GUIGNES Chrétien de (EN)
Biographical article
Born in Paris in 1759, Chrétien Louis Joseph de Guignes was the son of orientalist Joseph de Guignes (or Deguignes) (1721-1800) and Marie Charlotte Françoise Hochereau de Gassonville (1736-1806).
His father was an interpreter in the service of the king, secretary-interpreter of oriental languages to the Bibliothèque royale, member of the Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, professor of Syriac at the Collège de France and Keeper of antiquities at the Louvre. He took great care in his son’s education, in particular by initiating his study of the Chinese language. This vocation seems to have been confirmed when in 1781 he presented a paper on the Chinese celestial planisphere to the Académie des sciences, which was published the following year. France having established a consulate in Canton in 1776, the sole Chinese port open to foreigners, Joseph de Guignes engineered an appointment there for his son, who, in November 1783, and thanks to the backing of Henri Léonard Jean-Baptiste Bertin (1720-1792), was appointed second interpreter and secretary of the consulate. This nomination opened professional perspectives and also offered him a unique opportunity to improve his mastery of Chinese through direct contact with the Chinese empire. In addition, just prior to his departure for China, he was appointed correspondent of the Académie des sciences and the Académie des belles-lettres. This required that he contributes to the documentation for these two academies, but also participate in Bertin’s information network and serve as a link in the chain connecting the former minister to the missionaries in Beijing (Cordier H., 1908, p. 59-61; Cordier H., 1913).In August 1784, de Guignes reached Macao, where most Europeans were required to reside when there was no commercial transaction justifying their presence in Canton. In the precarious position in which they found themselves, up against the thousand ways Mandarins could create problems for them, de Guignes discovered a universe which differed in many ways from the idealised vision held by his correspondents. The creation in June of 1785 of a new Compagnie française des Indes, the Compagnie des Indes orientales et de la Chine, granted the monopoly on trade, led to the elimination of the consulate in Canton, which was replaced by a simple agent (Cordier H., 1908, p. 64-66). In February of 1787, after the departure of the last consul, de Guignes was awarded by the chevalier d’Entrecasteaux (1737-1793), commander of the French fleet of “les Indes orientales”, the dual function of agent and the king’s interpreter in Canton (Cordier H., 1908, p. 69-79; Cordier H., 1911, p. 30, 37-39). However, the Revolution and the resumption of war with England resulted in the interruption of already very difficult relations between de Guignes and his correspondents owing to the great distances involved. There was no longer any news from Bertin, deceased in 1792, or news from the king, or from any French administration. The occupation of Pondicherry by the English in August of 1793 deprived him of any tutelage as well as any subsidy (Cordier H., 1908, p. 92).
It was in this context in 1794 that he was admitted as an interpreter to the diplomatic mission the Dutch were sending to Peking to Emperor Qianlong, under the direction of Isaac Titsingh (1745-1812), assisted by André Everard Van Braam Houckgeest (1739-1801). Thus, from November 1794 to May 1795, he was one of the rare Europeans allowed to penetrate into the heart of the Empire, and even into the Forbidden City. Though the diplomatic mission was far from a success for the Dutch, the experience made a deep impression on de Guignes (Guignes, C. L. J. de, 1808).
Back in Canton, in January 1796, he returned to the Île de France, with the aim of restoring ties with the French authorities. Having failed to obtain payment for the appointments owed to him, he returned to Macao and Canton, stopping at Manilla along the way. In 1797, he left China once and for all and, after a second sojourn in Manilla, planned to return on 1 May, to the Île de France, where he would live for three years. Meanwhile, on 31 August 1797 he married Anne Louise Clouet (towards 1779 - before 1843), daughter of a former agent of the Compagnie des Indes and of the consulate of France in Canton (ANOM, 1DPPC/2935). In March of 1801, still awaiting instructions and financial resources, he resolved to return to France (Guignes, C. L. J. de, 1808).
Once back in Paris, in August of 1801, he set to work trying to obtain recognition and retribution for his seventeen years of unpaid services. On 15 October 1802, he was appointed resident and commissioner of trade relations between the Republic and Canton and Macao. However, political circumstances soon ruled out any new start. The minister of Exterior relations appointed him for a time to serve as head of the bureau of interpreters, prior to assigning him to the task of classifying its archives, in 1804 (AMAE-LC, 266QO/21 and 8MD/20; Cordier H., 1908, p. 92-95). Increasingly de Guignes dedicated himself to the honour and the succession of his father, deceased in 1800. He was admitted to the Institut national, on 6 May 1803 as a third-class associate member (history and ancient literature), after which on 16 January 1804 as a first-class correspondent member (section of geography and navigation) (Franqueville C. de, 1896, t. II, p. 142; Institut de France, 1979, p. 277). He undertook the project to publish the story of his travels, for which he obtained authorisation to have printed, at his expense, by the presses of the Imprimerie impériale. The Voyages à Péking, Manille et l'Ile de France faits dans l'intervalle des années 1784 à 1801 were published in 1808. Focused on his trip to Peking with the diplomatic mission of Titsingh and on the description of the Middle Kingdom, the book is comprised of an in-folio volume in which de Guignes reproduced the drawings he had done during his time with the diplomatic mission.
In October 1808, de Guignes was officially assigned the project to produce a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary, the printing of which was naturally entrusted to the Imprimerie impériale. Napoléon had previously assigned this mission to Austrian sinologist Joseph Hager (1757-1819). However, the attacks to which he was subjected by his Italian rival, Antonio Montucci (1762-1829), led the authorities to revoke his assignment, in favour of de Guignes, who was preferred over Montucci. The later wasted no time in attacking de Guignes as well. The impression of the Dictionnaire chinois-français et latin, published in 1813, was a typographical tour de force. However, its scientific value was immediately contested, in particular by the sinologists Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832) and Julius Klaproth (1783-1835), who denounced it as an inept plagiarism of the Chinese-Latin dictionary compiled by the Franciscan missionary Basile de Gemona (1648-1704), a copy of which the Bibliothèque impériale had made available to de Guignes and which had in fact served as the essential basis of the dictionary (Bussotti, M., 2015; Landry-Deron, I., 2015).
Thus, whereas it ought to have marked the ultimate scientific recognition of De Guignes, the publication of the dictionary seems to have precipitated his decline in a field where he was eclipsed and dismissed by a new generation of geographers and sinologists who sought to free themselves from hypotheses of centuries past.
Granted retirement in 1817 by the ministère des Affaires étrangères, in 1821, de Guignes remarried Amable Joséphine Petit (1792-1872), the daughter of a bureaux head at the ministère de l’Intérieur, who would ensure his security in old age. The disgrace into which Joseph de Guignes’s work increasingly fell fed his bitterness, as much with regard to the Institut as to the ministère des Affaires étrangères, to which in 1818 he made request, which remained unfulfilled, for financial support to publish the manuscripts inherited from his father (AMAE-LC, 266QO/21; AN, MC/ET/XII/1034).
Whereas the perspective of new editorial undertakings seemed henceforth out of the question, the impressive collection of Chinese objects he had gradually assembled in his home enabled him to relive and to show to Paris the décor of the happiest, most memorable and most brilliant period of his life.
Although his death, at home on 8 March 1845, went more or less unnoticed, the dispersion of his collections drew the attention of connoisseurs.
Domaine public / CC BY-SA 3.0
The collection
If the Chinese cabinet assembled by Chrétien Louis Joseph de Guignes contained a certain number of objects the collector had brought back directly from China, it is mostly comprised of objects and works he collected after returning to Paris. Available sources do not allow us to indicate at what date de Guignes became a full-fledged collector; the warning included in the catalogue of the sale of his collection in 1846 explained his sojourn in Beijing as being the triggering event: “we can understand that, filled with wonder by everything he was experiencing under those circumstances, he became a passionate amateur and knowledgeable collector” (Catalogue des objets d'art..., 1845, p. 3). His interest in the various arts and crafts of China is attested by the chapters he dedicated to them in his Voyages à Péking. However, the book provides no information on the objects he may have brought back to Paris.
Though it is not possible to follow the history of all the purchases the collector made, the minutes of auctions of specialised collections contain the trace of some of his acquisitions: sale of the Vivant-Denon collection in 1826, successive sales of the Sallé collection in 1826 and 1827 (AP, D48E3/20 and 21), sale of the Théodore Moreau collection in 1832 (AP, D48E3/26), and notably the sale of the collection of baron Roger (Art Sales Catalogue Online, Lugt 17980, margin annotation).
De Guignes built his collection at his home, 24 rue des Bons-Enfants, where he lived at least until 1827, then at 9 rue de l’Echelle, where he resided at the latest from 1834 until his death. The greater part of his collection was kept in a room dedicated to the Chinese cabinet (AN, AN/MC/ET/XII/1034).
The content of the collection assembled by de Guignes is mainly known from the inventory drawn up after his death (AN, AN/MC/ET/XII/1034) and through the auction catalogue established in anticipation of its dispersal in 1846 (Catalogue des objets d'art..., 1845). A brief description also exists in an article from the journal L’Artiste published in 1835, which lists the visits paid to three Parisian collectors, among whom was de Guignes. De Guignes does not seem to have sold any pieces from his collection during his lifetime, thus it can be supposed that the lists drawn up after his death are relatively faithful.
The collection was comprised mainly of objects and objets d’art, but there were also drawings, paintings and manuscript and printed Chinese books. It contained approximately 500 objects of ethnographic and artistic character, as well as a few natural history specimens. A broad variety of objects are represented: sculptures and figurines, models of junks, pagodas, towers, diverse boxes and baskets, flasks, bottles, bowls, goblets, teapots, vases and other utensils, spittoons, perfume vases, parfum burners, lamps, musical instruments, costumes and models of costumes, fans, umbrellas, canes, shields, screens, mirrors, mats, furniture, writing cases and writing materials, diverse forms of ink, pipes, sceptres, compasses, eye glasses, prayer beads, locks, balances, games, perfumes in diverse forms, etc. Articles were made of the most diverse range of materials: wood, textiles, ivory, mother of pearl, jade, horn, minerals, lacquers, Chinese and Japanese porcelains, bronze, gold, etc. The sale of the Chinese cabinet includes fourteen lots of drawings and paintings, by the piece or in album form. Essentially Chinese objects, the collection also counted a number of Japanese pieces (in particular, lacquers and porcelains). Objects from other regions of Asia were relatively few in number. Available sources indicate only exceptionally the date of the objects. In the auction catalogue, some ten pieces were dated according to their appearance or an inscription specifying the date of their fabrication. Only these mentions attested to the presence of objects predating the Qing dynasty. It is likely that most of the objects dated from this period.
Sold separately, de Guignes’ library contained some hundred Chinese books, of which some were manuscripts, but also a few manuscripts by de Guignes, as well as an autograph manuscript of the father Joseph-Marie Amiot (1718-1793). The collection contained a certain number of objects having previously belonged to Bertin. The article cited above from the journal L’Artiste indicates that the de Guignes collection “was in part joined with that of deceased M. Bertin”. However, it is not possible to specify which proportion of de Guignes’ cabinet actually came from there.
Visitors who had access to de Guignes’ cabinet could be particularly amazed by a Mandarin sceptre made of sandalwood from the former Vivant-Denon collection, a large ivory cornucopia that had belonged to Empress Joséphine, a large pagoda made of mother of pearl, a sculpted bamboo pirogue containing little characters made carved in wood and ivory, a sculpted rhinoceros horn goblet, Japanese lacquer boxes that had belonged to Marie-Antoinette, tableaux in relief, from Malmaison, representing landscapes filled with kiosks and characters made of mother of pearl, soapstone and ivory, costumes, flowers and foliage made of bird feathers and insect wings, albums of watercolours depicting notably landscapes, cultivation of tea and rice, porcelain making, and mandarin costumes. As the collection was being dispersed, the piece sold for the highest bid was a perfume box, undoubtedly Chinese, in gold filigree, originally from the former Vivant-Denon collection (AP, D48E3/38). In the library, in addition to the manuscripts by de Guignes father and son and the son’s original drawings done in China, were a few books coming directly from the Emperor Qianlong and the imperial presses.
In parallel to the Chinese cabinets, de Guignes collected some sixty paintings, half by Dutch masters from the Dutch Golden Century, the other half consisting of paintings by Flemish and French artists, and, fewer in number by German, Italian and Spanish artists.
Given his personal situation, the collector foresaw and organised, by his last will and testament which he drew up in 1834 (AN, MC/ET/XII/1034), the dispersal of his collections and library, with most of the funds produced by the sale to benefit his only child, from his first marriage, his daughter Joséphine Madeleine (born in 1798), residing on the present-day Island of Mauritius. A series of four auctions were held, in January of 1846, to sell off the Chinese cabinet, the collection of paintings, the library and finally the furnishings and other goods belonging to him. De Guignes, who had established a catalogue of his Chinese cabinet, bequeathed it by codicil dated 1839 (AN, MC/ET/XII/1034), to M. de Chabrefy, who has been identified as being Jérôme François Valleteau de Chabrefy († 1846).
The sale of the Chinese cabinet reached a total of 55,564.25 F (AP, D48E3/38). Among the buyers, collectors and dealers, several names stand out: Bailleul, Pierre Defer (1798-1870), Delessert, Lenoir, Roque et Rougemont. The manufacture of Sèvres acquired four pieces. It is also known that its collections contain at least one album of Chinese drawings depicting the processes involved in the fabrication of porcelain, said to have been brought back by de Guignes from his mission in Beijing (see notably Berger et Watabe, 1996, p. 109). The paintings and drawings, as well as the Chinese books or those on the subject of China were mostly sold to amateurs, dealers and specialised book sellers Bailleul, Defer, Dondey-Dupré and Duprat.
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