Thomas Child

Many of Thomas Child’s views are the only surviving photographic records of iconic historic and architectural masterpieces before their destruction. Foremost among these are his images of Yuanmingyuan. Despite the catastrophic losses at Yuanmingyuan, Child preserved the site’s beauty and unparalleled grandeur. His camera preserved images of the last vestiges of what remains an icon of Chinese national identity. When he made these photographs in the 1870s, Child may not have been fully aware of the place of Yuanmingyuan in the cultural heritage of China, but it was his intention to preserve images of unique monuments.

The Princes Porch was one of two gates connecting the European and Chinese sections of Yuanmingyuan to the Palace and was likely a popular meeting point for Manchu noblemen. This rare photograph depicts one of two elaborately carved and embellished marble gates that served as an entrance to the stone screen of Guanshuifa. In the “20 Views of the European Palaces,” the gateway appears in engraving no. 16, Guanshuifa zhengmian 16, (Viewing the Great Fountain main façade). As the scholar Vera Schwarcz states, Child’s photograph “stands as an eternal monument to a moment of lost greatness”.

This view conveys the immensity of the imposing city walls of Beijing. In his unpublished journal Thomas Child wrote, “[The wall] is [actually] built of two walls 18 inches thick of unburnt bricks; in between these walls it is filled in with dirt and paved with bricks on the top. The gates are closed every night at dark and opened at daylight, in the morning. There is a watch house at the foot of each gate full of soldiers. The wall is ascended by a slope on each side of the gates. From the top of the wall [one can] overlook the whole city, the housing being only one story high. The only high places that meet the eye are the emperor’s pleasure grounds, the Drum tower + the bell tower.”