名称: Japanese girl/日本少女
类别: Albumen photo/蛋白照片
日期: 1870
尺寸: 20x25cm



名称: Two Prisoners/囚犯
类别: Albumen photo/蛋白照片
日期: 1863-1864
尺寸: 13x19cm



名称: Some Porters/搬运工
类别: Albumen photo/蛋白照片
日期: 1863-1864
尺寸: 19x25cm



名称: Elderly Japanese Person/日本老人
类别: Albumen photo/蛋白照片
日期: 1870
尺寸: 21x25cm



名称: Rickshaw Puller/车夫
类别: Albumen photo/蛋白照片
日期: 1870
尺寸: 21x26cm


Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz/R. von Stillfried (1839-1911), an Austrian nobleman, was a distinguished photographer and collector, recognized as one of the most influential foreign photographers active in Japan during the late nineteenth century. Trained initially for a military career in Europe, he turned his attention to the cultures of the East, traveling through Asia and visiting China before settling in Yokohama in the 1870s. There, together with his partner, he founded the studio “Stillfried & Andersen,” which quickly established itself as a major center of photography, standing alongside the work of Felice Beato. Stillfried inherited and expanded Beato’s commercial photography tradition, becoming especially known for hand-colored landscapes, portraits, and genre scenes. His photographs not only catered to the curiosity of Western travelers, merchants, and diplomats, but also profoundly shaped Europe’s visual imagination of “exotic Japan.” 

莱蒙德·冯·斯蒂尔弗里德/莱·冯·斯（Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz，1839-1911）出身奥地利贵族，是一位重要的摄影师与收藏家，被公认为19世纪末期日本最具影响力的外籍影像创作者之一。他早年接受军事训练，但因对东方文化的浓厚兴趣而离开欧洲，旅途中曾访问中国，并最终于1870年代定居横滨。在此，他与合伙人创办“Stillfried & Andersen”摄影工作室，迅速成为当时与费利切·贝阿托（Felice Beato）并列的摄影经营者。斯蒂尔弗里德继承并扩展了贝阿托的商业摄影传统，尤以手工上色的风景照、人物肖像与风俗场景而著称。这些影像不仅满足了西方旅行者与商界人士对日本的好奇心，也深刻影响了欧洲社会对“东方日本”的视觉认知。

Artistically, Stillfried’s photographs balance documentary precision with painterly qualities. Employing the wet collodion process, he achieved detailed and sharp images, which were then delicately hand-colored by Japanese artists. This collaboration gave his photographs a unique depth of color and tonal richness. His subjects included samurai, geisha, traditional costumes, temples, and everyday customs, offering vivid depictions of Japanese society during the transformative Meiji era. His work thus represents both a valuable historical record and an innovative aesthetic experiment bridging photography and painting, as well as Western and Japanese visual traditions. 

In terms of collecting value, Stillfried’s works are now held in major institutions worldwide, including the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Library of Congress, and the Tokyo National Museum. Alongside Beato, he helped establish the enduring tradition of Japanese hand-colored photography, which has become a cornerstone for the study of nineteenth-century visual culture and East–West artistic exchange. Due to their rarity and fragile condition, his photographic albums and individual prints are highly sought after in the art market, frequently appearing in international auctions. Today, his works are regarded as irreplaceable visual documents of cultural history and key sources in the history of photography.

在艺术价值方面，斯蒂尔弗里德的作品兼具纪实与艺术特质。他广泛使用湿版火棉胶工艺，捕捉清晰细腻的画面，并聘请日本画师在照片上施以精致的手工彩绘，使影像呈现出独特的色彩层次与光影质感。他的摄影内容涵盖武士、艺妓、传统服饰、宗教建筑与民俗风景，不仅提供了明治维新时期社会与文化的生动记录，也使摄影在纪实性与绘画性之间达成融合，体现出跨文化的艺术实验价值。 

在收藏价值方面，斯蒂尔弗里德的作品如今已进入世界顶级学术与艺术机构的馆藏，如大英图书馆、法国国家图书馆、美国国会图书馆及日本东京国立博物馆等。他与贝阿托共同奠定的“日本手彩摄影”范式，已成为研究19世纪摄影史、日本视觉文化及东西方交流的重要资源。由于数量有限且保存不易，其摄影册与单幅作品在国际艺术市场上具有高度稀缺性与学术价值，屡次出现在艺术拍卖中，被视为影像史和文化史研究中不可替代的视觉遗产。>>返回>>