The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 29, 2026

An albumen print in warm brown tones depicts an architectural Chinese street scene. Occupying the left half, a building features intricate latticework and decorative roof brackets shaped like scrolling dragon heads. Below, a man sits near a doorway marked with white Chinese characters. Centrally, a tall, carved vertical pole stands beside a figure shadowed in a doorway. Slender poles rise in the background against a pale, featureless sky.

Streets and Shops in the Tartar city of Pekin

October 1860
photographer

Felice A. Beato

(British, 1832–1909)
China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
albumen print
Image: 25.5 x 27.2 cm (10 1/16 x 10 11/16 in.); Mount: 36.9 x 41.7 cm (14 1/2 x 16 7/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 2026.60
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Felice Beato was the first photographer to show the human cost of war: the corpses of fallen soldiers.

Description

Beato was invited in February 1860 to travel to China to accompany British troops and photograph the concluding events of the Second Opium War. The works in this album are the earliest images that document the progress of a military campaign through a sequence of dated and related photographs. Part of that story, for Beato, were the corpses of the Chinese soldiers who had been killed by European troops. The album also contains the first photographs of Beijing.
  • -October 8, 2026
    Stephan Loewentheil, New York, NY, sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art
    October 8, 2026-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • {{cite web|title=Streets and Shops in the Tartar city of Pekin|url=false|author=Felice A. Beato|year=October 1860|access-date=29 October 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2026.60