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Prat (G.) Photograph Album of China and Japan
98.R.14
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Title: G. Prat photograph album of China and Japan
Date (inclusive): 1874-1900
Number: 98.R.14
Creator/Collector:
Prat, G., active 1874-1900
Physical Description:
1.5 Linear Feet
(1 album containing 151 photographs; 21 loose photographic
prints)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The album, compiled by G. Prat, a
French silk inspector working in China in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
contains 151 albumen photographs of China and Japan. The album's visual focus is on the
ports and trading centers of China's Pearl River Delta. Present are 98 views of Guangzhou
(Canton); six of Hong Kong; and 11 of Macau. Additionally, there are 16 images on eight
pages depicting the Canton Amateur Theatrical Society's (CATS) productions, and 20
photographs of Japan, 19 of which are hand colored. Photographers include Lai Fong and
Kusakabe Kinbē. Extensive commentary written on the mount borders forms Prat's compendium
on China in which he addresses any number of topics from history, geography, climate,
agriculture, religion, language and dialects, and business practices to family life, sedan
chairs, etiquette, costume and dress, and opium, to a lexicon of colonial Asian terms. The
album is accompanied by 21 loose albumen prints and a manuscript listing photographs to be
acquired.
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Language: Collection material is in
French
The Frenchman, G. Prat, lived in Asia during the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
working or traveling in the region from at least 1874 to 1896. From 1877 to 1884, he was
based in Guangzhou where he was employed as a silk inspector by the American trading company
Russell & Co. for a year and a half, and by the English firm Thomas, Rowe, & Smith
for five and a half years. He was active in the European community on Shamian Island and
numbered among his friends the "junior men" who were variously employed as accountants, tea
tasters, silk inspectors, and the like at the European trading houses established in the
port city.
Sources consulted:
___"The Case of the Canton-Riot,"
The Straits Times, 27
September 1883, p. 2. Newspaper SG, microfilm reel NL05047.
The Directory & Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China,
Straits Settlements, Malay States, Sian, Netherlands India, Borneo, the Philippines,
&c: with which are Incorporated "The China Directory" and "The Hong Kong List for the
Far East…"
Hong Kong: Hongkong Daily Press Office, 1882.
Events in Hongkong and the Far East, 1875 to 1884. Hong
Kong: Daily Press Office, 1885.
Bickers, Robert,
China Bound: John Swire & Sons and Its World,
1816 – 1980
. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.
Department of State, United States,
Papers Relating to the Foreign
Relations of the United States
. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1885.
Hart, Robert and James Duncan Campbell,
The I. G. in Peking: Letters
of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868-1907
. Cambridge, Massachusetts and
London, England: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Morse, Hosea Ballou,
The International Relations of the Chinese
Empire, volume 2: The Period of Submission, 1861-1893.
New York, Bombay, Calcutta:
Longmans, Green and Co, 1918.
Perdue, Peter C., "The Rise & Fall of the Canton Trade System," Visualizing Cultures at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology website.
https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/rise_fall_canton_01/pdf/cw03_essay.pdf
Prat, G., G. Prat Photograph Album of China and Japan, 1874-1900, accession number 98.R.14,
album, Box 1*.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
G. Prat photograph album of China and Japan, 1874-1900, The Getty Research Institute, Los
Angeles, Accession no. 98.R.14.
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa98r14
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Acquired in 1998.
The finding aid was written by Beth Ann Guynn in 2020. The collection was originally
accessioned with the title: Chine-Japon Photograph Album.
The collection was digitized in 2000 and the images are available online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/98r14
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection comprises an album compiled by G. Prat containing 151 albumen photographs,
some of which are hand colored; 21 loose albumen prints; and a manuscript list of
photographs to be obtained.
The untitled album is half bound in dark green leather with gilt stamped decorative
banding; the spine is mostly lacking. The boards are covered in dark green leatherette.
Inscribed on the free front endpaper is the compiler's name, simply recorded as "G. Prat."
The album has 149 pages with eight blank pages in the middle and one blank page at its end.
While most of the pages contain a single image, six pages hold two photographs, and two
pages hold three photographs.
The album's visual focus is on the ports and trading centers of China's Pearl River Delta.
Present are 98 views of Guangzhou (Canton), one of the five original Chinese treaty ports;
six of Hong Kong; and 11 of Macau. Additionally, there are 16 images on eight pages
depicting the Canton Amateur Theatrical Society's (CATS) productions, and 20 photographs of
Japan, 19 of which are hand-colored. To date, a handful of the photographs of China have
been identified as being by Lai Fong and it is likely that further research will confirm
that the bulk of them are in fact by this Chinese photographer or his studio, known as Afong
Studio, which was based in Hong Kong. It is also possible that some of the China photographs
could have been taken by Prat himself, although this argument is weakened by the fact that
Lai Fong (or his studio operatives) frequently documented the events and outings of the
denizens of the Western settlements in the treaty ports. Lastly, Kusakabe Kinbē has been
identified as the maker of most of the photographs of Japan in the album.
Captions are written in French above the photographs and are continued below the image. The
upper portion of the caption usually contains a location and a date, while the one below the
image is usually descriptive of the photograph and often has additional notes written
immediately below it. Most of the titles of the individual photographs were derived by
combining the two captions. Prat's spelling has been retained and transcribed as written
with the exception of distinct words linked by ligatures which have been divided into
separate words.The date in the caption above each photograph has been used to date the image
it is associated with, although in some cases the descriptive text indicates that these
dates may be of a more general nature rather than being strictly specific to the image.
Although the dates in the upper captions range from 1874 to 1896, the album is not
organized in chronological order. Rather, Prat seems to have started compiling the album
beginning with photographs taken in or related to 1878, and then adding groups of
photographs from both before and after that date as his project progressed. The first six
photographs in the album document the aftermath of the cyclone (which Prat refers to as a
trombe) that struck Guangzhou on April 10, 1878. The
emphasis on the destruction of buildings in the European settlement on Shamian Island,
specifically that sustained by the European trading houses, sets the tone for Prat's focus
on documenting the Western business communities established along the Pearl River Delta.
The island known as Shamian (also Shameen; Shamin; Prat uses the French spelling Shamien)
is where Prat spent a significant amount of the time covered in the album. In 1859, the
foreign community in Guangzhou was moved from the banks of the Pearl River to the island, a
former sandbar that was separated from the mainland by the creation of an artificial canal
or river (now called Shajichong) and built up to encompass twenty-seven hectares. Britain
leased three-fifths of the island from China, using it for their concession or settlement,
while France leased the remaining land. Leasing the land from China allowed the settlements
to exist autonomously, essentially exempt from local Chinese control. The island was
connected to the mainland by two bridges, one located in each settlement, that were locked
at night. By 1873, Shamian boasted ten foreign consulates, numerous western banks, and the
local headquarters of the most prominent European and American trading companies present in
China.
The remainder of the photographs in the first half of the album alternate between views on
Shamian and views of the Chinese city. Attention is given to areas where the two communities
were likely to meet, such as the docks and wharves, and to the assorted Chinese and European
vessels plying its waterways. Informed by his profession as a silk inspector, Prat naturally
focuses on the numerous British, French, German, and American trading companies established
on Shamian. These companies were housed in so called "factories" which combined trade
offices, warehouses, and living quarters for their male employees. Nothing was manufactured
in these buildings, which had facades that gave them the appearance of large villas. Rather,
the term factory comes from the English word factor, used to mean commercial agent. The
Chinese term for these establishments was "hongs." Across East Asia and the East Pacific
they were also referred to as "godowns." Prat calls them "maisons." In the album, Prat
includes photographs of or mentions all of the important houses: W. Pustau & Co.
Siemssen & Co.; Jardine, Matheson & Co.; Olyphant & Co.; Russell & Co.;
Coare, Lind, & Co.; Carlowitz & Co.; Birley & Co.; Deacon & Co.; Vogel
Hagedorn (Vogel & Co.); and Thomas, Rowe, & Smith (Thomas & Mercer Co.). The
earlier images often show the "junior men" of the company seated on porches and verandas or
standing on upper balconies. Prat identifies the men, noting his close friends. Photographs
placed later along in the album depict the state of the trading houses after the
anti-foreign riots that took place on September 10, 1883.
While the overarching background to the anti-foreign riots on Shamian Island was the
growing tension between France and China due to the increasing French encroachment in
northern Vietnam (Tonkin) that culminated in the Sino-French war (April 1884 to April 1885),
two local incidents involving Europeans that resulted in the death of Chinese persons were
the immediate causes of the uprising. In the first, which occurred on August 13, 1883, J. H.
Logan, an English tidewaiter or customs officer, confronted a group of Chinese men and boys
who were gathered on the steps of the house where he was drinking and playing cards. An
argument ensued when the partying men tried to send the Chinese men away. Logan ran back
inside the building, retrieved a rifle, and fired it, wounding a Chinese man and woman and
killing Pak Wa Kung, a twelve-year-old Chinese boy.
The second, known as the "Hankow incident," began when Luo Fen, who was attemping to secure
good berths for boardinghouse guests on the steamer
Hankow
early in the morning of September 10, was accosted and brutally kicked by Faustino Caetano
Diaz, a Portuguese watchman, causing him to fall overboard. Luo's death was due either
directly to the blows or to drowning. In response to Luo's death, Chinese rioters set fire
to the wharf and sheds where the Hankow was moored, but the steamer itself escaped harm by
sailing quickly upriver. Failing to destroy the vessel, the rioters moved on to Shamian
Island where they looted and burned numerous buildings. Most of the European women and
children fled to other steamships anchored in the harbor, while the male population
patrolled the island. Charles Seymour, the American consul at Guangzhou, began his
understated dispatch written at ten p.m. on the night of the riots to John Russell Young,
the American minister to China (later the seventh Librarian of Congress), "Sir: I have the
honor to inform you that the Europeans and Americans residing in Canton and on the Shameen
have had an interesting day during which some lives were lost and considerable property has
been destroyed, amounting in value to about $200,000…"
The Chinese army was called in to help protect the settlement from further rioting. Several
photographs record its encampment and groups of soldiers on the commons with burnt buildings
in the background, while other images record the beefed up presence of foreign warships in
the harbor. Some views show the beginnings of reconstruction with bamboo scaffolding erected
around the damaged structures.
The trials of both European men took place after the riots. Logan, whose trial began on
September 20, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to seven years of servitude, which
was widely believed among the Chinese to be too lenient of a punishment. In November, Diaz
was sentenced to three months imprisonment. In both cases the trials were conducted and
sentencing delivered according to European rather than Chinese law, and their outcomes led
to increased resentment of the European presence in China.
The first half of the album concludes with various scenes of Chinese Guangzhou. After a
break of eight blank pages the reader is transported to Japan in the year 1896. Nineteen of
the 20 photographs in this section are by Kusakabe Kinbē, a Japanese photographer who worked
for Felice Beato and Baron Raimund von Stillfried as a studio assistant and colorist before
opening his own studio in Yokohama in 1881. Around 1885, he acquired the negatives of his
former employers and those of Uchida Kuichi, as well as some of Ueno Hikoma's negatives of
Nagasaki. By 1893, Kusakabe was one of the most prominent Japanese photographers and his
work was sought after by Western customers who knew him by his first name, Kinbē or Kimbei.
His images of Japanese women, three examples of which appear in Prat's album, were
especially popular. Most of the photographs in the album, however, are delicately colored
views of Japanese cities – Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Osaka – and of iconic
Japanese locales such as Mount Fuji and Lake Biwa. With the sole exception of an uncolored
view looking down a Yokohama canal towards the French consulate, Prat's self-referential
choice of images, so prevalent in the first half of the album, is lacking in his selection
of Japanese photographs.
In the pages following the photographs of Japan, Prat returned to adding earlier images
from his time in China to the album. He devotes much of the last part of the album to
documenting the European community on Shamian Island and locating himself within it. Dating
from 1877 to 1883, the photographs include large group portraits of the community gathered
outdoors, as well as images of Prat and his circle of friends casually arranged on the
porches and verandahs of their communal residences. Most of the images of the CATS players
are found in this section of the album, along with three group portraits of the costumed
attendees of the masked ball given by Mr. and Mrs. G. M. Smith of Jardine, Matheson &
Co. in 1879. Also included here are the images of Hong Kong and Macau, all of which are
dated 1879 (in the first part of the album there is a lone photograph of Hong Kong dated
1874). As Prat was working in Guangzhou at the time, it is likely that he traveled to these
two locations for either business or pleasure.
Throughout the album, the photographs and their immediate upper and lower captions are
enclosed in elaborate geometric or floral borders hand drawn in red or black ink. Prat used
the margins outside these surrounds to write extensive commentaries. Those written below the
borders often, but not always, refer to the image on the page, while those written above the
image, and frequently also in both side margins (sometimes written sideways), form Prat's
compendium on China in which he addresses any number of topics from history, geography,
climate, agriculture, religion, language and dialects, and business practices to family
life, sedan chairs, etiquette, costume and dress, and opium. Each subject is noted in the
top margin of the page where it begins, and topics often continue on several successive
pages. The last entry in the album is a small lexicon spanning several pages that Prat
labels "quelques locutions pidgin english."
Cross references to the album's photographs are often made in the marginalia, as well as in
the image captions. The dates included in these texts frequently refer to events that took
place later or earlier than the dates given in the upper captions for the images, which
suggests that at some point after the album compilation was well underway, or perhaps even
completed, Prat decided to add his general treatise on China.
The album is accompanied by 21 loose albumen prints, falling into three distinct groups,
and a manuscript list of photographs. The first group comprises eight group portraits of
members of the European community taken in Guangzhou between 1877 and 1883. Six of these
portraits are also present in the album. The other two photographs in the group are formal
studio portraits. One of these portraying four mustachioed young European men is by Li Yong,
while the other of six men, more casually arranged and dressed, is by an unidentified
photographer. Some of the men appear in both portraits.
The second group of loose photographs comprises seven views of Guangzhou. While all of them
are dated on their versos "Canton 1900," the photographs themselves were likely taken at an
earlier date, as indicated by the fact that several of them relate directly to, or are
variants of, photographs found in the album, and are assigned a number following the page
number on which a corresponding image appears. Lastly, six views of the Rhône Valley in
France taken in the 1880s by one or more unidentified photographers form the third group of
loose photographs.
The list of photographs is headed "Liste de vues à demander à Canton." In it, Prat gives
detailed descriptions of 19 views of Guangzhou, including sites within both the Chinese city
and the European settlements, which he wishes to acquire. At the end of the list he explains
that these photographs could be sold to residents of Canton or to "globe trotters" as
souvenirs, and that he hopes to be the one to facilitate this. He also explains which
photographs would be easy to obtain and which would require permission of the subjects
represented, or as in the case of number 17, the festival of the dragon boat, would need to
be taken on a specific date, here "le 5me jour de le 5me lune." As evidenced by his
description of the first image, a view of the central lane of the French Concession, Prat
compiled the list sometime after 1884 ("qui, m'a-t'on dit, est aujourd'hui complètement
garnie de maisons, alors qu'en 1884, il n'y en avait encase aucune"), and possibly as late
as 1900 when he assembled the group of loose photographs of Guangzhou.
The collection is arranged in a single series:
Series I: G. Prat photograph album of
China and Japan, 1874-1900.
Kusakabe, Kinbē,
1841-1932
Disasters -- China -- Guangzhou
Hurricanes -- China -- Guangzhou
Harbors -- China -- Guangzhou
Riots -- China -- Guangzhou -- History -- 19th century
Trading companies -- China
Guangzhou (China) -- Description and travel
Hong Kong -- Description and travel
Macau -- Description and travel
Pearl River Delta -- Description and travel
Shamian (China) -- Description and travel
Rhône River Valley (Switzerland and France) -- Description and
travel
Photographs, Original.
Albumen prints -- China -- 19th century
Albumen prints -- Japan -- 19th century
Photograph albums -- China -- 19th century
Photograph albums -- Japan -- 19th century
Hand coloring -- Japan -- 19th century
Prat, G., active 1874-1900