One of the funniest side-stories with this year’s “Where Is Kate” phenomenon was the focus on Rose Hanbury, Rose’s marriage to the Marquess of Cholmondeley, and the art and antiquities in their grand estate, Houghton Hall. As older photos of Rose and David circulated on Western social media, Chinese social media users also started looking closely at the photos, and Chinese art people soon discovered the Cholmondeley’s vast Chinese art collection. Many of the pieces of Chinese art within Houghton Hall looked as if they were from the Qing Dynasty, and Time Magazine ran a deep dive into why that is. David Rocksavage (the Marquess) is descended from the wealthy Sassoon family, a family which was very active in import/export in Asia. Time Mag’s art historians didn’t know if the Qing Dynasty pieces were “looted” or simply purchased more than a century ago and brought to England. While Time Mag covered the story, the British media mostly sat on their hands about Rose and David, like always. They waited until now to publish any kind of coverage, and they likely waited until the Cholmondeleys made a statement about the art:
It is one of the country’s most stunning stately homes – a 106-room mansion that draws thousands of visitors each year to admire its architectural history. But now Houghton Hall, family seat of David Cholmondeley, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley, is under scrutiny from Chinese internet sleuths who claim the neo-Palladian pile contains antique valuables looted from the Qing Dynasty.
Images of the Grade I listed house, commissioned by Sir Robert Walpole in 1722, have gone viral on social media sites, despite assurances from the estate that no items among the Hall’s contents had been stolen. In China, armchair detectives have taken to TikTok to accuse the Marquess, 63, and his wife Rose Hanbury, 40 – neighbours of the Prince and Princess of Wales – of living with pillaged loot they inherited from his illustrious ancestors, the Sassoons.
Nicknamed ‘the Rothschilds of the East’, the Sassoon family amassed a fortune dealing in textiles, tea, and opium across India and China in the 19th Century. The height of their business coincided with China’s ‘century of humiliation’ from 1839 to 1945, where millions of valuable artefacts were plundered by British and French soldiers. The Qing dynasty ran from 1644 to 1911. Identifying which items from this era were stolen and which were legally acquired is difficult but that has not stopped baseless allegations being made against the Cholmondeleys. One person on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like site, shared images of the Hall’s interior and said: ‘The Sassoons started to accumulate their wealth by looting late Qing China.’
While David, the current Marquess, is descended through his father from the Sassoons, the estate said the items in question were not heirlooms that were inherited through his family. A Houghton Hall spokesman said: ‘The items of Chinese origin in the photographs to which you refer were purchased by the Walpole family, the original owners of Houghton, during the 18th Century, mid-Qing Dynasty, mostly through agents rather than in China directly. The items were not looted but mostly made for export to Europe. It would be hard to find a country house collection, whether private or owned by the National Trust, that does not exhibit items acquired in or from China. This is true of most European and American collections.’
That statement is so interesting – Houghton Hall’s spokesperson (likely Rose or someone working closely with her) did a deeper dive into the provenance of the Chinese art housed in Houghton and they came up with “it wasn’t David’s Sassoon grandmother, it was actually several more generations back.” I actually didn’t know that wealthy English families were purchasing Chinese art – through a third party – back in the 18th century. I mean, colonizers gonna colonize, although Houghton Hall’s spokesperson seems to be indicating that Qing Dynasty artists were making pieces specifically for export to Europe? I don’t know enough about the history of Asian art export, but it will be interesting to see if actual historians chime in on this and try to fact-check the Cholmondeleys’ story.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.