Augustine Heard & Co. Hong Kong
1865
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
25.2 × 32.3 cm (9 15/16 × 12 11/16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Cynthia Hazen Polsky Gift, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.583 (84a)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In 1865, pioneering photographer John Thomson captured *Augustine Heard & Co., Hong Kong*, an evocative albumen silver print that offers a window into the bustling colonial trade world of mid-19th-century Hong Kong. The image, likely featuring portraits of men associated with the American trading firm Augustine Heard & Co reflects the era's mercantile ambitions. Hong Kong, a British colony since 1842, had become a vital hub for Western commerce following the Opium Wars, with firms like Heard's facilitating silk, tea, and opium exchanges between East and West. Thomson, a Scottish explorer-phot...
About the Artist
John Thomson · 1837–1921
John Thomson (1837–1921), a pioneering Scottish photographer, was born on 14 June 1837 in Edinburgh as the eighth of nine children to William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and trader, and Isabella Newlands.) After schooling in the early 1850s, he apprenticed with a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, where he mastered the principles of photography, completing his training around 185...