Canadian Centre for Architecture.
Musée de la photographie, Essonne, France.
“This Little Paradise”
Above: Pan Tsen Chen’s house and aviary, 1844 (detail). This early daguerreotype by Jules Itier has been modified to make it more legible and reversed to show the correct orientation. Above right: ‘View of a two-storey building in a garden, Canton (now Guangzhou), China’ (detail). An anonymous albumen silver print, made between 1862 and 1879. Note the aviary on the far left.
Collection of Caleb Cushing, Library of Congress. Photo: Josepha Richard.
Itier’s views of the garden are scarcely legible, but one of them reveals a large stand-alone wire aviary with a square base and a dome-like pinnacle standing in water near the summer house. The aviary’s important location in the garden is confirmed by later views, such as a watercolour by George R. West and an anonymous photograph held by the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
It is uncertain whether the aviary in Pan Shicheng’s garden was typically Chinese, or whether it was based on examples built by Western traders. Some 19th-century Western observers boldly asserted that Chinese gardens of the period were modified for the pleasure of their foreign visitors, but we should treat such statements with caution. After all, the Hong merchants were in a powerful position until the end of the Canton System and, after the Opium Wars, the local population was understandably wary of foreigners. It was perhaps not desirable for Chinese garden owners to imitate an antagonist’s architectural style. In fact, imitation seems to have gone the other way. In late 18th-century Britain, many gardens were adorned with ‘Chinese’ elements, such as the aviary at Dropmore, which combined two design elements found in Canton at the time: wire panels and a dome. Aviaries and their contents offer an alluring reflection of the intricacies of exchange between China and the world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the interest in chinoiserie faded in the West after the Opium Wars, the display of bird cages in gardens is still part of everyday life in southern China. Dr Josepha Richard (University of Bristol) is an art historian specialising in the art of Chinese gardens, with a specific interest in studying SinoWestern interactions under the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Left: ‘Puntinqua’s country villa near Canton’, by George R. West.
Issue 37
HISTORIC GARDENS Review
37