拍品專文
Several interesting portrait studies including Japanese girls in traditional dress, studio portraits of girls at a picnic party, gamblers, a Japanese pilgrim at the foot of Fujiyama, a Japanese dinner party, men and women at the hairdresser, girls drinking sake, a Japanese postman, and a fine portrait of a Japanese Yeomen in the Guard House.
Examples of several of the images in this album can be found in the albums Views of Japan, 1868 by Felice Beato in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Beato established himself as a photographer in Japan in 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. Beato's photographic business continued through the 1870s although Beato himself claimed to stop photographing in 1867. He is known to have taken photographs after this date, but it seems likely that his studio was run on a daily basis by his assistant, H. Woolett an others during the 1870s.
In 1866 a fire raged through the city and it has been presumed that most of Beato's early negatives and prints perished. Certainly there are portraits and views which have been dated to the period before 1866 which rarely, if ever, appear in the albums dating from 1867-8. Others, including portrait groups appear in both, with the quality of the prints in the later albums often comparable with early prints and therefore unlikely to be copies. Two fine albums, dated 1868, in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in which each photograph is accompanied by a printed descriptive text provide a model of the post-fire type in which a selection of commercially available prints was offered with descriptive text and title page. See also the following lot. The technique of vignetting used in many of the 1868 portraits is rarely seen in the earlier prints.
Examples of several of the images in this album can be found in the albums Views of Japan, 1868 by Felice Beato in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Beato established himself as a photographer in Japan in 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. Beato's photographic business continued through the 1870s although Beato himself claimed to stop photographing in 1867. He is known to have taken photographs after this date, but it seems likely that his studio was run on a daily basis by his assistant, H. Woolett an others during the 1870s.
In 1866 a fire raged through the city and it has been presumed that most of Beato's early negatives and prints perished. Certainly there are portraits and views which have been dated to the period before 1866 which rarely, if ever, appear in the albums dating from 1867-8. Others, including portrait groups appear in both, with the quality of the prints in the later albums often comparable with early prints and therefore unlikely to be copies. Two fine albums, dated 1868, in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, in which each photograph is accompanied by a printed descriptive text provide a model of the post-fire type in which a selection of commercially available prints was offered with descriptive text and title page. See also the following lot. The technique of vignetting used in many of the 1868 portraits is rarely seen in the earlier prints.