Table Of Content

This page intentionally left blank A PHOTOGRAPHER ON F E L I CE B E A TO THE EASTERN ROAD ANNE LACOSTE WITH AN ESSAY BY FRED RITCHIN THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM | LOS ANGELES This volume is published on the occasion of the exhibition Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from December 7, 2010, to April 4, 2011. © 2010 J. Paul Getty Trust Second printing Published by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles Getty Publications 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500 Los Angeles, California 90049-1682 www.getty.edu/publications Gregory M. Britton, Publisher Tevvy Ball, Editor Sheila Berg, Copy Editor Catherine Lorenz, Designer Stacy Miyagawa, Production Coordinator Gary Hughes, Stacy Rain-Strickler, Jack Ross, Tricia Zigmund, Photographers Typesetting by Diane Franco Color separations by Pro Graphics, Rockford, Illinois Printed in China through Asia Pacific Offset, Inc. Half-title page: Detail of plate 30. Title page: Detail of plate 6. Copyright page: Detail of plate 59. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lacoste, Anne. Felice Beato: a photographer on the Eastern road / Anne Lacoste; with an essay by Fred Ritchin. p. cm. "Published on the occasion of the exhibition Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from December 7, 2010 to April 4, 2011." Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60606-035-3 (hardcover) 1. Beato, Felice, b. ca. 1825. 2. Photographers—Italy—Biography—Exhibitions. 3. Photographers—Great Britain- Biography—Exhibitions. 4. Documentary photography—Asia—History—19th century—Exhibitions. 5. Travel photography—Asia—History—19th century—Exhibitions. 6. Asia—Pictorial works—Exhibitions. I. Beato, Felice, b. ca. 1825. II. J. Paul Getty Museum. III. Title. TR647.B386 2010 770.92—dc22 [B] 2010020024 CONTENTS vi FOREWORD David Bomford vii NOTE TO THE READER 1 FELICE BEATO A PHOTOGRAPHER ON THE EASTERN ROAD Anne Lacoste 29 PORTFOLIO PLATES 1-80 119 FELICE BEATO AND THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF WAR Fred Ritchin 133 PORTFOLIO I PLATES 81-120 184 SELECTED CHRONOLOGY 188 APPENDIX: FACSIMILES OF THE HENRY HERING CATALOGUE 190 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 192 NOTES 196 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 199 INDEX V FOREWORD vi In recent years Felice Beato has come to be recognized as one of the major pho- the date and place of his death have been established. However, although much tographers of the nineteenth century, and numerous articles have appeared illumi- work remains to be done, it is now possible to present a reliable—if perhaps not nating various aspects of his life and work. Until now, however, there has been no yet definitive—account of his career. I would like to thank Anne Lacoste, assistant overview of his career as a whole, which spanned more than fifty years and covered curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum, for her tireless significant parts of the Middle East and Asia. The recognition of Beato's central work in preparing this volume and the exhibition that it accompanies. It is our place in the early history of photography is, in fact, long overdue. His photographs hope that this retrospective, the first devoted to Beato's entire oeuvre, will advance offer a rare visual testimony to a number of important historical events of his time. the understanding and appreciation of this important photographer. A pioneer in the development of war photography, he chronicled several well- known conflicts, such as the Indian Mutiny in the late 1850s and the final campaign David Bomford of the Second Opium War in China in 1860, as well as more obscure events, such Acting Director as the American military expedition to Korea in 1871. With extended residences in The J. Paul Getty Museum Japan and Burma, he also played a critical role in the rise of commercial photography in East Asian countries, recording their traditional cultures before they were altered by their encounter with the West. The Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum has long emphasized the importance of collecting work in depth by individual photographers, and when the Museum first began to collect photographs in 1984, Beato's work was one of its major nineteenth-century holdings, along with such contem- poraries as Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Carleton Watkins. In 2007 the Getty was fortunate to complement its holding of four hundred Beato prints with the acquisition of more than eight hundred photographs from the Wilson Centre for Photography. We offer our sincere thanks to the Wilson Centre for its generosity in placing, through a gift/purchase arrangement, this important collection with the Getty Museum, making the Getty's the largest existing collection of the photographers work. The Getty's collection affords the opportunity to present, in this volume and the exhibition that it accompanies, the first general retrospective of Felice Beato's considerable accomplishment. His peripatetic existence, which ranged from Constantinople to India, from China and Japan to the Sudan and Burma, has long been difficult to track. Beato himself spread some confusion, claiming both Ital- ian and British citizenship and changing names from "Felice" to "Felix" and back again. His final years have been shrouded in mystery, and it is only recently that NOTE TO THE READER Titles vii Whenever possible, the titles given for Beatos photographs are the original ones found in contemporary references such as the Hering list and the printed captions in the Japanese albums. These titles appear in italics. When the original title is not known, a generic descriptive title is given in roman type, enclosed in brackets. Provenance Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs are from the J. Paul Getty Museum. Photographs by Felice Beato with accession numbers beginning with 2007 are a partial gift from the Wilson Centre for Photography. Dimensions The dimensions given for all photographs are of the image only. Orthography and place-names Indian place-names in the text are the historical names in use at the time of the narrative. Chinese place-names in the text are generally spelled using the modern Pinyin system, except in cases where earlier historical spellings remain the conven- tion in scholarship about the period, such as Peking, Canton, Macau, Taku, and Hong Kong. The Chinese place-names in the titles and captions of Beatos photographs are spelled according to common nineteenth-century British usage, which often differs markedly from spellings used today. Below is a chart with the spellings used by Beato, the spellings used in the text, and the modern spellings for Chinese place-names. Beato Text Modern Pekin or Peking Peking Beijing Canton Canton Guangzhou Pehtung Beidang Beidang Taku or Tangkoo Taku Dagu Talien-wan Dalian Bay Dalian Bay Figure 1. The Bronze Statue of Dai-Bouts, 1863. Albumen silver print, 22.9 x 29.4 cm (9 x 119/16 in.). 2007.26.49.