| William Chambers,who was an important architect in the Georgian Period of Britain,continued and developed the continental tradition of classical architectural design.Regarded as the last architect of neoclassicism in the 18th century in Britain,Chambers made important contributions to the development of British architecture.At the same time,Chambers’ contribution to the art of gardening goes down in history.He not only initiated the picturesque school of gardening in Britain,but also contributed to the continental naming of "Anglo-Chinois Garden" in a real sense,which greatly promoted the progress of the garden reform movement in Britain and the transmission of Chinese gardening art in the West.No matter at that time or since,his international influence was closely related to China,especially his writing on Chinese gardens.His writing of Chinese garden directly made him one of the most popular theorists on gardening in Britain in the second half of the 18th century,thus establishing his important position in the field of gardening in Europe.This thesis analyzes and explores Chambers’ writing of Chinese garden,for the purpose to clarify his empirical thought on gardening.The introduction introduces comprehensively the research background and academic significance of this thesis,analyzes the results and their shortcomings of the researches on Chambers’gardening thought at home and abroad,and explains the basic thread followed and research methods adopted in this thesis.Chambers’writing of Chinese garden clearly reflects the short-lived upsurge of introducing and learning Chinese culture in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries to promote ideological enlightenment and social transformation,which presents the ideological charm and special value of Chinese culture.In the present context of revitalizing Chinese culture and steadying cultural confidence,it is of great practical significance to study Chambers’ writing of Chinese garden and examine the influence of Chinese culture on the West.The first chapter clarifies the Chinese origin of Chambers writing the Chinese gardens by reviewing the relationship between Chambers and China.Chambers’writing on Chinese garden originated from his travels to the East.As an employee of the Swedish East India Company in his early years,Chambers sailed twice to Guangzhou and spent two years in China,where he developed a keen interest in Chinese arts.More importantly,during his traveling in China,Chambers not only came up with the idea of abandoning the business for "art",but also collected a lot of first-hand information about Chinese arts.Since then,he forged an inseparable bond with China.In the second half of the 18th century,when Chambers officially became an architect,the Chinoiserie design in Europe went from bad to worse.Most creators,in order to satisfy the curiosity of the public,made up,added and mixed various exotic elements at will,which caused the Chinoiserie products to become grandiloquent,and therefore was sharply criticized by western scholars.Faced with this situation,Chambers soon collected what he had seen and heard in China and published a book,Design of Chinese Buildings,Furniture,Dress,Machines and Utensils,attempting to restore the reputation of the Chinese arts.Chambers,who believed that Chinese arts had obvious originality,accuracy and rationality,while the conceptions on Chinese arts in Europe was not yet well understood and perfected,implicitly affirmed the superiorities of Chinese arts.Chambers’ writing of Chinese garden began in such a context about China.The second chapter,by combing the context of Chambers’ writing of Chinese garden,reveals the intention and attempt contained in his writing to expound his thought of gardening.From 1757 to 1773,Chambers described the planning thought of the Chinese gardens by writing three texts of gardening,namely,Of the Art of Laying Out Gardens Among the Chinese,A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening and An Explanatory Discourse,by TAN CHET-QUA,OF Quang-Chew-fu.However,Chambers did not truthfully give an account of his experiences in Chinese gardens in these texts.Based on his unique insight into the gardening art,he added a lot of fictional content,tried to weaken the criticism of European gardens,promote mildly his own thought of gardening by writing the Chinese gardens,and then provided a reference for improving the aesthetic taste of British gardening.Therefore,Chambers’writing of Chinese garden was not to simply introduce the art of Chinese gardening,but contained an ambition of constructing his own ideological system of gardening:the Art of Laying Out can be basically seen as Chambers’ overview of what he saw and heard in Chinese gardens;A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening reflects Chambers’ attempt to use the Chinese gardens to criticize and improve the taste of English gardening;An Explanatory Discourse presents Chambers’theoretical conception of planning the British national landscape.The third chapter reveals Chambers’ view of regarding exciting the emotion as the aim of gardening by expounding the basis of sensationalism of English empirical aesthetics and the ideological interaction between Chambers and Burke.The "Chinese garden" served as a medium for Chambers to express his thought on gardening,while the theoretical core that dominated the development of Chambers’thought of gardening was the British empirical aesthetics.In the 18th century,when the empiricism aesthetics was developing vigorously in Britain,the aesthetic inquiry of the whole society was filled with the keynote of sensationalism.After the exploration and construction of many philosophers such as Locke,Shaftesbury,Hutcheson and Hume,the empiricism aesthetics had become a mature theoretical discourse in the second half of the 18th century in Britain.Under the profound influence of this aesthetic thought,Chambers,based on the empirical aesthetics,formed the gardening view of sensationalism,and devoted to shaping the aesthetic effect of attracting attention,stimulating imagination and triggering emotion in gardens.Especially benefiting from Addison’s distinction among the attributes of "the great","the beautiful",and "the uncommon" and Burke’s exploration of "the sublime" and "the beautiful",Chambers focused on constructing three kinds of scenes,interpreting the three aesthetic attributes of natural landscape,which clearly reflected his gardening view of sensationalism:"the pleasing scene" represents the concept of "the beautiful";"the terrible scene" represents the concept of "the sublime";"the surprizing scene"represents the concept of "novelty".It can be said that Chambers’writing of Chinese garden is the representation of the British empirical aesthetics on the art of gardening,and forms a relationship of mutual reflecting with the latter.The fourth chapter,by tracing the theoretical venation of the formation of "the picturesque" and Chambers’early experiences of traveling and studying in Italy,clarifies the picturesque characteristics of Chambers’garden writing and reveals Chambers’ artistic taste of pursuing the picturesque effect.Benefited from the Chinese thought of gardening,Chambers held a firm position of naturalism.This position reflected Chambers’recognition and admiration of the aesthetic value of primitive nature."The picturesque" in Britain represented a disordered,rough and varied aesthetic quality of primitive nature in the 18th century.It was not only the product of the British empiricism aesthetics discovering the beauty of nature,but also deeply influenced by the expression of Italian landscape painting on nature.Therefore,it had become an aesthetic quality of nature that was widely recognized by the British natural aesthetics in the 18th century,as well as a kind of landscape effect pursued by Chambers in the construction of gardens.In the writing of Chinese garden,Chambers highlighted the irregularity of nature,the diversity of landscape,the dilapidated form of buildings and the pictorial features of expression,thus shaped the picturesque characteristics of landscapes and increased the perceptual charm of gardens.The emphasis Chambers made on the visual characteristics of landscape,not only contributed to the debate on the relationship between garden and painting in the British academic circle,but also provided ideological inspiration for the deepening of the theory of the picturesque.The fifth chapter through exploring the essence of Chambers’ criticism on European garden styles expounds Chambers’ methodology of gardening that "art supplies the scantiness of nature".In Chambers’ time,there were two main styles of garden in Europe,namely the continental regular gardens and the native English natural gardens.The former was based on the classical aesthetic theory of harmonious order,while the latter pursued simple nature.Taking the effectiveness of the gardens’arousing emotion as the evaluation criterion,Chambers neither approved the blind pursuit of rigid order in continental regular gardens,nor did he support the strict imitation of ordinary nature in native English natural gardens.However,Chambers did not completely deny these two styles.He not only thought highly of the positive factors of regular gardens,but also affirmed the beneficial elements of natural gardens.He critically absorbed the superiorities of both in perceptual level,thus formed a kind of comprehensive complementary method of gardening,namely "art must supply the scantiness of nature".Chambers believed that the only way to construct a perfect garden is to harmonize nature and art,and to supplement and improve the simple nature with the artifices of the arts.Kew Garden,which was presided over by Chambers and completed in 1763,interprets Chambers’ gardening thought of combining art and nature. |
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