529
FIEBIG, FREDERICK
(active 1840s–1850s)
German lithographer and photographer in India
Although unlisted in the Calcutta commercial directories
(apart from presumably being the ‘Feibig’ recorded as
a piano teacher in the 1849 and 1850 editions of The
Bengal and Agra Directory and Annual Register), Fiebig
is known to have been active as a lithographer in the
mid-1840s, when he published a number of topographi-
cal views of the city. In 1846 he also visited Singapore,
where he sketched a now-lost panorama of the town,
with the apparently unrealised aim of selling litho-
graphic copies to subscribers (Singapore Free Press,
2 April 1846). The only contemporary reference to his
photographic work appears in a short article recording
his visit to Madras in early 1852 (‘Photography in Ma-
dras,’ Illustrated Indian Journal of Arts, Madras, part
4, February 1852, 32). This confi rms his German origin
and notes that he had taken up photography ‘nearly
three years’ previously. During this period he had be-
come a prolifi c calotypist, producing the fi rst extensive
photographic documentations of Calcutta and Madras.
The writer of the article attests to having been shown
between seven and eight hundred views of Calcutta
alone and also mentions Fiebig’s photographic activity
in China and Burma, although no examples from these
locations have come to light.
By 1856, Fiebig was in England, where he succeeded
in selling a collection of nearly 500 hand-colored salted
paper views of Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon, Mauritius and
Cape Town to the East India Company (British Library,
India Offi ce Records, Miscellaneous Letters Received,
vol. 193, 1856). The views of Ceylon appear to have
been taken in the course of his visit to South India in
1852, while the Mauritius and Cape material must have
been taken during the voyage back to Europe. No further
information on his movements has been traced.
Apart from the large series of prints now in the British
Library, only a few small collections of his work have
surfaced at auction in recent years. The rich tonality of
these uncolored images perhaps gives a better indica-
tion of Fiebig’s sophisticated skills as a calotypist, than
the more lightly printed and sometimes crudely colored
views held in the British Library.
John Falconer
FIERLANTS, EDMOND (1819–1869)
Belgian photographer and photographic publisher
Edmond Fierlants was born in Brussels on 20 July 1819.
His father Nicolas Fierlants was a lawyer and joint
founder of the Université libre de Bruxelles in 1834.
Edmond was brought up as a member of the upper
bourgeoisie, and was probably of independent means.
In the late 1840s, he married a woman considerably
younger than himself, Isabelle Nieuwenhuys (born in
1831). They divided their time between Brussels and
Paris, where their fi rst child Hélène was born in 1850.
A son, Albert Jean, was born in Brussels in 1852.
During his stay in Paris, Fierlants learnt the rudi-
ments of photography, and completed his technical ap-
prenticeship under Hippolyte Bayard, whom he would
thereafter refer to as his “authority.” Guided by the
experienced Bayard, Fierlants acquired a reputation as
a technically profi cient researcher, and in 1854 became
one of 93 founder members of the Société française de
photographie, the only Belgian on the list. In 1855, the
Society’s Bulletin refers to him as one of the “habiles
experimentateurs” [skillful experimenters] of the Tau-
penot process. Fierlants pursued his research, drawn to
the process for its use in landscape and architectural
photography, and published an article detailing the
process’ advantages in the Journal of the Photographic
Society [of London] in 1856.
Fierlants showed his work in public for the fi rst time
in 1857. His reproductions of paintings at the exhibition
of the Société française de photographie were well re-
ceived, and, on the strength of a growing reputation, he
was invited to join the jury at the industrial arts exhibi-
tion in Brussels that same year. Fierlants was planning
a return to Brussels in order to make photography a
full-time occupation, an unusual step for a man of his
background in the Belgium of that era. However, the
Belgian state, created as recently as 1830, was in search
of its national identity, one strand of which was a cul-
tural heritage rich in art and architecture. This heritage
needed its spokesmen and popularisers, and Fierlants
conceived it as his mission to undertake this task within
his chosen medium.
In a revealing correspondence to Martin Laulerie,
secretary of the Société française de photographie,
Fierlants outlined his plans. He wrote of his aim to
photograph the paintings in the museums of Brussels
and Antwerp, enlisting his colleagues’ help to promote
his “entreprise” [enterprise] and adding: “Je dis mon
entreprise, c’est trop dire. C’est justement ce qu’il faut
obtenir et vous savez que nul n’est prophète dans son
pays, quand j’habitais la Belgique il y a quatre ans je
ne m’étais jamais occupé de photographie...” [I call it
my enterprise, but that’s claiming too much. The aim
is precisely that, and you know about a prophet being
without honour in his own land—when I used to live in
Belgium four years ago photography never interested
me...] (undated letter written from Aix-la-Chapelle).
In fact, Fierlants proved more than successful in pro-
moting his cause. Buoyed up by the encouragement of
his peers, and the judicious use of his family’s infl uence
in government circles, Fierlants returned to Brussels