Lot 21
KUSAKABE KIMBEI (1841-1934)
An album with 49 unusually fine Japanese scenes, including sumo wrestlers, tattooed men, tradesmen, beautiful geishas, and more; and a photo attributed to Beato of a Korean group (perhaps an extended family). With many fine occupationals and portraits; a couple of the figures are depicted in outdoor settings (including the Bamboo Grove) but many are shown in a studio, or in an everyday environment (including a tea house and other merchant settings). Hand-colored albumen prints, the images measuring 8 1/8x10 1/4 inches (20.7x26 cm.), and the reverse, mounted recto/verso, each with a caption label, in English, on mount recto and several with numeric notations in the negative. Oblong 4to, black lacquer with pictorial gilt details, covers detached, backstrip perished; with Kimbei's hand stamp on the front pastedown. 1880s
Estimate $3,500 - 4,500
WITH--Felice Beato. Group of 5 photographs of Japan, comprising one of the Statue of Daibuts, Kamakura; 3 of the temple at Shiba; and one a bridge in Yedo. Albumen prints, the images measuring 11 1/2x9 1/4 inches (29.2x23.5 cm.), the mounts 20 1/2x14 1/2 inches (52.1x36.8 cm.), each with a handwritten caption, in ink, on mount recto. Circa 1870.
