Augustine Heard & Co., Shanghai
1860
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
24.2 × 31.2 cm (9 1/2 × 12 5/16 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 (89b)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling world of mid-19th-century Shanghai John Thomson's *Augustine Heard & Co., Shanghai* (1860), an evocative albumen silver print capturing the firm's key figures. Scottish photographer Thomson, a pioneer in documentary photography, arrived in China around this time, using his keen eye to portray the era's expatriate traders. This image likely depicts the Western men managing Augustine Heard & Co., an American trading house dealing in tea, silk, and other commodities amid Shanghai's transformation into a vibrant treaty port after the Opium Wars. The photograph's historical ...
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...