4053 - Japan

Japan Photographer: Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1837–1916). Japanese costume and genre studies. 1870s. 4 hand-colored albumen prints, mounted on card. Approx. 26.5 x 20.5 cm (mounts approx. 60.5 x 47.5 cm), or reverse. Later pencil annotations and inventory labels on the reverse. These four prints are characteristic examples of Stillfried’s “costumes”: a modular collection of hand-colored genre subjects designed for the high-end Yokohama album market. Developed during the early years of his independent practice, this repertoire combined repeatable compositions from glass negatives with meticulous hand-coloring by specialized studio staff, giving commercially produced photographs the finish and visual authority of one-of-a-kind objects. One print in this lot, *Lady Writing*, appears in *Views and Costumes of Japan* (ca. 1876), whose frontispiece explicitly distinguishes Stillfried as the maker of the negatives from Stillfried & Andersen as the printer and publisher. – Mounts with scattered foxing, light soiling, handling marks, minor edge wear, and slight bowing; some with later pencil annotations. Prints with scattered surface marks, fine scratches, and light fading. “Lady Writing” and the standing portrait show localized pigment disturbance along the upper edges; otherwise, they are good tonal prints and are in good overall condition. Lit.: Hugh Cortazzi and Terry Bennett. *Japan: Caught in Time*. Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1994, ill. pp. 97, 105, and 108 (same studio backdrop on pp. 97 and 105).