浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 inches Code: AD32 Price [Framed]: £320 A rare naturalistic outdoor study of a senior maiko, or possibly a debuting geisha, wearing lacquered okubo [high clogs]. Their distinctive sound, resonating throughout the floating world, entered the Japanese language as the onomatopoeia koppori or pokkuri. 51. Anonymous Photographer, possibly Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) On Snowing [Geisha in a Two-passenger Jinrikisha] Date [Western]: ca. 1880-5 Date [Japanese]: Meiji period Method: Hand-tinted albumen print Dimensions: 7 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches [Image] Code: SOX Price [Framed]: £170 The jinrikisha [lit. man-powered vehicle] or rickshaw first appeared in Tôkyô in 1870. An invention variously ascribed to Jonathan Goble, an American Baptist missionary, and to Izumi Yosuke, Suzuki Tokujiro, and Takayama Kosuke, the group of enterprising Japanese townsmen who obtained the first manufacturing license, the jinrikisha quickly replaced the kago [palanquin] as the transportation of choice for the urban masses of the Meiji period. According to a contemporary report in the Shinbun Zasshi newspaper, its rise in popularity was such that by 1872, only two years after the first passengers were gingerly stepping into the early prototypes, over 40, 000 were plying their trade in the capital’s streets. From its inception, it was constructed in one- and two-passenger versions, the latter swiftly becoming identified with trysts and romantic intimacy, inspiring popular songs such as Ainori Horokake (‘Beneath a Hood for Two’) and Hoppeta Ottsuke (‘Cheek Pressed to Cheek’). As such, it became a mainstay of early photographer’s studios: here, two young geisha pose amidst a carefully constructed winter scene. 52. Felice Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908) Japonais dans son intérier [Geisha holding an ebony kiseru [pipe], surrounded by the symbols of her art ~ shamisen, koto and tea kettle] Date [Western]: ca.1880-1883 Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 13-16 Method: Hand-tinted albumen silver photograph Studio Location: Yokohama Dimensions: 10 x 7 3/4 inches [Image] Code: AD1 Price [Mounted]: £480 Felice Beato was arguably the most important foreign figure working in the field of Japanese photography in the late nineteenth century. One of the originators of photojournalism, he travelled to India in 1857, taking what are retrospectively considered to be the definitive images of the Indian Mutiny, and then to East Asia in 1860, becoming the first Western photographer to work in China, as he followed and recorded the British army during the Second Opium War. Previously he had worked as an assistant to James Robertson, whose body of work in the Crimea, to which Beato contributed, is generally defined as the first distinct example of objective war photojournalism. Beato was probably born in Corfu, then a Venetian territory, but at some point he and his brother Antonio (or Antoine) Beato (ca.1830-ca.1903), both became British citizens. This was a period when Britain welcomed political exiles and many Italian nationalists, such as the Rossetti family, were living and working in London. Antonio Beato was also a keen photographer and the two brothers worked together on a number of occasions, signing their collaborative works Felice Antonio Beato; later problematizing the identification of
photographs taken at the same time in different locations. For the majority of his working life, however, Antonio resided in Egypt, running a flourishing studio specializing in the photography of antiquities. Beato arrived in Japan in around 1862, living in Yokohama from 1863 to 1884. He initially joined Charles Wirgman, an ex-patriot since 1861; the two forming a partnership entitled ‘Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers’ during the years 1864–1867. A trained watercolourist, Wirgman developed a technique of adding colour washes to his albumen prints; a technical advance which greatly contributed to the popularity of the partners’ oeuvre, particularly amongst Occidental collectors already enamoured of the sophisticated colouring present in woodblock prints. Before long, the studio was inundated with work and, to satisfy demand, Beato began to employ Japanese Ukiyo-e colourists. Organized as a production line, they could complete 20 or 30 high-quality prints a day, a number which was quickly absorbed by the gaijin travellers, merchants and who flocked to Beato’s emporium. Beato's Japanese photographs include bijin portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes and, consciously recalling Hiroshige and Hokusai, a number of meisho-e documenting the scenery and sites along the Tôkaidô. Despite his large output, Beato's images are remarkable not only for their quality, but for their rarity as photographic views of a lost Japan at the brink of cataclysmic change. 53. Felice Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908) Portrait of a Geisha Date [Western]: 1863 Date [Japanese]: Bunkyû 3 Method: Hand-coloured albumen print Code: AD36 Price [Framed]: £2, 300 This extremely rare photograph was made just after Beato arrived in Yokohama, and was one of the first albumen prints to be hand-coloured using the method devised by Beato’s partner, Wirgman. One of the earliest extant photographs of a geisha; it represents a historical artefact of great import, offering us an unprecedented vignette of the Edo demimondaine. 54. Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839-1911) Geisha playing a Shamisen Date [Western]: 1875 Date [Japanese]: Meiji 8 Method: Hand-tinted albumen silver photograph Studio Location: Dimensions: 9 1/2 x 8 inches [Image] References: Hugh Cortazzi & Terry Bennett, Japan Caught in Time (New York: Weatherhill, 1995) Code: AD2 Price [Mounted]: £220 Born in Chomutov, now in the Czech Republic, Stillfried moved to Yokohama in the early 1870s, where he established a photographic studio entitled ‘Stillfried & Co.’ which traded under that name until 1875. In that year, Stillfried began to collaborate with another photographer named Hermann Andersen, of whom little is known. The studio was subsequently renamed ‘Stillfried & Andersen’ or the ‘Japan Photographic Association’, successfully as operating as a joint enterprise until 1885. In 1877, the partners purchased the stock of Felice Beato and moved into his larger studio. While based in Japan, the peripatetic Stillfried also made a number of working trips to Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Greece, later producing a collection of important images of Mexico [see Luke Gartlan, Remembering Imperial Mexico: Baron Stillfried's Photographs of Miramar Castle (1885)'2003].
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Page 20 and 21: Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print F
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浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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