The intriguing title of Isabelle Tillerot’s monograph both piques curiosity and encapsulates the thesis that its text develops in detail. Deploying astute observations and subtle insight, this study follows the evolution of room decoration in seventeenth and eighteenth-century European, principally French royal and aristocratic dwellings. Its focus is on the close relationship between the ornamental designs of these spaces and the paintings embedded within them, projects that required the joint efforts of artists and artisans of varied specializations and status. Ultimately it asserts that the full flowering of rocaille—the author rejects the nineteenth-century term “rococo”—decor coincides with the adoption of a specific set of formal characteristics derived from East Asian art. Following a warmly appreciative foreword by Mark Ledbury, the introduction promises a focus on the transcultural impact of Chinese and Japanese painting, although this subject is not approached until the fourth chapter, halfway through the text.

In the first chapter, “The Places of Painting,” Tillerot introduces the theme of interactions between paintings and the objects and surfaces surrounding them. Concentrating on the importance of carved and gilded frames, molding, and paneling, she considers ”the décor as the place of painting” (62). The text then provides detailed descriptions of rooms in the seventeenth-century Parisian hôtel de Lauzun and hôtel Lambert, the latter decorated by Eustache Le Sueur and Charles Le Brun, that present characteristically Baroque da sotto in su perspective, trompe l’oeil grisailles of sculpture, and fictive architecture.

Chapter two, “Decor and Time,” examines aspects of this pairing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Parisian interiors. The painted illusion of outside distance visible through an opening in a wall is discussed first. Practiced in classical antiquity, this genre of painting was revived in the early modern age, linking eras divided by a vast span of time. Next considered is the possible chronological difference between ornamental arrangements and the paintings they enclose. Generally, this involved the placement of an earlier composition into a later decorative scheme, but the reverse procedure was also employed. In either situation, Tillerot contends, the ornamental carving, stucco works, and trompe l’oeil features surrounding the paintings relegated them to secondary status.

In the early eighteenth century a painting received more attention when it was from the same era as its surroundings. Increased townhouse construction in the first half of the century created further opportunities for paintings, which were emphasized by frames that mediated between them and the carved decorations. Ceiling painting having become unfashionable late in the seventeenth century, its imagery became limited to overdoors and areas above mantels and mirrors; in the Princess’s Oval Salon in the hôtel de Soubise the restricted space allotted to Charles Joseph Natoire’s works dictated their compositions.

The third chapter, “The Trajectory of the Arabesque,” traces the progression and varieties of this quintessential rocaille decorative component. Characterizing it as the ornamental form “that has effected the greatest transformation of the role of the picture” (109). Tillerot lists its typical elements, including “abstract, floral, linear, and geometrical figures” in the form of “cartouches (a term left undefined), foliated scrolls, [and] meanders of ribbon” (110). This is followed by many examples supporting the assertion that the arabesque allowed artists freedom from the constraints that architectural structuring had placed on their work. Contributions by a series of ornamentist artists are examined; these include Jean I Bérain, whose “airy compositions give greater prominence to empty spaces than to markings” (111). The term “grotesque” is employed here, also without definition, as companion to “arabesque.”

Singeries, further noted in the chapter, were included in the work of Claude III Audran beginning in 1709; representational painters, including Jean Antoine Watteau and Nicolas Lancret, furnished figural images that were surrounded by his arabesques. The art of Juste Aurèle Meissonnier, to which the term rocaille was first applied, receives attention, as well as that of sculptor Nicolas Pineau, characterized by complex undulating scrolls; both artists notably favored asymmetry. Works by Jacques de Lajoüe elaborated the framing decoration by incorporating extensive figural features and favoring the cartouche. Describing a drawing by sculptor-designer Pierre Edme Babel, Tillerot observes that use of the arabesque enables the establishment of a new formal unity between a pictorial image and its frame.

The fourth chapter, “Asian Motifs in European Decoration,” is devoted to the characteristics of chinoiserie—European art and material culture based on Asian, especially Far Eastern, imagery. Following the claim that interior design was the principal creative form to reflect Asian models, Tillerot details the panels painted by Watteau for the château de la Muette. She notes that his sources were imports from East Asian delete and Chinese drawings sent to France by Jesuit missionaries as well as engravings illustrating Johan Nieuhoff’s account of the first Dutch embassy in China. Watteau’s depictions became sources for images on numerous objects, including furniture, screens, porcelain figurines, textiles, and wall paintings.

Tillerot finds the singerie and chinoiserie combined with European imagery painted by Christophe Huet in the Château de Chantilly and elsewhere to be superficial rather than displaying genuine absorption of Chinese and Japanese approaches. She explores European fascination with premier East Asian materials, detailing collections of porcelain and noting the particular popularity of blue-and-white style and celadon. Often adorned with gold, imported lacquer objects were also coveted. Some European chinoiserie cabinets decorated with Chinese themes and figures displayed imitations of these luxury substances. 

In Chapter five, “The East Asian Idea of Taste,” we finally come to the crux of Tillerot’s thesis. Adopting the concept of “taste” as an entry point, she distinguishes between enthusiasm for Asian objects and subjects on the one hand and “elements of a comprehensive non-European approach to design and representation” that “elicited a more enduring refashioning of the mind” (177) on the other. By the mid-eighteenth century the transition between these two forms of reception had begun, with East Asian imports modified by being cut down and given gold, silver, or bronze accessories as well as being displayed in collections. The juxtapositions provided a surprise for the eye, engendered pleasure, and contributed to developing taste.

This is followed by the observation that Chinese art was first integrated as a subsidiary feature in interior decoration, kept at the edges of rooms, tapestries, and wall and ceiling designs; similarly early Chinese rooms created in Europe were at the outer areas or entirely outside of buildings. Examples presented include the Japanese Cabinet at the Hermitage Old Palace at Bayreuth and the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm Castle in Sweden, but the Chinese village created for Catherine the Great at Tsarskoye Selo is not mentioned.

Tillerot then contends that East Asian employment of emptiness in design had a fundamental impact on the West, demonstrated in lacquerwork cabinetry. This choice elicited praise for whiteness in Chinese and Japanese gardens, known from imported objects and travelers’ accounts. After recounting the contributions to Chinese garden theory by Jean Denis Attiret and especially by William Chambers, Tillerot details its goal: the integration of natural features and architecture with the passage of time experienced by one walking through the location, accomplished through shaping formal elements to create surprise impressions.  She affirms the significant effects of interior decoration adopting the whiteness that evokes distances in Chinese gardens and painting; when not left white, walls were painted in pale hues. Various greens, suggesting landscape, were also employed.

The sixth chapter, “Another Way of Representing the World,” cites the contrast between East Asian art and the symmetry and regularity characterizing ancient Greco-Roman creations.  Following is a discussion of textiles, among the first chinoiserie productions, with attention to the highly successful tapestry series, The Story of the Emperor of China. The earliest European work with a Chinese subject, these compositions still display traditional Western perspective and horizon lines. The same structure marks the works of François Boucher, who owned “an immense collection of Asian” (222) items.

Tillerot then considers European adoption of Asian ambiguous, indefinite portrayal of space accompanied by chinoiserie motifs and surrounded by rocaille arabesques. Backgrounds are left plain, shadowing is eliminated, and compositions are asymmetrical, with empty, open areas. Typically, in Jean Pillement’s drawings small vignettes float in a void. Paintings he created or inspired harmonize with adjoining arabesque areas by employing similar background hues. The spectator’s gaze is guided in new ways within and around the image, ornamentation having been freed from the control of the architectural structure. Chinoiserie’s association with the rocaille, Tillerot observes, kept it from being taught in the academies. The status of ornamentist artisans was as a result intensely debated but ultimately they achieved recognition.

The short conclusion, titled “Asian Caprice, or Making an Island of the Picture,” adds some observations that might appropriately have appeared earlier in the text: we learn that the “Chinese picture begins in its lower part and ends in its upper part,” that “everything that tends toward the distance . . . is represented high on the surface” (248) and that its visible elements suggest those that are invisible. In her characteristically evocative language this section sums up the author’s thought-provoking thesis concerning the transformative impact of East Asian art on Western design.