Unknown

Duke Kong Greeting Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart at Qufu, China

About this artwork

This extraordinary photograph illuminates the meeting between two remarkable men - Duke Kong and Stewart Lockhart. Lockhart was the British commissioner administering Weihaiwei, leased from the Chinese in the province of Shandong. He was one of the first westerners that Duke Kong met, and this appears to be the moment when he, and his only European supporter, Captain Barnes, arrived. The Duke has evidently come to meet them with an offer of beer after a long, dusty ride and is looking over his glass at Lockhart with evident interest and pleasure. Here the two men are connecting on an attractive, human level, arguably humanising the tedium and arrogance of imperial ambitions.

Updated before 2020

  • artist:
    Unknown
  • title:
    Duke Kong Greeting Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart at Qufu, China
  • date created:
    1903
  • attributed to:
  • materials:
    Gelatin silver print
  • measurements:
    19.00 x 14.10 cm
  • object type:
  • credit line:
    The Stewart Lockhart Photographic Archive, on loan from George Watson’s College to the Scottish National Photography Collection
  • accession number:
    PGPLA 23
  • gallery:
  • subject:
  • artwork photographed by:
    Antonia Reeve
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