This painting of a Pekingese dog was produced by artrist Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl in 1861. While we don't know for sure whether the dog was male of female, we know its name was Looty. At the time, Pekingese dogs were found in China, where they were bred for their small size and their resemblance to lions.
When Anglo-French invaders stormed, looted, and burned the Summer Palace during the Second Opium War in 1860, they found five of these Pekingese dogs guarding the corpse of a lady who had committed suicide upon hearing the pillaging taking place outside. The dogs were brought back to England, the tiniest of them—historians note she weighed around three pounds—was gifted to Queen Victoria, who renamed her “Looty” in reference to the spoils of war.
The renaming sealed her fate as a stolen object of intense fascination.
To modern ears, the name sounds like a confession of a crime, but the British Empire was downright proud of taking treasures from conquered lands. Read about Looty and what she came to symbolize at Artsy. -via Nag on the Lake