The interior of a Chinese house

Interior of a Chinese pavilion The painting is watercolours on paper, from the collection of the Lubomirscy, the former owners of the castle, behind a glass, it depicts the interior of a Chinese-style pavilion. Princess Lubomirska, wife of marshal Lubomirski, commissioned a series of such depictions to show how to arrange summer houses and pavilions in Chinese style, which was popular until the end of the 18th century. This is confirmed by descriptions of these depictions in the castle inventory list of 1802. The interior is shown in a perspective, and is made up of three rooms separated by archways. The first room is closed off on the right with a grey wall bearing a gentle, white pattern; it is divided using vertical slats. The wall bears an oval entranceway, through which the neighbouring room can be seen. The roof above the layout is divided by vertical battens. Two lamps with shades made of grey silk are suspended from the ceiling. On the right wall there hangs a rectangular painting with a rocky landscape. At the wall there are plants in crates, and a table; on it, there is a vase and a plate with mango fruit. The wall closing off the interior on the left is regularly divided by horizontal and vertical slats. The surfaces created this way are filled with white, translucent paper in a geometric pattern. At the centre of the wall, an entrance opening is seen. At the wall, there are four wooden chairs with blue and green pillows. The entire pavilion has moving walls (fusumi), the floor is made of grey tiles. Through the flat arch way one can see two farther rooms – in the first, at the walls, there are two blue vases; in the other, on a raised platform, there are two identical vases arranged symmetrically. The wall closing off the last chamber has a painting depicting a rocky landscape. All pictures from the series are framed the same way – wooden, most likely made in Vienna. The paintings stem from the end of the 18th/ beginning of the 19th century, and were most probably made in China as reference templates. They are displayed in the bedroom of the Chinese Apartment, in the first floor of the castle of Łańcut.