Hugo's former residence is located at No.6 Place de Vosges in Paris. From 1832 to 1848, he lived and wrote here, leaving behind a lot of manuscripts and illustrations about Notre Dame de Paris, Les Miserables and other works, as well as a China arranged by him for his confidante Juliette Drouet (whose first and last names begin with J and D).
Hugo's former residence ▲ Picture | Hai Xia
"China Complex" of European celebrities and nobles
Hugo has a special complex for China. He has never set foot in China, but he is familiar with the history of China and the art of China, and he is obsessed with the art of China. The antique China Poetry House he built for Juliet is the embodiment of his Chinese complex.
according to Hugo's six volumes of Guernsey Notebook, he bought China works of art 48 times in order to decorate his poetry house, which cost about 3, francs.
Poetry House Living Room▲ Picture | Hai Xia
Hugo's love poetry house is more China-style than many China families. Chinese ochre tones, Chinese furniture, Chinese porcelain, Chinese palace lanterns, Chinese bedding, and a large wall of blue and white porcelain. Everything makes people who come to this room dumbfounded and amazed. In her letter to Hugo, Juliet said, "I want to thank you, my dear husband. You have arranged such a wonderful room for me, which not only makes every visitor like it, but also deserves respect as a temple. Your creativity transcends art and gives every place special feelings ... That is to say, I must look back again and express all my respect for this rich China style and lyrical house."
In this China Poetry Room built by Hugo, there are countless writers and artists shuttling back and forth, such as Lamadine, Dumas, Merimee, Flaubert, Georges Sang, Balzac, Berlioz, etc. It can be said that it is "the living room of French literature in the first half of the 19th century".
victor hugo ▲
Hugo's love for China is so deep that he can't let go of a love poem house. He is a person who truly loves China culture and Chinese civilization from the heart. After he learned that the British and French allied forces burned the Yuanmingyuan and plundered China's treasures, Hugo angrily stood up and denounced the brutality and barbarism of the invaders, accusing his country and Britain of being robbers and barbarians, demanding the invaders to return the cultural relics immediately and writing a letter.
Part of the translation of Letter to Captain Butler about the Anglo-French Allied Expedition to China:
Somewhere in the world, there is a world miracle. This miracle is called Yuanmingyuan. Art has two sources: one is ideal, which produces European art; One is fantasy, which produces oriental art. The position of Yuanmingyuan in fantasy art is just like that of Parthenon in ideal art.
This building as big as a city is the crystallization of generations. Who was it built for? For the people of all countries. Because everything created by years belongs to human beings.
this miracle has disappeared. One day, two robbers from Europe broke into the Yuanmingyuan. One robber robbed property, and another robber set fire to it. What they did to the Parthenon in the past, now they are doing to the Yuanmingyuan, the only difference is that they have done it more thoroughly and beautifully, so that there is nothing left. If we add up the treasures of all the cathedrals in Europe, it may not be as great as this magnificent museum in the East.
We Europeans are civilized people, and China people are barbarians in our eyes. This is what civilization does to barbarism.
The manuscript "Letter to Captain Butler on the British-French Allied Expedition to China" ▲
Blue and white porcelain in the eyes of European celebrities and nobles
There are many China elements in Hugo's love poetry house, but only China's blue and white porcelain is his favorite. On a large wall of the living room of the poetry house, there are blue and white porcelain that he bought many times, and there are also blue and white porcelain on many shelves.
Hugo pays more attention to every piece of blue and white porcelain, and even Hugo compares every piece of blue and white porcelain to "China". Once a maid accidentally broke a vase, Hugo was so heartbroken that he wrote a poem "Broken Vase": "God, the whole' China' fell to pieces on the ground!"
Hugo also compared blue-and-white porcelain to a beautiful girl, and wrote a poem saying: Your little sister from the tea country had a strange and beautiful dream. There is a big city in the sky, China, cui wei, which is a suburban girl of Tiancheng. We are in the dark in Paris, and you are looking for it. Innocently, we are looking for a splendid garden and the wonder of proud as a peacock. You laugh at our zenith. There are dwarfs happily tracing the pure blue with your porcelain white eyes.
Blue-and-white lotus bowl ▲ Picture | Palace Museum < p As early as a long time ago, European celebrities, aristocrats and all walks of life were extremely obsessed with China culture and China porcelain, proud of the China porcelain in the hall, and took the collection and exhibition of China porcelain as the fashion.
It is said that in the early 18th century, when Louis XIV held a ball in Versailles, France, he appeared in a Chinese-style eight-lift sedan chair, which attracted admiration from the audience. A member of the royal family in Portugal loves blue-and-white porcelain very much, and embeds 261 pieces of blue-and-white porcelain purchased at a huge sum of money on the roof. You can see it every day when you look up, and its spectacular scene is jaw-dropping.
The ceiling of the Portuguese royal palace inlaid with 261 pieces of China blue-and-white porcelain ▲
Picture | Cheng Yong's love for blue-and-white porcelain by European celebrities and nobles
1. Crazy purchase of blue-and-white porcelain
According to statistics of relevant foreign archives:
During the thirty-four years from the establishment of the Dutch East India Company to Kangxi, 2 million pieces of China porcelain were trafficked to Europe, mainly including blue-and-white, colorful and colorful porcelain in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
in the 12th year of Yongzheng, 68, pieces of porcelain were sold.
about 4, pieces of porcelain were shipped to Britain in the thirty-ninth year of Qianlong.
during the fifteen to forty-six years, Qianlong sold 1.1 million pieces of Swedish porcelain. .....
Blue-and-white Hua Niaowen covers the jar ▲ Picture | Palace Museum
Second, blue-and-white porcelain is a favorite of European royal families and nobles
After China porcelain was introduced to Europe, it was immediately loved by royal families, nobles and people from all walks of life. Blue and white porcelain has become the best among many porcelains and their treasures. There is a poem that says: Come on, look at this porcelain. What attracts me is its splendor. It comes from a new world and I have never seen such beautiful art.. How attractive, exquisite and extraordinary, from China, its native land.
1. Take blue and white porcelain as a symbol of identity. In Europe, blue and white porcelain is very expensive, but it is still hard to find a bottle. Every time it was introduced, it was snapped up by the royal family and nobles.
They put blue and white porcelain in palaces, mansions and showrooms to show the elegance of their status and to show off as the property of the royal family.
According to relevant records, among the more than 3, pieces of China porcelain collected in the Spanish Palace, most of them are blue and white porcelain; There is a main hall covered with blue and white porcelain in the famous Novella Palace in Portugal, and China porcelain is an extremely important item in the property list of the Queen of Portugal. French King Louis XIV loved blue-and-white porcelain most. In 167, he established the Palace of Versailles, and later built the Palace of Toriano in the palace, which is famous for displaying China blue-and-white porcelain collected by Louis XIV.
2. List blue and white porcelain as a valuable gift. To put it simply, blue and white porcelain is the most extravagant national gift given to each other by European royal families. It is a very high-standard dowry for princesses when they get married, and it is also the object used by royal nobles to show off their wealth.
3. Imitate China blue and white porcelain. Blue and white porcelain in China is expensive and the output is scarce. It triggered the creative desire of the European royal family, and various countries decided to set up workshops to imitate blue and white porcelain. Among them, the Dutch "Royal Delft" factory is one of the best, known as "Delft Blue", and the blue and white porcelain they made has now become a national treasure and specialty of the Netherlands.
Dutch blue-and-white porcelain Delft Blue ▲
China blue-and-white porcelain is precious and really expensive!
The preciousness of blue and white porcelain in China makes the world intoxicated; The expensive blue-and-white porcelain in China has broken the hearts of royal families all over the world.
When French King Louis XIV established the China Porcelain Palace, the national treasury was frequently in a hurry because he bought blue and white porcelain for many times.
There is also a crazier king of Saxony-Augustus II. In 1717, in order to marry a porcelain-loving queen, he exchanged 6 personal guards and his good neighbor, the King of Prussia, for his collection of 127 blue vases from the Kangxi period in China in the Qing Dynasty. These blue and white porcelain exchanged by guards are still displayed in the Wingel Palace Museum in Dresden.
The reason why Augustus II is crazy is that according to the statistics of his collection list, at the peak of his collection, Augustus II owned as many as 24,1 pieces of oriental porcelain. He specially built the China Palace and the Japan Palace to store these porcelain, and numbered them into the warehouse himself. Therefore, he was called "one of the best collectors of oriental porcelain" by later generations.
Augustus II ▲
China's rare treasure-Yuan Qinghua
In 21, the blue-and-white porcelain "Guiguzi Down the Mountain" pot of Yuan Dynasty was auctioned by American antique dealers for 23 million RMB, setting a record for the highest auction of China cultural relics and even Asian works of art in history.
Yuan blue-and-white Guiguzi Mountain Map Pot ▲ Yuan blue-and-white porcelain ware, the main decoration of which is "Guiguzi Mountain Map", describes the story of Sun Bin's master Guiguzi, who promised to go down the mountain at the repeated request of Su Dai, the envoy of the State of Qi, to rescue Sun Bin and Duguchen, the famous Qi soldiers who were trapped by the State of Yan.
In 211, another blue and white Yuan piece was sold for 84 million (HK$) at Citic Auction Company in Macau. This blue and white flower is very similar to the cultural relic "Xiao He Chasing Han Xin under the Moon" which is forbidden to go abroad in China. According to cultural relics experts, there are three pieces of this blue and white Yuan * * *, one of which is kept in Nanjing Museum, and the other is missing.
It was once estimated by experts in the industry that the Yuan Blue and White "Xiao He Chasing Han Xin under the Moon" of Nanjing Museum would be worth at least 1 billion yuan if it appeared in the auction market. There are four reasons for the high price:
-Gong Shi in Qing Dynasty
a blue-and-white porcelain, which intoxicated the whole world and made European aristocrats scramble to snap it up, and was regarded as an object to show off their wealth and identity, which was probably unexpected by our ancient people. Perhaps this is the state-owned boundary, and art has no boundaries, as Hugo said: "Everything created by years belongs to human beings."
China Garden/Boucher /1742 ▲
Chinese ebony painted cabinet ▲
Jean-Henri Ritzner, a famous French furniture master, made it for Marie Antoinette, the queen of Louis XVI, in 1783.
Writing: Guan Ru
Note: Some pictures in this article are from the Internet, so they are deleted!