Touch Codes and Japanese Taste: The Material Experience of Félix Bracquemond's Service Rousseau

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to a number of scholars who made this material study of the Service Rousseau possible. Michael Marrinan, David O'Brien, Christine Guth and Pamela Warner offered insightful feedback during the early formulation of this project, while the staff at the Musée d'Orsay and National Gallery of Australia provided invaluable assistance with the handling and research of the tableware.

Notes

1. Léon-Victor Daguzan, Études sur L'Exposition de 1867: Annales et Archives de l'Industrie au XIXe siècle ou Nouvelle Technologie des Arts et Métiers, de L'Agriculture, etc. Description Générale, Encyclopédique, Méthodique et Raisonnée de L’état actuel des arts, des sciences, de l'Industrie et de l'Agriculture, chez toutes les nations, ed. Eugène Lacroix, vol. 3 (Paris: Librairie scientifique, industrielle et agricole, November 30, 1867), 346.

2. Though there are a number of positive reviews of the Service Rousseau, Philippe Burty offers some of the most comprehensive and complimentary commentary on the tableware. See Philippe Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, La Chronique des Arts et de la curiosité 188 (June 1867): 181. Over a decade later, Ernest Chesneau commends Bracquemond's decorative scheme, citing the Service Rousseau as a model for the early and thoughtful adaptation of Japanese design in France. Ernest Chesneau, ‘Le Japon à Paris’, Gazette des Beaux Arts (September–November 1878): 388–89.

3. See Gabriel Weisberg, ‘Félix Bracquemond and Japanese Influence in Ceramic Decoration’, The Art Bulletin 51, no. 3 (September 1969): 278–9; Deborah Jean Johnson, ‘The Impact of East Asian Art Within the Early Impressionist Circle: 1856–1868’ (PhD diss., Brown University, 1984), 107; Larry Simms, ‘Drawing on Japan’, Apollo Magazine (August 2008): 4. Sonia Coman, ‘The Bracquemond-Rousseau Table Service of 1866: Japoniste Ceramics and the Realignment of Medium Hierarchies in Nineteenth-Century French Art’, Journal of Japonisme 1 (2016): 17–40.

4. When compared to earlier faïence precedents in France, such as Bernard Palissy's naturalistic dishes from the sixteenth century, Bracquemond's experimentation with mimesis becomes more apparent. While Palissy's dishes construct illusionistic renderings of animals and plant-life through building up and modelling the ceramic surface, Bracquemond's dinnerware favours flat motifs multiplied in space. The result is a different approach to illusionism and the rendering of nature, with Bracquemond actively subverting mimetic tradition and convention in favour of a different kind of immersive ceramic experience. In 1866, Philippe Burty drew a distinction between the illusionism of Palissy and the emphasis on decorative surface found in Japan. See Philippe Burty, Chefs-d'oeuvre des arts industriels (Paris: Ducrocq, 1866), 100–39 and 206–13.

5. Exposition Universelle de 1867 à Paris: Catalogue official des exposants recompenses par le Jury international (Paris: Dentu, 1867), 20–1.

6. The French delegate headed by Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros signed the Traité d'amitié et de commerce

(日仏修好商条約) with Japan five years after the reopening of Japanese ports by Commodore Perry. The treaty stipulated that France could trade feely with Japan and guaranteed low import and export duties for goods exchanged between the two countries. The conditions of this treaty ensured the rapid importation of Japanese objects throughout the 1860s. See Traité d'amitié et de commerce, 1858.

7. 明治期万国博覧会美術品出品目録、東京国立文化財研究所, Catalogue of World Exhibitions from the Meiji Period, Tokyo: Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties,1997), 9–10, 13–17 and 18–22.

8. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 181.

9. Ibid.

10. Several scholars have discussed the relationship between Bracquemond's ceramic designs and republican politics, particularly through Bracquemond's association with the Société Jing Lar, a republican drinking club comprised of Japanese enthusiasts, including Philippe Burty. See Jean-Paul Bouillon, ‘“A Gauche:” Note sur la société du jing-lar et sa signification’, Gazette des Beaux Arts (March 1978): 111–2; Bernard Bumpus, ‘The “Jing-Lar” and Republican Politics: Drinking, Dining, and Japonisme’, Apollo: The International Magazine of the Arts (March 1996): 13–16; and Sonia Coman, ‘The Bracquemond-Rousseau Table Service of 1866: Japoniste Ceramics and the Realignment of Medium Hierarchies in Nineteenth-Century French Art’, Journal of Japonisme 1 (2016): 29

11. Goncourt later described the Service Rousseau as porcelaine de Creil, a statement that frames the faïence tableware as ‘porcelain-like’. See Edmond de Goncourt, Journal des Goncourts: Mémoires de la vie Littéraire, series 2, volume 2, book 5 (Paris: Charpentier, March 31, 1878).

12. Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley: University of California, 2010), 21–6.

13. Johann Friedrich Böttger is said to have produced the first European porcelain in eighteenth-century Dresden. This development and subsequent material experimentations in Europe are discussed in Histoire artistique, industrielle et commerciale de la porcelaine, the first comprehensive history of porcelain published in France. See Albert Jacquemart, Edmond Le Blant and Jules-Ferdinand Jacquemart, Histoire artistique, industrielle et commerciale de la porcelaine (Paris: J. Techener, 1862), 43–9.

14. Finlay, 49.

15. Hugh Honour, Chinoiserie: the Vision of Cathay (London: J. Murray, 1961), 96–9;and Finlay, The Pilgrim Art, 286.

16. Philippe Burty, La Poterie et La Porcelaine au Japon: Trois Conférences (Paris: Quantin, 1885), 5.

17. Paul Rouillon, A propos d'une faïence républicaine de la date 1868 (Paris: Manginot-Hellitasse, 1875), 9. See also Jules Champfleury, L'Histoire des faiences patriotiques sous la Révolution (Paris: Dentu, 1867), iv.

18. Burty, La Poterie, 5.

19. Though not produced in Japan until the seventeenth century, porcelain is the first representative ceramic form of Japan in France. See Yuko Imai, ‘Changes in French Tastes for Japanese Ceramics’, Japan Review 16 (2004): 2. Burty acknowledged the important distinction between pottery and porcelain in Japan during his public lectures of 1885. As Burty himself suggested, this Japanese distinction between ceramic forms had been unknown or unconsidered in France until well after 1878. This contention reinforces the idea that, throughout the Second Empire, porcelains were considered the ceramic exemplars of Japan and were celebrated, primarily, for their surface decoration. See Burty, La Poterie, 2–5.

20. Albert Jacquemart, Edmond Le Blant and Jules-Ferdinand Jacquemart, Histoire Artistique, Industrielle et Commerciale De La Porcelaine (Paris: J. Techener, 1861), 289–90. See also Burty, who would claim: ‘le Japonais est plus artiste et le Chinois plus fabricant’. Burty, Chefs-d'oeuvre des arts industriels, 210.

21. Burty, Chefs-d'oeuvre des arts industriels, 210.

22. As tin-glazed earthenware, the Service Rousseau possesses a grey tint. This grey, rather than stark white, is also a hallmark of Japanese porcelain. See Léon-Victor Daguzan, Études sur L'Exposition de 1867, 96.

23. Discussing this connection, Rouillon claimed of Bracquemond's Assiette: ‘Elle se rattache directement à ce mouvement de recherché et de collection des monuments de la céramique symbolique et parlante qui commence vers 1850, avec M. Champfleury pour promoteur, et qui sans doute continuera jusqu’à l’épuisement de leur curiosité.’ Rouillon, A propos d'une faïence républicaine de la date 1868, 12.

24. Jules Champfleury, L'Histoire des faiences patriotiques sous la Révolution (Paris: Dentu, 1867), v.

25. Thus, it is not incidental that in his first review of the ceramic service Burty referred to the earthenware set as ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’ – a service from the land of Montereau. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 181.

26. Philippe Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle: L'exemple de François-Eugène Rousseau’, in La France Regarde le Japon: L'Influence des peintres japonais sur les arts décoratifs français dans la second moitié du XIXème siècle, Exposition catalogue for the Tokyo National Museum and Musée d'Orsay (Tokyo: Nikkei, 2008), 128.

27. Recall Daguzan's quote that likened the base colour of the Service Rousseau to a grey day in December: ‘Ce disque de terre cuite, qui, dans sa nudité, représente un ciel gris de décembre, devient sous la main du décorateur une divertissante image.’Daguzan, Études sur L'Exposition de 1867, 346

28. Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle’, 128.

29. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 181. For an explanation of this process, see also Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle’, 131.

30. Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle’, 129.

31. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 182.

32. Daguzan, Études sur L'Exposition de 1867, 346.

33. Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle’, 131.

34. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 181.

35. Ibid.

36. ‘La disposition aléatoire n'est pas dans la tradition céramique japonaise, ce qui signifie que la source d'inspiration n'est plus la porcelaine, comme c’était le cas au XVIIIème siècle, mais exclusivement l'art graphique.’ Laurens d'Albis, ‘Les débuts du japonisme céramique en France de Bracquemond à Chaplet’, Société des Sèvres: Amis du musée nationale de céramique 7 (1998): 14.

37. Hiroshige and Hokusai would also serve as source material for Rousseau's 1874 collaborative dinnerware, the Service Lambert. However, when compared to Bracquemond's 1866 design, Henri Lambert's treatment of these Japanese sources reveals a greater attention to illusionism and the direct copying of original Hiroshige and Hokusai prints. The formative show, La France regarde le Japon: l'influence des peintres japonais sur les arts décoratifs français dans la second moitié du XIXème siècle, was instrumental in identifying many of the direct sources for both the Service Rousseau and Service Lambert. See Exposition catalogue for the Tokyo National Museum and Musée d'Orsay (Tokyo: Nikkei, 2008).

38. Though Bracquemond applied to work at Sèvres as a ceramic decorator in 1865, he was rejected by the factory minister due to his lack of expertise with the medium. Ultimately, he appealed to Rousseau as a collaborator, for his skills as a printmaker and his interest in ceramic design. See Jean-Paul Bouillon, Félix Bracquemond et les arts décoratifs: Du japonisme à l'Art nouveau (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2005), 47.

39. Bouillon, ‘“A Gauche”’, 47–8.

40. Burty would also note the aesthetic importance of Hokusai for illustrated albums, citing the Manga specifically as a vital sourcebook for ceramic ornament in Japan. Thus, the dominant presence of the Manga in Bracquemond's repertoire signals an interest in Japanese albums, at the same time that it draws an equivalence between Braccquemond's dishes and Japan's decorative ceramics. Burty, Chefs-d'oeuvre des arts industriels, 210.

41. Burty, ‘Un Service de terre Montereau’, 181.

42. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken Books, 1968), 78.

43. Thiébault, ‘Art de la table et japonisme dans la France de la seconde moitié du XIXème siècle’, 131.

44. Michael Marrinan and John Bender's analysis of the role of ‘material whiteness’ in the space of an illustrated page has compelling cross-applications to Bracquemond's accentuation of the white ceramic ground in his service. See, in particular, their discussion of encyclopaedic pages: ‘This paradoxical notation signals to an attentive viewer that the white of the page is neither a void nor a space but simply a material whiteness. This whiteness is an arena of potentiality that fosters connections without fixing them or foreclosing thought experiments.’ John B. Bender and Michael Marrinan, The Culture of Diagram (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 23. See also Simms, ‘Drawing on Japan’, 3.

45. Daguzan, Études sur L'Exposition de 1867, 346.

46. This conjured experience recalls Baudrillard's analysis of simulation: ‘It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes.’ Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 2.

47. Laurens d'Albis shared this insight during an interview and viewing of his collection in his Paris home. See also Laurens d'Albis, ‘Les débuts du japonisme céramique en France de Bracquemond à Chaplet’, Société des Sèvres: Amis du musée nationale de céramique, no. 7 (1998): 14

48. I am indebted to Pamela Warner for this insight into the visual effect of the entire service.

49. For an explanation of French dining rituals, see Jean-Louis Flandrin, Arranging the Meal: A History of Table Service in France (Berkeley: University of California, 2007), 90–105; see also Finlay, The Pilgrim Art, 266.