从 20 世纪开始，中国佛教石窟寺的雕塑遭到严重破坏并流散海外，当时正值政治动乱时期，缺乏官方对文化遗产的监督和保护。国际学者对佛寺与石窟遗址的兴趣及其考察的照片引起了国外收藏家与古董商的注意，结果导致了造像的破坏和流失。
天龙山石窟早期的照片最初发表于1922 年，当时的石窟除了自然风化的痕迹外，原貌仍较完整。不久以后，人们开始凿取造像并运到国外，盗掘活动持续了十多年的时间，一直延续到20 世纪30 年代。本文梳理了天龙山石窟造像通过国际艺术市场流往私人手中或进入博物馆收藏的近代史，同时介绍了一些参与文物买卖和捐赠过程的重要人物以及当时的社会和政治语境。
Introduction: An Early History of Collecting Chinese Buddhist Sculptures
There has been great interest in recent years in museum history, the formation of museum collections, and the personalities involved. The acquisition of a work of art by a museum often involves a series of transactions and figures acting in various roles — as dealers, private collectors, museum directors, curators, trustees, and donors. Particularly, the collecting of Chinese art has received special attention and historical study in recent years with a number of publications that focus on these people—their philosophies, backgrounds, practices, and means of acquisition of Chinese works of art — and on the resulting museum collections of Chinese art in Europe and North America. They have been written from the point of view of collecting Chinese art in the West as an aspect of modern social and cultural history, and the importance to Chinese visual and material culture in the modern Western world.
Already in the seventeenth century, Europeans learned of Chinese arts and regarded Chinese tea, porcelain, and silk as luxuries. A thriving China trade that arose between China and Europe created a huge outflow of financial resources for which the Europeans attempted to compensate through the development of gold and silver mines in the New World and the cultivation of opium in India. The opium trade and China’s objections to the harmful effects of widespread opium addiction to its society brought about war with Britain. One of the results was an event at the end of the Second Opium War that was emblematic both of the declining power of the Qing dynasty and the evergrowing, uncontrollable desire for Chinese art and cultural objects in the West: the looting of the Yuanmingyuan palace in Beijing. In October 1860, British and French troops destroyed Yuanmingyuan and took however much they could carry away as the spoils of war and awarded prize money to the looters after holding an auction at the site. The looted material was presented to the rulers of France and Britain, and was featured in London and Paris auctions with the identification of “Summer Palace” for years to come. A second major event that brought many works of art from China to the West was the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 by an international military force that subsequently occupied the Imperial Palace or “Forbidden City” and resulted in further large-scale looting of the imperial collections. By this time, the Hague Conventions of 1898 had created a series of international agreements outlawing plunder, so in the auctions that followed these objects were not identified as plunder taken from Beijing.
After the European victories in the Opium Wars, treaty ports opened up with the establishment of foreign legations and residencies. These conditions attracted increasing numbers of foreigners to travel to China. Many of those who came for work as consular staff, missionaries, and for trade and industry became enamored of Chinese culture and its beautiful works of art and craftsmanship. Some stayed on to collect and sell the art. In America and Europe, the growth of industry and private wealth created a burgeoning market for porcelain, sculptures, and paintings for furnishing the homes of the newly rich. The self-made newly wealthy sought to increase their social standing by building large houses with expensive furnishings and by sponsoring community projects and institutions. Museums provided a place to meet with members of prominent families and opportunities to learn about art, as well as contribute to growing museum collections.
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