Chinese Buddhist Art in the Ten Thousand Chinese Things Exhibition (1842), London

In 1842, American collector Nathan Dunn’s Chinese collection was exhibited at Hyde Park Corner, London. Buddhist art constituted a substantial part of the exhibition, featuring three colossal Buddhas, a Chinese pagoda, temple architecture, and even Buddhist priests. Through visual and iconographic analyses of Chinese Buddhist art in the exhibition catalogues, I pose the following questions: How did the Hyde Park exhibition interpret Buddhist art? What attitudes toward Buddhism, and by extension, China, did the Hyde Park exhibition reflect? How did this exhibition impact other international exhibitions and European artistic depictions of Chinese Buddhist art? I argue that the British curator removed Chinese Buddhist art from its ritual context, inventing novel iconographies and pseudo-ritual scenes. This exhibition reinforced a narrative of China as backward while asserting Britain’s imperial superiority. Such representations, influenced by early Jesuit travel books and Chinese export art, shaped later European art and international exhibitions on China.