Page 56 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

From the Summer Palace 1860 41
known by the name of ‘Yuan-Ming-Yuan’. . . . I was able to secure a few fragments
sufficiently large to show the style of the decoration.” 18 Arguably then, like these
fragments, some if not all of the surviving fountainheads could very well have been
removed after the initial looting and burning of the garden. Indeed, the only verifiable
provenance is that offered in the Christie’s Hong Kong 2000 catalogue, where it states
that two of the heads were sold previously in New York on October 9, 1987 (monkey)
and London on June 13, 1989 (ox).
However, as Anne-Marie Broudehoux has noted, it has suited the Chinese govern -
ment to focus attention on the sacking and destruction of Yuanmingyuan in 1860,
rather than the aftermath and to inflate the importance of the bronze heads and other
objects that can be provenanced to this event, as a way of raising nationalist feeling
following the fallout of Tiananmen Square. She writes:

Forgotten for nearly a century, Yuanmingyuan was recently reopened to the public
to stand as a symbol of Western imperialism in China. Facing a major legitimacy
crisis in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the Chinese state traded
its socialist rhetoric for a more fundamental call for nationalism, reinforced by
re-invocation of national humiliations at the hands of foreign nations and repeated
warning about the duplicitous and predatory West. 19

Indeed there is not a little irony in that, the objects chosen by the Chinese government
as representing both the sacking and looting of Yuanmingyuan should not be in any
way Chinese (except in their manufacture). Furthermore, these and the other relics
repossessed by the State are the products of a superimposed Manchu culture, rather
than a purely Chinese one. 20 This aspect has recently been explored by the artist
Ai Weiwei, in his Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, a public installation touring the
United States and Europe inspired by the fountainheads from Yuanmingyuan.
Interviewed about his work and the hyperbole around the original heads, Ai Weiwei
had this to say: “I don’t think the zodiac heads are a national treasure. They were
designed by an Italian, made by a Frenchman for a Qing dynasty emperor who was
the ruler of China, but actually invaded China. So if we talk about national treasure,
what nation are we talking about?” 21
Of course when and how Yuanmingyuan-related material was taken and left China
is one thing. But establishing that provenance is another. The designation “From the
Summer Palace, Peking” attached to the many public auctions of so-called Summer
Palace loot that took place in the years immediately following 1860 and added to
museum acquisition records, is a familiar one. But the term conflates their provenance
to this event, often with little but circumstantial evidence. During the decades following
1860, “From the Summer Palace, Peking” offered a mark of distinction; more recently
it has proven to be a less welcome accolade, but one less easy to shake off. 22
Like the fountainheads and the architectural fragments acquired by Wylde for the
V&A, a few objects have a clear provenance to Yuanmingyuan and 1860. One such
is the gold ewer described in a number of contemporary accounts as having been
presented to the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, General Sir James Hope
Grant (1808–1875). 23 It was presented to him by the prize committee following the
public auction of the British loot at the Huangsi Temple in Beijing, on October 11
and 12. 24 Hope Grant’s diary notes: “The prize committee secured a beautiful gold
jug, from which the Emperor of China used to pour rose-water upon his delicate