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Lot Essay
Several interesting portrait studies and landscapes including Japanese market-traders, dancing girls, barbers, groups in the streets, a rice shop and a good portrait of Prince Okudaira.
Beato established himself as a photographer in Japan 1863-64, after accompanying the English and French forces to China earlier in the decade. His artistic and travelling companion, Charles Wirgman, accompanied him to Yokohama where their partnership survived until the late 1860s. In 1866 a fire raged through the city and it has been presumed that most of Beato's early negatives and prints perished. Thirty-one of the photographs in this album are accompained by a printed descriptive text. This was typically used in Beato's post-fire commercially available albums. The album has prints of both pre and post fire work including a series of vignetted portraits rarely seen in the earlier work.
Beato established himself as a photographer in Japan 1863-64, after accompanying the English and French forces to China earlier in the decade. His artistic and travelling companion, Charles Wirgman, accompanied him to Yokohama where their partnership survived until the late 1860s. In 1866 a fire raged through the city and it has been presumed that most of Beato's early negatives and prints perished. Thirty-one of the photographs in this album are accompained by a printed descriptive text. This was typically used in Beato's post-fire commercially available albums. The album has prints of both pre and post fire work including a series of vignetted portraits rarely seen in the earlier work.