Sotheby’s has announced a fall sale of Chinese art which includes a bronze sculpture looted from the Yuanmingyuan by French and British troops. From Reuters:
A rare bronze horse’s head plundered by British and French troops from Beijing’s old Summer Palace will be put on sale next month in an auction likely to fetch $10-million (about R72-million) and stir nationalist feelings in China.
The statue, which belongs to a Taiwan collector, is one of 12 bronze heads of zodiac animals which graced a water-clock fountain in the old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, which was destroyed by the British and the French in 1860. [Full text]
