The interior of a Chinese house

Interior of a Chinese pavilion The painting is watercolours on paper, behind a glass, from the collection of the Lubomirscy, the former owners of the castle; 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 painting shows a rectangular room in perspective. It includes a niche separated by a low arch, and closed off with a paper wall. The walls and ceiling are grey (sliding walls – fusumi), divided with battens (vertical for the walls, horizontal for the ceiling). The wall areas are framed dark blue with corner bas reliefs styled to look like flowers. At the walls are white and blue pots in red metal supporting stands, with flowers that blossom white and rose. Behind them, also symmetrically, there are shelves (an imitation of a fireplace), with openwork side walls, cut out in trefoil motifs. On the shelves there are vases, sepets and a plate with mango fruit. There is a door opening in the wall on the left, on the right there is a window covered with blue paper. The second room (a niche) is closed off with a wall described by blue paper with colour flowers painted on it. Above the window there is a decorated overdoor field – yellow Chinese characters on a blue background. In front of the arch that constitutes the passage to the niche, there is a wooden podium. On it, there stands a black table, with symmetrically arranged two green and blue mats. At the podium there are two low tables and two vases. The entire floor is clad in grey tiles. All pictures from the series are framed the same way – wooden, with overlaid braidwork and rosettes in the corners; 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.