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Portraits of a British merchant family in Brazil
95.R.30
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Contributing Institution: Special Collections
Title: Portraits of a British merchant family in Brazil
Creator: Fredricks & Weeks
Identifier/Call Number: 95.R.30
Physical Description: 35 Photographic Prints
Date (inclusive): between 1845 and 1865
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the
catalog record for this collection. Click here for the
access policy .
Abstract: The collection of cased photographs comprises 32 photographs, mostly portraits of the extended Youle family, a British merchant
family residing in Recife, Brazil, in the mid-nineteenth century. Included are 14 daguerreotypes, 18 ambrotypes, one tintype,
and two albumen prints. While the makers of most of the photographs in the collection are unidentified, three daguerreotypes
that did not originate with the Youle family were made by Fredricks and Weeks in Recife in 1851.
Language of Material: English.
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Alfred Phillips Youle, one of the few sitters identified in the collection, was born in London in 1824. He was one of the
ten children of Peter Youle (London, 1788-London, 1863) and Ann Jones Shepherd Youle (1788-1873). It is not known when Alfred
Phillips Youle arrived in Brazil, but by 1851 he had already joined his older brother Frederick and George Deane as a partner
in Deane, Youle & Company, commission merchants whose transatlantic trade included sundries such as sugar, preserved meats,
and spirits. Alfred Phillips Youle returned to London sometime in the 1860s, and by 1872 he was named to the first board of
directors of the Great Western Railway Company Limited, the "Greitueste," which was formed to build railway lines in Western
Brazil. He was also on the board of directors of the Conde d'Eu Railway, Limited in Parahyba, Brazil.
In 1852, Alfred Phillips Youle married seventeen-year-old Annie Stewart Schwind (Bahia, 1835-London, 1871) in Bahia. Annie
was the daughter of Fredrick Louis Schwind (Liverpool, 1796-1873) and Margaret Stewart Schwind (Ireland,1811- ). Her grandfather
of the same name (Germany, ca. 1750-Cape Coast, Ghana, 1799) was a mariner and later a ship's surgeon who served aboard several
English enslaver ships. His first post was to the
Alfred in 1784. He was serving as ship's master on the
Pilgrim when she went down off Cape Coast in 1799. Annie's father, Schwind, Jr., along with his older brother Charles, was a member
of the Bahia commission merchants firms of Schwind, Brade & Company and Schwind, Weetman & Company. The extended Schwind family
was a British presence in Bahia well into the twentieth century.
The Schwinds were thus rooted in both Liverpool, the epicenter of the British enslaver trade, and in Brazil, which did not
begin to seriously enforce anti-slave trade legislation until 1850, and which was the last country in the Western world to
abolished slavery, doing so only in 1888. As merchants participating in the last leg of the triangular trade by sending goods
produced in the Americas back to Europe, the Schwind brothers and their firms continued to accrue benefits from the institution
of slavery in the form of compensations and reinvestment derived from products created through the labor of enslaved people.
The commodities the Youle firms shipped to Europe were likewise produced in large part through the labor of enslaved people.
The Youles had 12 children before Annie died at age 35 or 36. A few years later, in 1875, Charles Youle married Charlotte
Emily Broadbent in London. He died in England in 1905.
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American photographer, Charles DeForest Fredricks (1823-1894), was an itinerant daguerreotypist who had been traveling extensively
in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina since 1843 when, on 8 March 1851, he paid a visit to Alexander B. Weeks (1818-1859)
at J. Gurney's Daguerreotype Gallery in New York City, where Weeks worked as a daguerreotype operator, to convince Weeks to
join him on his upcoming trip to South America. On April 14, the two men finalized their photographic partnership and, after
making preparations, they embarked upon their journey, setting sail from New York on the
Mary Ellen on May 19. They arrived in Recife, Brazil (then Pernambuco) in early July, and from the middle of that month until late
September they operated a daguerreotype studio in the city before moving on to ply their trade first in Montevideo and then
in Buenos Aires.
In April 1852, Weeks left on his return trip to New York, while Fredricks remained in South America for another year before
moving on to Paris where he took up the new technique of collodion glass plate photography and opened a studio with Jeremiah
Gurney. Meanwhile, upon returning to New York, Weeks opened a studio in Brooklyn under the name Fredericks & Weeks. Weeks
operated the business as a partnership until January 1854, when he bought out Fredricks's half of the business. Shortly thereafter
Weeks moved to Toledo, Ohio where he opened a studio. Fredricks, who had returned to New York at the end of 1853, established
what would become New York City's largest and most fashionable portrait photography studio. Located at 585-587 Broadway, the
facade of his premises was illuminated by hundreds of lanterns forming a sixty-foot arch which spelled out the words "Fredrick's
Photographic Temple of Art." In 1857, he also opened C. D. Fredricks y Daries with Augusto Daries in Havana. Fredricks never
returned to South America.
Sources consulted:
"Charles Schwind, 1790-1842." WikiTree. Profile last modified September 10, 2019. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schwind-273
"Frederick Louis Schwind (abt. 1750-1799)." WikiTree. Profile last modified January 10, 2020. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schwind-274
"Frederick Louis Schwind (1796)." WikiTree. Profile last modified October 10, 2019. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schwind-277
Herold, Marc. "Re: Liverpool Merchants Active in Bahia 1810-1900." Geneology.Com. June 30, 2008. https://www.genealogy.com/forum/regional/countries/topics/brazil/2665/
New York (State).
Court of Appeals, New York Court of Appeals. Records and Briefs, vol. 13. 1864.
Peterson, Rebecca Ewing. "Alfred Phillips Youle." Find a Grave. Added to website February 6, 2012. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84596148/alfred-phillips-youle
Peterson, Rebecca Ewing. "Annie Steward Schwind Youle." Find a Grave. Added to website February 6, 2012. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84596151/annie-stewart-youle
Peterson, Rebecca Ewing. "Peter Youle." Find a Grave. Added to website February 6, 2012. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/84596168/peter-youle
Ramer, Richard C. "Inventory for Early Brazilian Photographs, Including a Daguerreotype View and Two Daguerreotype Portraits
Signed by Charles DeForest Fredricks," 1995.
Skinner, Thomas.
The Directory of Directors, 1881. London: Gresham House, 1881.
Weeks, Alexander B.
Alexander B. Weeks: A Daguerreotypist's Journal: Brooklyn, Recife, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Toledo, Detroit, transcribed by Catherine A. Murray. Mt. Pleasant, Mich.: Catherine A. Murray, 2014.
Arranged in a single series: Series I. Portraits of a British merchant family in Brazil, between 1845 and 1865.
Copy prints are open for use by qualified researchers. The original photographs are restricted.
The collection was digitized by the institution in 2010 and the images are available online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/95r30b7
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Acquired in 1995.
Portraits of a British Merchant Family in Brazil, between 1845 and 1865, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession
no. 95.R.30.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa95r30
Processed by Beth Ann Guynn in 1995. The finding aid was written by Guynn in 2020.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection of cased photographs comprises 35 photographs, mostly portraits of the extended Youle family, a British merchant
family residing in Recife, Brazil, in the mid-nineteenth century. Included are 14 daguerreotypes, 18 ambrotypes (17 collodion
positives and one collodion negative), one tintype, and two albumen prints. Most of the items are in leather cases or wooden
frames with glass. Although most of the sitters are unidentified, three daguerreotypes portray Alfred Phillips Youle, while
five ambrotypes are portraits of Annie Stewart Schwind, who married Alfred Phillips Youle in Bahia in 1851, and her parents.
All of the photographs originating from the Youle family collection are unsigned.
Three of the daguerreotypes are not from the Youle family. They are stamped on their gilt mats: Electrotypo-Fredricks e Weeks
(1) or Electrotypo-Fredricks é Weeks (2), identifying the photographic partnership of Charles DeForest Fredricks and George
H. Weeks. They all date to 1851 when Fredricks and Weeks were briefly active in Recife. A full plate daguerreotype depicts
a view of Recife harbor. The two daguerreotype portraits depict, respectively, two small girls standing and holding hands
and a Black woman seated in three-quarter view holding a light-skinned infant in her lap. This is one of the earliest known
photographs of a Black person taken in Brazil.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Merchants -- Brazil -- Portraits
Merchants -- Great Britain -- Portraits
Blacks -- Brazil -- Portraits
Harbors -- Brazil -- Recife
Recife (Brazil) -- Description and travel
Photographs, Original
Studio portraits -- Brazil -- 19th century
Albumen prints -- Brazil -- 19th century
Daguerreotypes (photographs) -- Brazil -- 19th century
Ambrotypes (photographs) -- Brazil -- 19th century
Cased photographs -- Brazil -- 19th century
Group portraits -- Brazil -- 19th century
Tinypes (photographs) -- Brazil -- 19th century
Youle, Alfred Phillips, 1824-1905