Photographs: Japan through Western Eyes – Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried

September 2023

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Shiba Temple, Japan
c. 1870
Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

After the latest burst of exhibition postings there seems to be a paucity of exhibitions that I would like to post on until the end of the year… and as I have been pushing it pretty hard lately and not feeling so well (needing a hip replacement), now is the time to take things a little easier.

While the photographs taken by Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried of Japanese culture and landscape portray a Western, romanticised, exoticised, staged and persistently Eurocentric view of Japan (linked to Edward Said’s concept of “Orientalism” which denotes the exaggeration of difference, the presumption of Western superiority, and the application of clichéd analytical models for perceiving the “Oriental”, namely those societies and peoples who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East world) … there is no doubting the sheer beauty of some of the photographs and the dignity of the sitters.

As such the photographs remain valuable documents of a time far removed from present day Japan but linking Japanese culture to long past ancestors and ways of life.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
The Ford at Sakawa Nagawa, Japan
c. 1870
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Ferry boat, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Miyanoshita Onsen, Japan
c. 1870
Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Garden, Japan
c. 1870
Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Single-storied Pagoda, Hachiman Shrine, Kamakura
1867-1868
Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Getty Center
Public domain

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Samurai of the Satsuma Clan, during the Boshin War period (1868-1869)
1860s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Public domain

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Noble in dress, Japan
c. 1870
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander, wearing traditional armour
c. 1868
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Wellcome Library
Public domain

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Samurai, Yokohama
1864-1865
Albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Purchase, Robert Rosenkranz Gift 2005

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Buddhist Priests
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Barbers
1868
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Getty Center
Public domain

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Pipe makers
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Mukojima, Tokyo
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Mukojima, Tokyo
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Uyeno Park, Tokyo
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

Felice Beato

Felice Beato (1832-1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian-British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato’s travels gave him the opportunity to create images of countries, people, and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represents the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers, and his influence in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.

 

Early life and identity

A death certificate discovered in 2009 shows that Beato was born in Venice in 1832 and died on 29 January 1909 in Florence. The death certificate also indicates that he was a British subject and a bachelor. It is likely that early in his life Beato and his family moved to Corfu, at the time part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato was a British subject.

Because of the existence of a number of photographs signed “Felice Antonio Beato” and “Felice A. Beato”, it was long assumed that there was one photographer who somehow photographed at the same time in places as distant as Egypt and Japan. In 1983 it was shown by Chantal Edel that “Felice Antonio Beato” represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continues to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image.

 

Japan

By 1863 Beato had moved to Yokohama, Japan, joining Charles Wirgman, with whom he had travelled from Bombay to Hong Kong. The two formed and maintained a partnership called “Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers” during the years 1864-1867, one of the earliest and most important commercial studios in Japan. Wirgman again produced illustrations derived from Beato’s photographs, while Beato photographed some of Wirgman’s sketches and other works. (Beato’s photographs were also used for engravings within Aimé Humbert’s Le Japon illustré and other works.) Beato’s Japanese photographs include portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes, and a series of photographs documenting the scenery and sites along the Tōkaidō Road, the latter series recalling the ukiyo-e [17th-19th century woodblock prints and paintings] of Hiroshige and Hokusai. During this period, foreign access to (and within) the country was greatly restricted by the Tokugawa shogunate. Accompanying ambassadorial delegations and taking any other opportunities created by his personal popularity and close relationship with the British military, Beato reached areas of Japan where few westerners had ventured, and in addition to conventionally pleasing subjects sought sensational and macabre subject matter such as heads on display after decapitation. His images are remarkable not only for their quality, but also for their rarity as photographic views of Edo period Japan.

The greater part of Beato’s work in Japan contrasted strongly with his earlier work in India and China, which “had underlined and even celebrated conflict and the triumph of British imperial might”. Aside from the Portrait of Prince Kung, any appearances of Chinese people in Beato’s earlier work had been peripheral (minor, blurred, or both) or as corpses. With the exception of his work in September 1864 as an official photographer on the British military expedition to Shimonoseki, Beato was eager to portray Japanese people, and did so uncondescendingly, even showing them as defiant in the face of the elevated status of westerners.

Beato was very active while in Japan. In 1865 he produced a number of dated views of Nagasaki and its surroundings. From 1866 he was often caricatured in Japan Punch, which was founded and edited by Wirgman. In an October 1866 fire that destroyed much of Yokohama, Beato lost his studio and many, perhaps all, of his negatives.

While Beato was the first photographer in Japan to sell albums of his works, he quickly recognised their full commercial potential. By around 1870 their sale had become the mainstay of his business. Although the customer would select the content of earlier albums, Beato moved towards albums of his own selection. It was probably Beato who introduced to photography in Japan the double concept of views and costumes / manners, an approach common in photography of the Mediterranean. By 1868 Beato had readied two volumes of photographs, “Native Types”, containing 100 portraits and genre works, and “Views of Japan”, containing 98 landscapes and cityscapes.

Many of the photographs in Beato’s albums were hand-coloured, a technique that in his studio successfully applied the refined skills of Japanese watercolourists and woodblock printmakers to European photography.

Since about the time of the ending of his partnership with Wirgman in 1869, Beato attempted to retire from the work of a photographer, instead attempting other ventures and delegating photographic work to others within his own studio in Yokohama, “F. Beato & Co., Photographers”, which he ran with an assistant named H. Woollett and four Japanese photographers and four Japanese artists. Kusakabe Kimbei was probably one of Beato’s artist-assistants before becoming a photographer in his own right. These other ventures failed, but Beato’s photographic skills and personal popularity ensured that he could successfully return to work as a photographer.

In 1871 Beato served as official photographer with the United States naval expedition of Admiral Rodgers to Korea. Although it is possible that an unidentified Frenchman photographed Korea during the 1866 invasion of Ganghwa Island, Beato’s photographs are the earliest of Korea whose provenance is clear.

Beato’s business ventures in Japan were numerous. He owned land and several studios, was a property consultant, had a financial interest in the Grand Hotel of Yokohama, and was a dealer in imported carpets and women’s bags, among other things. He also appeared in court on several occasions, variously as plaintiff, defendant, and witness. On 6 August 1873 Beato was appointed Consul General for Greece in Japan.

In 1877 Beato sold most of his stock to the firm Stillfried & Andersen, who then moved into his studio. In turn, Stillfried & Andersen sold the stock to Adolfo Farsari in 1885. Following the sale to Stillfried & Andersen, Beato apparently retired for some years from photography, concentrating on his parallel career as a financial speculator and trader. On 29 November 1884 he left Japan, ultimately landing in Port Said, Egypt. It was reported in a Japanese newspaper that he had lost all his money on the Yokohama silver exchange.

 

Death and legacy

Although Beato was previously believed to have died in Rangoon or Mandalay in 1905 or 1906, his death certificate, discovered in 2009, indicates that he died on 29 January 1909 in Florence, Italy.

Whether acknowledged as his own work, sold as Stillfried & Andersen’s, or encountered as anonymous engravings, Beato’s work had a major impact:

For over fifty years into the early twentieth century, Beato’s photographs of Asia constituted the standard imagery of travel diaries, illustrated newspapers, and other published accounts, and thus helped shape “Western” notions of several Asian societies.

 

Photographic techniques

Photographs of the 19th century often now show the limitations of the technology used, yet Beato managed to successfully work within and even transcend those limitations. He predominantly produced albumen silver prints from wet collodion glass-plate negatives.

Beato pioneered and refined the techniques of hand-colouring photographs and making panoramas. He may have started hand-colouring photographs at the suggestion of Wirgman, or he may have seen the hand-coloured photographs made by partners Charles Parker and William Parke Andrew. Whatever the inspiration, Beato’s coloured landscapes are delicate and naturalistic and his coloured portraits, more strongly coloured than the landscapes, are appraised as excellent.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Akindo, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Middle-class Woman, Japan
c-1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Obasan, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Japanese man in armour
1881
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Art and Design Library
Public domain

 

A portrait of a Japanese soldier from the waist up. He is standing facing his left whilst wearing ornate armour consisting of a chest plate and chainmail undershirt. His hair is swept back and is dressed in a topknot.

This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870’s. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as ‘Baron Stillfried’. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.

This album, which dates from 1879-1883, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio’s collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Woman, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried, also known as Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz (6 August 1839, in Komotau – 12 August 1911, in Vienna), was an Austrian photographer.

He was son of Baron (Freiherr) August Wilhelm Stillfried von Rathenitz (d. 1806) and Countess Maria Anna Johanna Theresia Walburge Clam-Martinitz (1802-1874).

After leaving his military career, Stillfried moved to Yokohama, Japan and opened a photographic studio called Stillfried & Co. which operated until 1875. In 1875, Stillfried formed a partnership with Hermann Andersen and the studio was renamed, Stillfried & Andersen (also known as the Japan Photographic Association). This studio operated until 1885. In 1877, Stillfried & Andersen bought the studio and stock of Felice Beato. In the late 1870s, Stillfried visited and photographed in Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Greece. In addition to his own photographic endeavours, Stillfried trained many Japanese photographers. In 1886, Stillfried sold the majority of his stock to his protégé, the Japanese photographer Kusakabe Kimbei, he then left Japan.

He left Japan forever in 1881. After travelling to Vladivostock, Hong Kong and Bangkok, he eventually settled in Vienna in 1883. He also received an Imperial and Royal Warrant of Appointment as photographer (k.u.k. Hof-Photograph).

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Hodo Falls at Nikko, Tochigi
between 1871 and 1885
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Rijksmuseum
Public domain

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Group of men, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Minzoku, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Umbrella maker, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Pipe maker, Japan
c. 1870
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Japanese woman on her head
between 1871 and 1885
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Rijksmuseum
Public domain

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Portrait of two Buddhist monks with rosary, bell and slit drum
c. 1875
Hand coloured albumen silver print from wet collodion glass-plate negative
Rijksmuseum
Public domain

 

 

Kusakabe Kimbei (Japanese, 1841-1934) and Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Japanese Tattoo
between 1870 and 1899
Height: 26cm (10.2 in)
Width: 20cm (7.8 in)
Getty Center
Public domain

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Fille de Sootchow (Suzhou Girl)
1870s
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection
Museum Purchase 2005

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Portrait of an Old Chinese Woman
1870s
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection
Museum Purchase 2005

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Courios Shop
c. 1875
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Old beggar
1870s
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection
Museum Purchase 2005

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Double portrait
c. 1880
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Untitled (Accountant with newspaper and his servant with folding fan)
1870s
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Portrait of Irezumi Tattooed man – Post Runner
1880-1890
Albumen silver print from glass negative with applied colour

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Young Lady
c. 1875
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Hand-coloured albumen silver photograph
23.8 × 19.1cm
La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) and Uchida Kuichi (Japanese, 1844-1875)
Untitled [The Fishmonger]
1870s
Hand-coloured albumen silver photograph

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Sleeping beauties
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Hairdressing
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Hand-coloured albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Tomiyoka
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Komagatake Volcano
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Ainu Village
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Odji Teahouse
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Views of Nagasaki, Japan
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911)
Views of Tokyo, Japan
1876
From Views and Costumes of Japan, c. 1876
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria

 

 

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