Oct 21, 2008 - Sale 2158

Sale 2158 - Lot 24

Price Realized: $ 24,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 25,000 - $ 35,000
BEATO, FELIX (1834/35-circa 1907)
Select group of 75 rare Japanese landscapes, picturesque street scenes and views of temples, with 2 depicting Beato; several are vignetted. Albumen prints, 9 1/2x12 inches (24.1x30.4 cm.), on the original mounts, many with the original letterpress text leaf affixed to mount verso. Circa 1870
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Additional Details

A host of extraordinary pictures of old Japan by Beato, the first photographer to devote himself entirely to photographing in Asia.


Felix A. Beato was the most celebrated 19th-century photographer in Japan. A naturalized English subject born in Corfu, he led an adventurous life. Beginning in 1850, he worked with his brother-in-law, James Robertson, in the Mediterranean, making pictures in Constantinople, Athens, Malta, Cairo, and Palestine. He documented the Crimean War (1855), the Indian Mutiny (1858), China (where he was the first photographer, in 1860), and the Sudan (1885).


Beato's residence in Japan coincided with a period of rapid modernization during the Meiji period, 1868–1912, which he artfully documented. Although Beato was not the very first to photograph in Japan (the first studios opened in the late 1850s), he was the first to work extensively in the country, operating a studio in Yokohama from 1863 to 1877. After leaving the country in 1884, he opened a furniture and curio business in Burma.

Employing a documentary style, Beato's work encompassed picturesque topographic views, studio portraits, occupationals, and scenes from daily life. This lot features two photographs in which the artist is quietly depicted.