Lot Essay
There is unfortunately no surviving archival family evidence to link this Imperial cloisonne enamel incense burner to 'Chinese' Gordon. However, the tiger has, pasted to the base, an old printed but undated catalogue entry identifying it as coming from the estate of his sister, Miss M. A. Gordon. Inside the tiger was discovered an auction catalogue description of the bronze, again tantalisingly undated, but clearly relating to the object itself, with a lot number.
Research in Christie's archives for records of sales from the Gordon family revealed that on 25th January 1894, the estate of Miss M. A. Gordon was sold at Christie's King Street. Lot 14 in this property was indeed the lot referred to in the cutting found hidden within the tiger's body. The tiger was sold then for an unusually high ¨40, 19 shillings, to a purchaser E.B., believed to be Ernest Bluett, founder of the distinguished London antique dealers Bluett and Son, established in 1894. Sadly the firm's records only survive from about 1907, but on the internal evidence from the auctioneer's book, where "E.B." is a regular and familiar buyer always referred to only by his initials, it is reasonable to suppose that Bluett was the buyer. This would also explain why there is no particular family record of its Gordon provenance apart from the applied label, if this auction purchase was resold shortly after January 1894 and it then disappeared into a private collection. Nothing is known of its subsequent history for exactly 100 years, until it was rediscovered in early 1994
Although best-known for his exploits and unnecessary but heroic death in the Sudan in 1885, at the hands of the Islamic Mahdi, General Charles George Gordon's most valiant and successful military endeavours took place in China. If it had not been for his romantic death, caused by the lacklustre efforts of the British Government under Gladstone to send a relieving force (which arrived three days too late), he would still remain in the public mind as the quintessential military man, "Chinese Gordon", rather than the heroic British martyr to the infidel, "Gordon of Khartoum"
Gordon spent four years in China, between 1860-1864. Arriving there as a Captain in the British Army, he left China as the Commander in Chief of the Emperor's Ever Victorious Army with the rank of Field Marshal, but still as a British Lieutenant-Colonel. He was sent to assist other Crimean War and Indian Imperial Government troops, to suppress the army of the "Tai Ping Tien Ku" (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace), a Christian rebel militia which the Imperial Army had proved unable to subdue without Western aid. But the Chinese Emperor changed the whole shape of Western involvement, by arresting, imprisoning and torturing to death four British diplomats sent to Beijing in 1859 to collect an Imperial War indemnity. The Joint British-French declaration of war, and landing of an Expeditionary Force under the leadership of Lord Elgin, gave the newly-arrived Gordon an immediate role in one of the most controversial political acts of the 19th Century; the reprisal looting and sacking of the Emperor's Summer Palace, eight miles to the north-east of the Forbidden City in Beijing, as an avowedly direct riposte to the personal prestige of the Emperor
Gordon was initially sent there to make inventories of the contents of the Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the 'Garden of Perpetual Brightness'. But the French contingent in the Joint Expeditionary Force had got there shortly before the British, and a letter survives from Gordon after his first visit there, "as he sat in the small pagoda allotted to him, drinking tea out of a tin cup and writing home" (R. MacGregor-Hastie, A Biography of General Gordon):
You will scarcely conceive the magnificence of this residence or the tremendous devastation the French have committed... smashing everything in a most wanton way. The throne room was lined with ebony, carved in a marvellous way. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and kinds, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all colours, embroidery and in a word as much splendour as you would see at Windsor...
All Gordon's biographers seem to believe that Gordon was profoundly uninfluenced by any sorts of souvenirs, mementoes, rewards, or trophies of his military successes. It is possible therefore that Gordon acquired this tiger, and the other significant Imperial-taste works of art sold from his sister's estate in 1894, as gifts from the Emperor when he left China in 1864, feted by the Court and the recipient of a Commemorative gold medal. The cynic will suggest that, like many of his French and British companions at the sacking of the Summer Palace, Gordon had dutifully followed the instructions of Lord Elgin 'to save what could be saved' before Gordon's own Engineers blew the Palace up in 1860. Either way, there are good reasons for believing that this Imperial tiger came to Europe directly from one of the Celestial Emperor's palaces in Beijing well over a century ago; and the attribution to 'Chinese' Gordon himself is highly plausible, a personal and historical link with one of Victorian England's greatest popular heroes
Research in Christie's archives for records of sales from the Gordon family revealed that on 25th January 1894, the estate of Miss M. A. Gordon was sold at Christie's King Street. Lot 14 in this property was indeed the lot referred to in the cutting found hidden within the tiger's body. The tiger was sold then for an unusually high ¨40, 19 shillings, to a purchaser E.B., believed to be Ernest Bluett, founder of the distinguished London antique dealers Bluett and Son, established in 1894. Sadly the firm's records only survive from about 1907, but on the internal evidence from the auctioneer's book, where "E.B." is a regular and familiar buyer always referred to only by his initials, it is reasonable to suppose that Bluett was the buyer. This would also explain why there is no particular family record of its Gordon provenance apart from the applied label, if this auction purchase was resold shortly after January 1894 and it then disappeared into a private collection. Nothing is known of its subsequent history for exactly 100 years, until it was rediscovered in early 1994
Although best-known for his exploits and unnecessary but heroic death in the Sudan in 1885, at the hands of the Islamic Mahdi, General Charles George Gordon's most valiant and successful military endeavours took place in China. If it had not been for his romantic death, caused by the lacklustre efforts of the British Government under Gladstone to send a relieving force (which arrived three days too late), he would still remain in the public mind as the quintessential military man, "Chinese Gordon", rather than the heroic British martyr to the infidel, "Gordon of Khartoum"
Gordon spent four years in China, between 1860-1864. Arriving there as a Captain in the British Army, he left China as the Commander in Chief of the Emperor's Ever Victorious Army with the rank of Field Marshal, but still as a British Lieutenant-Colonel. He was sent to assist other Crimean War and Indian Imperial Government troops, to suppress the army of the "Tai Ping Tien Ku" (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace), a Christian rebel militia which the Imperial Army had proved unable to subdue without Western aid. But the Chinese Emperor changed the whole shape of Western involvement, by arresting, imprisoning and torturing to death four British diplomats sent to Beijing in 1859 to collect an Imperial War indemnity. The Joint British-French declaration of war, and landing of an Expeditionary Force under the leadership of Lord Elgin, gave the newly-arrived Gordon an immediate role in one of the most controversial political acts of the 19th Century; the reprisal looting and sacking of the Emperor's Summer Palace, eight miles to the north-east of the Forbidden City in Beijing, as an avowedly direct riposte to the personal prestige of the Emperor
Gordon was initially sent there to make inventories of the contents of the Yuen-Ming-Yuen, the 'Garden of Perpetual Brightness'. But the French contingent in the Joint Expeditionary Force had got there shortly before the British, and a letter survives from Gordon after his first visit there, "as he sat in the small pagoda allotted to him, drinking tea out of a tin cup and writing home" (R. MacGregor-Hastie, A Biography of General Gordon):
You will scarcely conceive the magnificence of this residence or the tremendous devastation the French have committed... smashing everything in a most wanton way. The throne room was lined with ebony, carved in a marvellous way. There were huge mirrors of all shapes and kinds, clocks, watches, musical boxes with puppets on them, magnificent china of every description, heaps and heaps of silks of all colours, embroidery and in a word as much splendour as you would see at Windsor...
All Gordon's biographers seem to believe that Gordon was profoundly uninfluenced by any sorts of souvenirs, mementoes, rewards, or trophies of his military successes. It is possible therefore that Gordon acquired this tiger, and the other significant Imperial-taste works of art sold from his sister's estate in 1894, as gifts from the Emperor when he left China in 1864, feted by the Court and the recipient of a Commemorative gold medal. The cynic will suggest that, like many of his French and British companions at the sacking of the Summer Palace, Gordon had dutifully followed the instructions of Lord Elgin 'to save what could be saved' before Gordon's own Engineers blew the Palace up in 1860. Either way, there are good reasons for believing that this Imperial tiger came to Europe directly from one of the Celestial Emperor's palaces in Beijing well over a century ago; and the attribution to 'Chinese' Gordon himself is highly plausible, a personal and historical link with one of Victorian England's greatest popular heroes