May 21, 2015 - Sale 2385

Sale 2385 - Lot 3

Price Realized: $ 18,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
BEATO, FELICE (1832-1909)
A spectacular group of 47 photographs and 2 panoramas from the album "Photographic Views & Costumes of Japan," depicting pre-industrial, feudal Japan, comprising views of rivers, country roads, mountainous landscapes, town streets, village life, temples, and palaces, often with figures, and including the Palace Arima Sama--Yedo (Tokyo), and scenes in and around Hakoni, Kamakura, and Tokyo. Albumen prints, each approximately 9 1/2x11 1/2 inches (24.1x29.2 cm.), or slightly smaller, and the reverse, many with a title, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on mount recto, and some with printed descriptive text on mount verso. The panoramas consist of 2 prints each, each with an overall size of 8x20 1/2 inches (20.3x57.1 cm.); unmounted. With the original cover, an oblong folio, gilt-stamped cloth (lacks rear cover) with the photographer's label "F. Beato and Co., Yokohama," on the front pastedown and former owner's inscriptions on both the pastedown and front free endpaper, in ink. 1863-69

Additional Details

The Italian photographer Felice Beato traveled to Japan in 1863, where he established one of the first photo-studios in Yokahama with Charles Wirgman, a sketch-artist and fellow journalist. The primary design of their business was the "commercialization in the West of that great novelty, 'Japonisme,' the craze for all things Japanese," as noted in Margarita Winkel's Souvenirs from Japan (p. 25). With a background as a military photographer, Beato managed to capture a similar authenticity in his photographs of Japanese scenes, where his peopled landscapes simultaneously convey the formality of Japanese culture as well as the immediacy of his documentary approach. One of the first photographers in Japan to begin the process of hand-coloring, Beato responded to the native aesthetic of wood-block prints, known as "ukiyo-e," rather than European taste, demonstrating both his business as well as his cultural sensitivity. This album encompasses a wide range of imagery, highlighting Beato's journalistic as well as commercial goals. Several of the images are reproduced in Souvenirs from Japan.