AFA Summer 2020

2020 Antiques & Fine Art 109 1. “Chinese Wallpaper in National Trust Collections,” National Trust Collections, May 23, 2018, accessed March 14, 2020, http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/article/chi- nese-wallpaper-overview. 2. “Palacio de la Cotilla,” Ayuntamiento de Guadalajara, accessed March 14, 2020, https:// www.guadalajara.es/recursos/doc/portal/2017/09/22/palacio-de-la-cotilla24182.pdf. 3. Iván Camacho Navarrete and Encuadernación Camacho, Restauración Del Salón Chino Del Palacio De La Cotilla (Guadalajara: s.n, 2001), 758. 4. Pedro José Pradillo y Esteban, El Palacio De La Cotilla Y Su Salon Chino, 1a. ed. Patrimonio De Guadalajara, 1. (Guadalajara: Patronato de Cultura, 2006), 29. 5. D.P. Rowan, “Reading the wallpaper of the Chinese Parlor at the Winterthur Museum,” Magazine Antiques (February 2002): 161. piano concerts took place at Palacio de la Cotilla. 4 At Beauport, the China Trade Room occupied a dramatic, two-story space with a raised balcony surrounded by a gilded, fretwork screen that was used as a stage to entertain; the Tea Room at Guadalajara also features a stage, in this case, flanked by two columns. Sleeper originally incorporated Chinese-style furniture, including a pagoda, but the house’s subsequent owners, the McCanns, replaced these furnishings with Chinese-Chippendale- inspired designs much like those at Winterthur, which they believed to be more suited to entertaining. Similarly, the Spanish couple complemented their paper with European-style antiques, in this case, furnishings in the style of Louis XV. While many imported Chinese wallpapers recreate bird and flower schemes, all three present examples depict more elaborate narrative scenes with human actors. They are done in a style recalling the guidelines of Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) imperial workshops in Beijing, which changed when European visitors, such as the Jesuit father and painter Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), introduced such European pictorial techniques as perspective. All feature a limited, though intense color palette. The Winterthur wallpaper depicts imagined scenes from Chinese daily life, organized hierarchically, so that the occupations of elite scholars occupy the foreground, and are therefore in the largest scale, while the scenes of merchants and artisans, and then the peasants and working class, recede into landscape higher up on the wall. 5 Similar to the American examples, the Guadalajara wallpaper shows the same emphasis on status; individuals’ ranks are identifiable through telling signs, such as tunics with embroidered cranes that denote the highest rank of Manchu officials. But in contrast, the Palacio wallpaper features a storyline with successive scenes that begin to the right of the entrance door. It follows a feudal-era visiting dignitary, and includes an entrance procession, an assassination attempt, a successful review of administrative documents, and culminates with the convening of several characters. Clearly, the couple envisioned a space for performances as dramatic as the images on the wallpaper that decorated it. Several decades later, Henry Francis du Pont and Henry Davis Sleeper had much the same aspirations.  Olivia Armandroff is pursuing her master’s degree in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, Winterthur Museum, Delaware, and will graduate in May 2020. She has researched the dissemination of imagery in print media, the projection of a consciously styled self through visual objects, instances of collaborative production, and the revival of historic images in modern and contemporary art. right Fig. 3: Tea Room. Palacio de la Cotilla, Guadalajara, Spain. Image by the author. far right  Fig. 4: Detail, Tea Room. Palacio de la Cotilla, Guadalajara, Spain. Image by the author.