Page 61 - Collecting and Displaying China's Summer Palace in the West

46 Nick Pearce
Lieutenant Frederick Luard, an officer of Fane’s Horse, where “an enamelled screen
. . . received twice the highest bid earned by his best jades.” 49 The Times reported a
similar state of affairs: “jade ornaments may be obtained at half the price in England
which they always command in China, for the stone, which is found in the moun -
tains of Tartary, and which is of a pale sickly colour, has never been a favourite in
Europe, though regarded with an almost superstitious appreciation by the Chinese.” 50
Wells seems genuinely to have developed an admiration and knowledge of the ma -
terial and initially this interest may have been due to the availability of this highly
crafted stone on the market, the relatively modest prices that they commanded, both
of which gave him the opportunity to build a collection in an area where there was
little competition.
In terms of his sources, there is no indication from surviving annotated sales
catalogues of Yuanmingyuan material that Wells bid directly, so he is likely to have
purchased them through dealers. There were few of these in the 1860s. William Hewett
& Co., who supplied Chinese material to the 1862 International Exhibition in London,
appear as bidders, as does William Wareham (1824–1887), a self-styled “dealer in
curiosities and articles of vertu” and in the 1860s, trading from 14 and 15 Castle
Street, Leicester Square, London. 51 Like many of these early art dealers, Wareham’s
career began somewhat differently, first as a silversmith in the mid-1840s, then a
“Water Proofer” in the 1850s, before setting up as an art dealer around 1860. 52 His
career as an art dealer flourished, enabling him to buy Whitehall Manor House in
Hook, Surrey, but came to a sudden end on August 26, 1887, when he and 14 others,
drowned in a pleasure boat accident off Ilfracombe in Devon. Wareham acquired a
range of Chinese material from the Yuanmingyuan sales in that decade from 1861
and Wells would have been a likely customer. The pity is that Wells did not publish
anything relating to his collection or hardstones more generally. That would not
happen for another 20 years after Wells’ death. 53
This chapter has attempted to explore some of the issues surrounding the prove -
nance of objects to Yuanmingyuan and specifically the sacking of the Palace in 1860.
Although in recent years there has been a move by the Chinese Government to exploit
the humiliation suffered by China during the Second China War and to attempt to
locate objects taken from Yuanmingyuan and surrounding imperial gardens, the latter
54
in most cases still proves to be a somewhat fruitless exercise. While there is circum -
stantial evidence for linking certain objects to the 1860 Campaign, not least the proven
link to individuals who were participants, for most objects the provenance is by no
means secure. The war and its aftermath offered opportunities for looting other sites
and indeed for acquisition in other ways and once objects entered the marketplace
the provenance becomes even more tenuous. At the time, “From the Imperial Summer
Palace, Peking,” was a convenient catch all for objects new to a Western market in
the nineteenth century, but as a secure basis for provenance, let alone the political
struggle by the Chinese Government around the restitution of cultural patrimony, the
approach remains problematic.

Notes
1 Christie’s Hong Kong, The Imperial Sale, April 28, 1996. See also Hevia, Chapter 2.
2 The Imperial Sale, Introduction.
3 Christie’s Hong Kong, The Imperial Sale, April 30, 2000, lots 516 and 517.