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Adolfo Farsari

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Portrait of a woman playing a gekkin, by Adolfo Farsari, c. 1886. Hand-coloured albumen print on a decorated album page.

Adolfo Farsari (1841 – 1898) was an Italian photographer based in Yokohama, Japan. He had a brief military career, including service in the American Civil War, but was primarily a successful entrepreneur and commercial photographer in Japan. His work as a photographer was highly regarded in his own time, particularly his hand-coloured portraits and landscapes, which he sold mostly to foreign residents and visitors to the country. With Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried he was one of the most important foreign photographers in 19th century Japan and his was the last notable foreign-owned photographic studio in Japan.

Early years

Alolfo Farsari was born in Vicenza, Italy on 11 February 1841. He began a career in the Italian military but emigrated to the United States in 1863 and served with the Union Army as a New York State Volunteer Cavalry trooper until the end of the American Civil War. He married an American, but the marriage failed and in 1873 he left his wife and two children, moving to Japan[1][2].

Based in Yokohama, Farsari formed a partnership with E.A. Sargent, and their business, Sargent, Farsari and Company, dealt in smokers' supplies, stationery, visiting cards, newspapers, magazines and novels, Japanese and English conversation books, dictionaries, guidebooks, maps, and photographic views of Japan. It is not known who produced the photographs, but Farsari is known to have produced maps, notably of Miyanoshita (in the Hakone resort area of Kanagawa Prefecture) and Yokohama. After Farsari's partnership with Sargent ended, Farsari and Company published successive editions of Keeling's Guide to Japan and Farsari himself wrote and published Japanese Words and Phrases for the Use of Strangers[3].

Career as a photographer

Farsari decided to expand his business interests into commercial photography and so he taught himself photography in 1883. In 1885 he formed a partnership with photographer Tamamura Kozaburo to acquire the Stillfried & Andersen photographic studio (also known as the Japan Photographic Association), which had some fifteen Japanese employees[4][5]. The Stillfried & Andersen stock included images by Felice Beato that the firm had bought along with Beato's studio in 1877[6]. As for the partnership between Tamamura and Farsari, it is not clear how long it lasted, for within a few years they were in competition with each other. Farsari further expanded his business in 1885 when the Yokohama Photographic Company (owned by David Welsh) folded, and Farsari acquired its premises (next door to his own) and moved in[7]. By the end of 1886 Farsari and Chinese photographer Tong Cheong were the only foreign photographers still operating in Japan, and by the following year even Tong Cheong had gone[8].

In February 1886 a fire destroyed all of Farsari's negatives and he then toured Japan for five months taking new photographs to replace them. He was able to reopen his studio in 1887. In spite of the setback of the fire, by 1889 Farsari's stock comprised about one thousand Japanese landscapes and genre portraits[9].

View of Shijo-dori, Kyoto, Japan by Adolfo Farsari, c. 1886. Hand-coloured albumen print.

Farsari sold a large number of photographic albums, particularly to foreign residents and visitors to Japan. He employed excellent artists who hand-coloured his photographs, each producing high quality work at a pace of two or three coloured prints per day[10][11]. Farsari ensured that the colours applied to his prints were accurate and that the best materials were used for his photographs. Accordingly, his work was expensive. Nevertheless, it was popular and often praised by clients and visitors to Japan, even receiving a glowing reference by Rudyard Kipling following his 1889 visit to Yokohama[12]. Also in 1889, Farsari presented a deluxe photograph album to the King of Italy[13]. As a further example of the high regard in which Farsari and Company was held, Farsari's studio had sole rights to photograph the Imperial Gardens (also known as Fukiage) in Tokyo [14].

Some details are known of the working conditions at Farsari and Company. Prospective colourists were interviewed by Farsari himself, who ensured they were familiar with Japanese painting techniques. Once hired, they were given unpaid instruction for several months, and then given a basic salary that steadily increased as Farsari became satisfied with their work. A capable and loyal colourist at Farsari and Company could earn twice the going rate in Yokohama and double their own daily rate for work on Sundays. There were also regular bonuses and gifts. On the other hand, Farsari complained in a letter to his sister that he had to rage, swear and beat his employees, which he did according to a fixed schedule. By 1891 Farsari and Company had thirty-two employees, of whom nineteen were artists engaged to hand-colour photographs[15].

He expressed his view of photography in a letter to his sister, writing, "taking pictures is just a mechanical thing", and in describing his development as a photographer, he wrote, "I have had no real teachers, I have learned everything from books. I bought all the necessary equipment and with no help from anyone, I printed, took photographs and so on. Then I taught others." [16].

Personal life and later years

In 1885 Farsari had a daughter, Kiku, by a Japanese woman (whom he may not have married). He described himself as living like a misanthrope, associating with very few people outside of business, and it seems from his correspondence that he increasingly hoped to return to Italy. He tried to regain the Italian citizenship that he had lost when he had gone to the United States, and he even hoped to be made a cavaliere and thereby join the Italian aristocracy. It is not clear whether or not he succeeded in either of these endeavours. Nevertheless, in April 1890 he and his daughter left Japan for Italy. On 7 February 1898 Farsari died in his family home in Vicenza[17].

Following Farsari's departure from Japan in 1890, his studio continued to operate, and even listed him as proprietor until 1901, when Tonokura Tsunetaro became the owner. Tonokura, whom Farsari had known since the mid-1870s, had long been responsible for the day-to-day management of the studio. In 1904 Tonokura left the business to start his own studio and Farsari's former chief operator, Watanabe Tokutaro, became the new owner, only to be followed in turn as owner by the former secretary, Fukagawa Itomaro. The business was finally registered as a Japanese company in 1906 and it continued to operate until at least 1917 and possibly as late as 1923, when Yokohama was largely destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake. Farsari and Company was the last notable foreign-owned photographic studio to operate in Japan[18].

Notes

  1. ^ Bennett, 44-45.
  2. ^ Dobson, 27.
  3. ^ Dobson, 21, 28.
  4. ^ Dobson, 21.
  5. ^ Bennett, 45.
  6. ^ Gartlan, 146.
  7. ^ Dobson, 21.
  8. ^ Dobson, 20.
  9. ^ Dobson, 21-22.
  10. ^ Bennett, 45.
  11. ^ Gartlan, 174.
  12. ^ Dobson, 22-23.
  13. ^ Dobson, 27 (Dobson refers to "King Victor Emmanuel II", but as Victor Emmanuel II died in 1878, the presentation was probably made to either Umberto I or the future king Victor Emmanuel III).
  14. ^ Bennett, 59.
  15. ^ Dobson, 23.
  16. ^ Quoted in Dobson, 21.
  17. ^ Dobson, 27.
  18. ^ Dobson, 28.

References

  • 'Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston', with essays by Sebastian Dobson, Anne Nishimura Morse, and Frederic A. Sharf (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004).
  • Bennett, Terry. 'Early Japanese Images' (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1996), 44-46, 59.
  • Clark, John. 'Japanese Exchanges in Art, 1850s to 1930s with Britain, continental Europe, and the USA: Papers and Research Materials' (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 238.
  • Dobson, Sebastian. 'Yokohama Shashin'. In 'Art & Artifice: Japanese Photographs of the Meiji Era – Selections from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston', with essays by Sebastian Dobson, Anne Nishimura Morse, and Frederic A. Sharf (Boston: MFA Publications, 2004), 15-28.
  • Gartlan, Luke. 'A Chronology of Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839-1911)'. In 'Japanese Exchanges in Art, 1850s to 1930s with Britain, continental Europe, and the USA: Papers and Research Materials' (Sydney: Power Publications, 2001), 146, 166, 172-174.
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, s.v. "Farsari, Adolfo"
  • Nagasaki University Library; Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period, s.v. "A. Farsari"
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