(CNTV)

Among Beato’s portfolio images from 150 years ago that are unique … of a China changed forever by time.

These images were shot at a time of traumatic change in China, Beato came to the country as a 28 year-old war photographer, along with invading Anglo-French forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

One photograph on the auction catalogue’s cover page is the only surviving record of the Summer Palace, pictured shortly before it was torched by British and French troops.

"With private collectors on the phone from China among the bidders, there’s every likelihood these pictures will join a growing global tide of Chinese antiquity returning to its country of origin. And that say experts here at Sotheby’s is exactly the way it should be," CCTV correspondent