128
going about their daily work are of at least equal impor-
tance to the grandeur of their architectural settings. His
output embraced landscape, architecture and people, and
many images bear the legend ‘A Beato’ handwritten onto
the collodion negative. Some also have an additional ink
signature on the print. Additionally, several of Beato’s
images exhibit a pink hue to the highlights, believed to
have been introduced by dyeing the albumen to give a
warmer alternative to the conventional albumen print.
John Hannavy
BEATO, FELICE (c. 1834–1906)
Corfu-born photographer and merchant of British
nationality
Despite Felice Beato’s reputation as a pioneer war
and travel photographer, many aspects of his life and
background remain unknown. At a meeting of the Lon-
don and Provincial Photographic Association, he was
described as “a Venetian by birth, but now a naturalised
Englishman,” however no fi rm evidence has emerged
to substantiate this claim of ‘Italian’ birth. Current re-
search indicates that he was born on the island of Corfu
around 1834.
Like his brother Antonio Beato, Felice obtained his
knowledge of photography in the mid-1850s from his
brother-in-law James Robertson, chief engraver of the
Imperial Mint in Constantinople. The correspondence
of the French military artist Jean-Charles Langlois pro-
vides the earliest known reference of his photographic
activities. In a letter from the Crimea, dated 30 April
1856, Langlois noted the presence of Robertson’s as-
sistant at work photographing the stationed troops: “We
believed that the fi gure was not Robertson himself,
but his fi rst student, a replacement.” A few days later
Langlois confi rmed the identity of this assistant with
evident disdain for his work: “Certainly this M. Beato is
no artist.” While this judgment perhaps refl ects Beato’s
inexperience in the fi eld, his formative training in the
Crimea enabled him to establish strong ties with the
British offi cer class that would prove invaluable in his
future career (see Gartlan).
Over the next year Felice Beato continued to work as
Robertson’s able assistant in several Mediterranean
locations as their professional relationship gradually
transformed into a collaborative partnership. En route for
London in September 1856, Robertson left an assistant
in Malta to manage his operation, and once again, Beato
was almost certainly delegated this task. On 3 March
1857, Robertson and his two brothers-in-law, Felice and
Antonio Beato, registered their arrival in Jerusalem at the
British Consulate. Given that the prints taken thereafter in
Jerusalem, Athens, Constantinople and Egypt were signed
either ‘Robertson and Beato’ or later ‘Robertson, Beato
& Co.’ (unlike the former accreditation of prints to Rob-ertson alone), Felice Beato appears to have gained some
recognition from his elder mentor for his contribution to
the enterprise’s success.
Beato began his own independent photographic ca-
reer on his embarkation for Calcutta in early 1858. He
travelled widely through northern India, photographing
the embattled buildings still evident months after the
Sepoy Rebellion at Lucknow, Delhi, and Cawnpore
(now Kanpur), and preparing a portfolio of architectural
views of Agra, Benares, and Amritsar. His gruesome
photographs of the Lucknow massacre, in which the
exhumed remains of numerous Indian insurgents lie
strewn on the city streets, established his penchant for
battlefi eld scenes showing the dishevelled victims of
British military action. Among the earliest photographs
to portray corpses on the battlefi eld (although like
Alexander Gardner, Beato certainly ‘arranged’ his war
scenes), these images differed markedly from the earlier
absence of corpses in the Crimean War photographs
of Roger Fenton and James Robertson. In subsequent
years, Beato accompanied military forces as a war
photographer in China (1860), Japan (1864), Korea
(1871), the Sudan (1885) and Burma (1886). From July
1858 to December 1859, Antonio Beato assisted his
brother in the management of a studio in Calcutta until
he returned to Egypt to eventually open his own studio
at Luxor in 1862.
On 26 February 1860, Beato left Calcutta for Hong
Kong to join the Anglo-French forces gathering in readi-
ness for a retaliatory campaign to North China. Over
the next eight months, he assembled a comprehensive
record of the campaign, from the fi rst encampment
at Kowloon to the fi nal destructive events in Beijing.
Beato displayed his enthusiasm for battlefi eld scenery
soon after the allied forces captured the strategic Dagu
forts on 21 August 1860. The memoirs of the military
surgeon, Dr. David Field Rennie, provide some insight
into Beato’s eagerness on the battlefront:
I passed into the fort and a distressing scene of carnage
disclosed itself; frightful mutilations and groups of dead
and dying meeting the eye in every direction... Signor
Beato was here in great excitement, characterising the
group as “beautiful,” and begging that it might not be
interfered with until perpetuated by his photographic
apparatus, which was done a few minutes afterwards.
(Rennie, 112)
Gathered into albums in chronological order, these
photographs were sold to numerous British offi cers
and soldiers in the course of the campaign. Although
the experienced photographer Antoine Fauchery also
accompanied the French forces, Beato’s portfolio con-
stitutes the only substantive photographic record of the
campaign and includes the earliest known photographs
of Beijing.