Portrait of a Woman
1868
Medium
albumen print with applied color
Dimensions
image (oval): 23.5 × 17 cm (9 1/4 × 6 11/16 in.) sheet: 25.5 × 21.5 cm (10 1/16 × 8 7/16 in.) mount: 49.5 × 35 cm (19 1/2 × 13 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Michael and Jane Wilson
Accession Number
2012.137.87
Art Historical Context
Step into the world of 19th-century photography with Felice Beato's *Portrait of a Woman* (1868), an exquisite albumen print enhanced with applied color. Beato, a pioneering Italian-British photographer renowned for vivid documentation of Asia, captured this intimate oval-framed image during his time in Japan amid the Meiji Restoration—a transformative era when the country opened to Western influences. Measuring a modest 23.5 × 17 cm, the print's delicate hand-coloring transforms the sharp details of albumen paper into a lifelike, painterly portrait, blending photography's precision with artis...
About the Artist
Felice Beato
Felice Beato (c. 1832–1909), an Italian-born photographer who became a British subject through his family's residence on the British protectorate island of Corfu, emerged as one of the pioneering figures in war and travel photography. Born in Venice or Corfu to a Venetian noble family with roots in Corfu, Beato's early life remains somewhat obscure, but he acquired his first photographic lens in P...