LONDON.- A series of rare photographs and maps of China, little seen in public before, will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s London auction of Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History on 30 April 2015. Created nearly 150 years ago, they include some of the earliest images of the country, bringing to light a historic China and illuminating a landscape now changed beyond recognition.

Highlights of the auction include: a rare large-scale historic Chinese woodcut map of Beijing; 60 photographs of 1870s Xiamen; 100 of 1870s Ningbo and over 100 of 1860s Beijing. All the works will go on public exhibition for the first time at Sotheby’s London from 25– 29 April 2015.

Photographs of historic China are highly desired by collectors around the globe. The auction record for any historic photographs of the region currently stands at £349,250 for a rare album of photographs by John Thomson titled Foochow and the River Min which sold at Sotheby's on 15 November 2012. One of an edition of only 46, this album was offered for sale by descendants of the original tea-merchant owner, Oliver Latham, who won the album in a pigeon match in Foochow in April 1873.

A RARE HISTORIC MAP OF BEIJING, est. £30,000-40,000 / HK$360,000 – 480,000
A rare, intricate map of Beijing created by a Chinese craftsman in either the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, measuring over a metre wide.

No other copy can be traced in the National Library of China, the Library of Congress, the British Library, nor the National Library of France.

Most likely based on an earlier prototype from the Ming Dynasty, the map shows the forbidden city, temples, palaces, gardens, rivers, wells, gates to the city, all clearly labelled.

60 PHOTOGRAPHS OF 1870S XIAMEN, est. £40,000-60,000 / HK$480,000 – 720,000
An album of historic photographs showing life in late nineteenth century Amoy (modern day Xiamen) and the surrounding areas. The album includes 27 views of Amoy, 27 of Gu Lan Yu (Gulangyu), four of Hai Zang (Haicang), one of Quanzhou, and one of Tong’an. Many were taken by St Julian Hugh Edwards, the most significant photographer working in Amoy at the time, and “arguably the most colourful and controversial Western photographer in nineteenth-century China”

100 PHOTOGRAPHS OF NINGBO FROM c. 1870, est. £40,000-60,000 / HK$480,000 – 720,000
A comprehensive album of photographs of Ningpo (modern day Ningbo) and the surrounding areas showing the temples, pagodas, Buddhist monks, Chinese junks and more.

Many were taken by Major J.C. Watson (c. 1834-1908), an Australian officer in the AngloChinese Artillery and later superintendent of police at Ningpo. Watson gifted the album to Mrs John Truelson, a merchant’s wife living in Ningpo at the end of the nineteenth century.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF 1860S BEIJING, est. £40,000-60,000 / HK$480,000 – 720,000
A large-scale album comprising over 100 photographs of Peking (modern day Beijing) and the surrounding areas.

It includes 33 photographs of Ningpo, eight of Tien-dong, and one each of Poo-to (Pu-du) and Tienstsin, taken by Major J.C. Watson and Dr John Dudgeon, a British missionary doctor and amateur photographer who moved to Peking (Beijing) in 1864.