Military College at Great Marlow, and then subsequently
becoming the first Keeper of the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum.
Once the embassy had returned to
Britain it did not take long for the information its members brought back to
gain a wide circulation. Indeed, just four months after their return this
painting (above) of the Emperor Qianlong was done by Mariano Bovi (an Italian artist
then working in London) and curiously, although nothing is known of how it originally
came to be produced, it is clearly a very faithful likeness of one of
Qianlong’s official court paintings (below) – which were painted on silk and
mounted on hanging scrolls, an example of which from the Palace Museum’s own
collection was included in the Britain Meets the World exhibition in 2007.
The European fascination with China
goes back a long way. From first contacts with Chinese wares brought along the
Silk Road trading routes as far back as the Roman era to the well-known travel
accounts of Marco Polo in the 13th Century; however, it wasn’t until
the Jesuit missions of the late 16th Century that sustained contact
was established. Much of Europe’s earliest knowledge of China came from the
accounts returned by these Jesuit priests, most notably Matteo Ricci. The Jesuits
gained quite a significant footing in China where their scientific knowledge,
particularly in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy, geography and
cartography, were highly esteemed and utilised by Chinese scholars and court
officials.
Chinese commodities, such as silks,
porcelain, and spices, were highly prized items in Europe from the 14th
Century onwards. And even as early as 1604 the first Chinese books found their
way into the collections of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Such curious wares
naturally fuelled an interest in a seemingly fabled faraway land of scholars
and artists, and the tantalising glimpses these items gave blended with fantasy
and stirred the desire to know more. From the 17th Century onwards
European craftsmen began to design ceramics, fabrics, and furniture based on
Chinese archetypes. At the start of the 18th Century the French
painter, Antoine Watteau, devised a fanciful decorative style known as chinoiserie which soon became all the
rage in Europe. A vogue for all things ‘Chinese’ from porcelains and interior
décor to pagodas and dragon motifs adorning parks and palaces ensued. A
Chinese-style bridge was even built over the River Thames at Hampton Court.
The fashion for chinoserie in Britain initially peaked
in 1750s and 1760s, but was revived by the excitement surrounding Macartney’s
embassy, and perhaps reached its apogee in the manifestation of George IV, the
Prince Regent’s sumptuously extravagant and distinctly over the top Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Built between 1787 and 1823 in the “Hindoo style”,
looking rather like the Taj Mahal outside, inside it was decorated (in 1802) with
a profusion of Chinese motifs, some of which were directly based upon William
Alexander’s artworks from the embassy, as well as an enormous chandelier
weighing over one ton which was decorated with silvered dragons. Such lavish
‘orientalizing’ provided ample fuel for stoking contemporary satires, mocking
both Macartney and the famous contretemps over the kowtow and later on mocking George IV by depicting him as an
‘oriental despot’ surrounded by opulence and ‘oriental luxury’ whilst receiving
Lord Amherst, Britain’s second failed Ambassador to China in 1816.
Back to Part I - The Embassy
References
Aubrey Singer, The Lion & The Dragon: The Story of the First British Embassy to
the Court of the Emperor Qianlong in Peking, 1792-1794 (Barrie &
Jenkins, 1992) – contains a good selection of artworks from the embassy by
William Alexander and other members of the party
Qian Chengdan & Sheila
O’Connell, Britain Meets the World,
1714-1830 – The Palace Museum (The Forbidden City Publishing House, 2007)
Edward Said, Orientalism (Routledge, 1978)
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