colonial exposition

Engraving the Grotesque Buddha, 1660–1850 Exhibit

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive pop-up exhibit, entitled “Engraving the Grotesque Buddha, 1660–1850” will be on display November 22, 2025 at CGIS S050 at Harvard University.

Introduction to the Exhibit

Through the 1650s Buddhist material culture remained an enigma to much of Europe. Yet, in the late 1660s, Amsterdam-based publisher Jacob van Meurs (1619/1620–c.1680) started publishing illustrated books devoted to China and Japan. These works proved popular and helped introduce Buddhist material culture to broader European audiences.

Van Meurs’ influence was substantial. The engravings produced by his workshop were widely reproduced in publications over the next century. Some illustrations continued to be reused well into the nineteenth century until the invention of photography and adoption of photomechanical reproduction finally rendered the illustrations outdated. Consequently, some of the images from van Meurs’ workshop exhibited a strong media echo for nearly two-hundred years.

Notably, many of the images of Buddhist icons and Buddhist monks were embellished, often veering towards the uncanny, ghoulish, or grotesque.

The exhibit will be comprised of eighteen prints published between 1665 and 1863 that show the lasting influence of Jacob van Meurs’ printed works on the visual literacy of Buddhist material culture in the West.

Selected Prints

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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1906 French Colonial Exposition Annam Pavilion Postcard

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Following the success of colonial pavilions at World’s Fairs, France initiated its own independent Colonial Expositions in the 1890s. In Marseilles in 1906, famous architectural sites from French Indochina were reconstructed, including a towering Buddhist pagoda representing Annam.

Jules Charles-Roux, organizer of the colonial portions of the Paris World’s Fair of 1900 and head of the 1906 exposition, showcased the pagoda behind the main Indochina gate. The pagoda was also set at the head of a replicated “Hanoi road” populated with real inhabitants of the protectorate.

Held during the height of the postcard craze, the exposition grounds opened its own dedicated postcard pavilion. While the cancellation is unclear on the obverse, this card appears to have been sent from Marseilles; its destination was Port-Vendres, further down the Mediterranean coast.

While often obscure in exposition literature, the “Annam Pavilion” was a replica of the pagoda from Tien Mu Temple, in the city of Hue, which was founded in 1601. The pagoda was a popular subject of souvenir photographs sold by studios throughout French Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin.

The following year, in 1907, Paris held another colonial exposition, but recreated a different pagoda to represent Annam. A photo illustrated book of the 1906 Marseilles Exposition is digitized by the University of Aix-Marseille, viewable here: https://tinyurl.com/mczsvn6s.

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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1922 French Colonial Exposition Angkor Wat Replica Postcard

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In 1922, the organizers of the Colonial Exposition in Marseille accomplished the impossible – a plaster recreation of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat. While only a partial replica, the central tower, built on a wooden skeleton, was 177 ft. (54m) tall and towered over the exposition grounds.

Cambodian “natives” were also brought in to add authenticity to the fabricated environment. The golden-clad Cambodian royal dance troupe proved to be a “must see” attraction; curiously, they performed the Orientalist opera Lakmé by composer Léo Delibes.

Cambodia was a protectorate of France since 1863 and French troops had already been sending home picture postcards of the real Angkor Wat ruins. Dated July 8, 1922, this card depicting Angkor Wat’s replica was prepared, but never mailed.

This stamp is a non-postal commemorative stamp, one of twelve designs made for the 1922 Marseille exposition. It depicts a royal dancer wearing a crown shaped like a Southeast Asian Buddhist stupa; such crowns are also seen in the stone reliefs decorating Angkor Wat.

While plasters casts made in Cambodia were used in Marseille, the replica temple had many alterations, creating only a semblance of reality. For more on the use of plasters casts and dancers, see Isabelle Flour’s “Orientalism and the Reality Effect: Angkor at the Universal Expositions” (2014).

The Buddhas in the West Material Archive is a digital scholarship project that catalogues artifacts depicting Buddhist material culture for Western audiences. It’s comprised of prints, photos, and an assortment of ephemera and other objects. For a brief introduction to this archive, visit the main Buddhas in the West project page.

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