Le cabinet des Chinois de Marie Leszczynska

In 1761, Queen Marie Leszczynska, wife of Louis XV, had a room with Chinese paintings created at the heart of her private apartment in Versailles, making a number of the compositions herself with the help of a team of painters. Skilfully combining Chinese and Western sources of the 17th and 18th centuries, she composed picturesque scenes that were not merely decorative, but traced the main phases of tea cultivation, notably the hand-withering of the leaves and their storage in crates for export. More than a fantasised China, the choice of iconography reveals the fascination of European elites with the Chinese empire in the 18th century, and especially with its agriculture, the products of which were sent around the world.