Published on October 12, 2022, the database Connoisseurs, Collectors and Dealers of Asian Art in France, 1700-1939 includes nearly 250 bio-bibliographical entries. Initiated in 2018 with an object-oriented biographical approach, this directory lists many of the personalities who played a role in the history of Asian art collections in France. The entries, written by nearly 130 international specialists, are the result of a major effort to identify, research and promote Asian art collections throughout France. They highlight individuals, amateurs, travelers, soldiers, merchants and artists who contributed to shaping an image of Asia through its material culture. 
Hosted on the INHA's open access research data platform, AGORHA, the database is entirely bilingual (French and English) in order to reach and international scientific community.

An Object-Oriented Biographical Approach 

The program focuses on collections assembled between 1700 and 1939 - thus encompassing cabinets of curiosities, large collections assembled in the 19th century, and the development of a specialized market for Asian art - in a geographic area that extends from Eastern Siberia to Southeast Asia, including India and the Far East. Focusing on the construction of the Western view of Asia through the prism of its material culture in an approach at the crossroads of economic history, art history and cultural history, the research program aims to shed light on the underlying goals of individual collections, thanks to which objects acquire meaning, destinations and temporality. The database seeks to highlight the social, professional, economic, geostrategic, cultural, symbolic and aesthetic mechanisms that presided over the constitution of collections. This methodology encourages us to question the motivations, the tastes of the personalities studied and the results of their quest, not to mention their generosity, when it gave rise to donations to public institutions. A global and complex history of relations with Asia emerges from these individual trajectories and the objects that accompany them. The presence of a large number of dealers in the corpus also allows us to study their role as promoters of the taste for Asian objects as well as the evolution and structuring of the market: from the marchands merciers of the 18th century to specialized dealers of the second half of the 19th century.

Bringing to Light Little-Known Personalities

The major figures of Henri Cernuschi (1821-1891), Emile Guimet (1818-1936) and Georges Labit (1862-1899), whose eponymous museums reflect the importance of their collections, tend to overshadow other collectors. This work was an opportunity to synthesize their work, but the project also allowed for the emergence of lesser-known or forgotten personalities, in order to give an account of the importance of the phenomenon of Asian art collecting in all its complexity. Outreach to numerous museums in Paris and the surrounding region has led both to collaboration and to new interest in these ensembles. This program has brought to light little-known collections long ago relegated to museum reserves and has encouraged research on the provenance of objects in order to identify works that, through a bequest or a donation, have come to enrich French collections.

The Database: An Open Access Tool for Research

Designed as a tool for researchers, the database makes available structured, open-access and reusable data. The data of the “Connoisseurs, Collectors and Dealers” program encompass three types of records: persons, collections and events associated with their bibliographic references.
 

Each "person" record includes:

• An image, preferably a portrait of the individual;
• a civil status (names, first names, places and dates of birth and death) ;
• the successive coordinates of the individual ;
• the individual's activities, filled in thanks to a thesaurus and dated (collector, merchant, diplomat, customs administration personnel, etc.);
• an "event" field in which only trips to Asia are entered and dated;
• a written biographical commentary;
• a typological description of the collection in the "study themes" field, also specifying the artistic periods and geographical areas concerned. Attention: this field can also lend itself to the description of the activities of art historian of the personality, the program then specifies: [objects collected];
• a written commentary on the collection;
• personal connections, describing any business, friendly, or professional relationships with others in the program;
• documentation including bibliographic records and archival holdings.

The attention given to the census of addresses has allowed the creation of an interactive cartography, developed by the digital research department of the INHA, highlighting the "Geography of Asian art collecting in France". An ambitious project was carried out on the census of more than 200 Asian art dealers' stores indicated by their addresses. 

Systematically linked to the person record, a "collection" record includes 

• an image of the collection or of an object in the collection ; 
• the mention of one or several persons linked to the collection; 
• the dates of constitution of the location when they are known; 
• the successive places of conservation, dated, until the current place of conservation in the public collections;
• an "event" field in which only exhibitions and sales concerning the collection are specified; 
• a short bibliography concerning only sales and exhibitions, essentially catalogs. 

The information provided in the "conservation sites" field has enabled the development of the Cartographie des lieux de conservation des collections asiatiques en France [Geography of the French Sites Conserving Asian Art].
The research program has also established a delimited corpus of Asian art exhibitions concerning the personalities of the corpus presented thanks to "event" notices. They specify the dates, the places of the exhibition and the participating personalities as well as the bibliographical references of the publications that accompany the exhibition (sales catalog, visit guides, etc.).

How to search? 

Two interfaces are available to consult the database: 

• the Agorha platform hosts all the data in the database (civil status, addresses, type of collection, activities, events, bibliographic records and archives). It can be consulted directly via the "consult data" tab. 
• an editorialized interface presents all the articles written (biographical comments, comments on the collection, bibliography). It gives access to the articles written via the search bar "consult the biographical articles".

The way the database has been structured allows for several types of search: 

• A biographical entry: by name of collector, dealer or collector thanks to the search bar "consult biographical articles". The entire corpus can be consulted via the program's home page, under the tab "list of collectors". The interactive map "Geography of Asian art collecting in France" also allows access to the notices of the personalities by their various addresses. 
• A search by type of object via the "consult data" tab: the search program only provides "person", "collection" and "event" records and does not include a "work" record. A search by type of object collected is nevertheless possible thanks to the structured fields "study theme". Indexing is based on a thesaurus whose terms can be searched in the Agorha search bar. Example: porcelain, lacquerware, ivoryware, etc... The full field search allows however to make a search by specialized terms such as "netsuke" or "inrô" which will be consequently less precise. The "study theme" field can be completed by a search by chronological period and geographical area, for example: porcelain, China, Qing. 
• A search by collection location: the "collections" entries provide information on the location of public collections. The interactive "Map of Asian Conservation Sites" allows you to see the museums that hold these collections and to access the records of the corresponding personalities. 
• A search by "event": the last type of record filled in by the research program, the event records essentially concern exhibitions in which the personalities in the corpus took part. These events allow for an important interconnectivity of the records in the database and complete the information in the "links between people" fields in order to make the networks between the actors in the program visible.