1462
paintings exhibited in February 1886 at Vienna’s Öster-
reichischer Kunstverein. In 1889, Stillfried travelled
through Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia and Greece
producing a collection of three hundred landscape, eth-
nographic, and archaeological studies, again exhibited in
Vienna the following year. These exhibitions culminated
in a large retrospective at Trieste in May 1891 compris-
ing one thousand Asian and European images from the
previous twenty years of work.
In the early 1890s, Stillfried established a large
studio for the restoration of oil paintings at Feldsberg
bei Lundenberg (now Czech Republic). He exhibited
paintings regularly at several art societies, which some
critics compared to the celebrated work of Rudolf von
Alt. Although the Viennese city directory Lehmanns
Adreßbuch continued to list Stillfried as an active pho-
tographer until his death, by the early twentieth century
he was primarily occupied as a painter of architectural
interior scenes until illness hindered further activities
in 1908. He died from a heart attack on 12 August 1911
at his apartment in Gentzgasse 9, Vienna.
Luke Gartlan
Biography
Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz was born into
an aristocratic family on 6 August 1839 at Komotau,
Bohemia, in the Austrian Empire (now Chumotov,
Czech Republic). From his early childhood, he devel-
oped a penchant for maritime travel, art and distant
cultures, nurtured in the thriving cosmopolitan port
of Trieste. In broad terms, Stillfried’s adult career can
be divided into two periods. The fi rst comprises the
twenty years of travel between his resignation from the
Austrian army in 1863 and his fi nal return to Vienna.
Eventually settling in Yokohama after fi ve years spent
in South America, Japan and Mexico, he established
a photographic studio by August 1871, which soon
gained international recognition for the hand-tinted
genre scenes and untinted landscapes. He left the Japan
Photographic Association in June 1878, and was later
active in Siberia, Hong Kong and Siam. In the second
period, from 1883 following his return to Vienna until
his death in 1911, Stillfried continued to remain active,
assembling important photographic portfolios of the
Habsburg estates, the Balkan and Greek peninsulas, and
numerous other European sites. His personal life, with
separate families in Japan and Vienna, refl ects these two
phases in his career. A common aspect of treaty port
life in Asia, Stillfried had a long-term liaison with a
Japanese woman named Nishiyama Haru, with whom he
had three daughters christened Mary, Anna, and Helen.
After returning to Vienna, Stillfried married Helene
Jankovich de Jeszenicze on 22 September 1884, with
whom he had a further two children, Alice and Alfons.
He died in Vienna on 12 August 1911, a few days after
his seventy-second birthday.
See also: Burger, Wilhelm Joseph; and Beato,
Antonio.Further Reading
Banta, Melissa and Taylor, Susan (eds.), A Timely Encounter:
Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Japan, Cambridge, Mass.:
Peabody Museum Press, 1988 (exhibition catalogue).
Boyd, Torin and Izakura, Naomi, Portraits in Sepia: From the
Japanese carte de visite collection of Torin Boyd and Naomi
Izakura, Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2000.
Cortazzi, Hugh and Terry Bennett, Japan: Caught in Time, New
York: Weatherhill, 1995.
Gartlan, Luke, “A chronology of Baron Raimund von Stillfried-
Ratenicz,” in John Clark, Japanese Exchanges in Art, 1850s–
1930s, Sydney: Power Publications, 2001, 121–188.
Geschichte der Fotografi e in Österreich, 2 Bände, Bad Ischl:
Verein zur Erarbeitung der “Geschichte der Fotografi e in
Österreich,” 1983 (exhibition catalogue).
Lehnert, Josef, Um die Erde. Reiseskizze von der Erdumseglung
mit der S.M. Corvette “Erzherzog Friedrich” in den Jahren
1874, 1875 und 1876, 2 Bände, Wien: 1878.
Stillfried, Alfons, Die Stillfriede: Drei Jahrhunderte aus dem
Lebensroman einer österreichischen Familie, Wien: Euro-
paischer Verlag, 1956.
Th., A., “Freiherr von Stillfried-Ratenicz und sein japanisches
Theehaus,” Allgemeine illustrirte Weltausstellungs-Zeitung
(Wien), 9 November 1873, S. 103.VON VOIGTLÄNDER, BARON PETER
WILHELM FRIEDRICH (1812–1878)
Viennese inventor and lens makerPeter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer was born into
a family of optical instrument makers in Vienna in 1812.
His grandfather, Johann Christoph von Voigtländer
(1732–1797) had established a small business in the
Austrian capital in 1756 manufacturing microscopes,
compasses and other optical instruments. Johann had
three sons, the youngest of whom, Johann Friedrich
(1779–1859), carried on the family business after his
father’s death in 1797. As a young man, Johann trav-
elled to England to study optics and, after his return to
Vienna, started to make lenses in about 1808. In 1823
Johann invented and patented the opera glass. In 1837,
aged 58, Johann Friedrich retired and the management
of the family business was taken over by his son, Peter
Wilhelm Friedrich, then just 25 years old.
By this time the house of von Voigtländer had already
gained a reputation of being one of the very fi nest Eu-
ropean optical instrument makers. Peter, although still
comparatively young, had a wealth of knowledge and
experience. His early education and practical instruc-
tion came from his father. For his more advanced and
theoretical education he later enrolled at the Vienna