Earliest known Dutch photographs of Japan to go on display in the Rijksmuseum
1 July to 4 September 2022 in the Rijksmuseum’s Photography Gallery
Publication date: 07 April 2022 - 12:00
In the summer of 2022 the Rijksmuseum will devote an exhibition to the earliest known photographs by a Dutch visitor to Japan. It was only by sheer good fortune that Antoon Bauduin’s photographs, all taken around 1865, escaped destruction in a house fire. The collection offers a rare glimpse of 19th-century Japan – when the country was just opening up its borders – while also marking the end of the special relationship with Japan that the Netherlands had enjoyed since the 17th century.
In 2016, Bauduin’s heirs, Mrs M.A. van Munster van Heuven-Sprenger van Eyk family, donated 121 of his photographs to the Rijksmuseum so that they could be restored and conserved for future generations. The Early Photographs of Japan exhibition comprises almost 50 photographs and runs from 1 July to 4 September 2022.
Antoon Bauduin (1820-1885) arrived in Japan in 1862. A physician, he had been invited by the Japanese government to teach at the Nagasaki Yojosho Medical School. His brother Albert (1829-1890) was also working in Japan at the time, for the Netherlands Trading Society (NHM) on Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki Bay. The Netherlands was the only western nation granted trading access to Japan until 1859, when other western powers forced access to Japan’s trading ports, leading to the Netherlands losing its exclusive position.
Photography was introduced to Japan just a few years before the arrival of the Bauduin brothers, when it was far from the mass medium we know today. In the first decades following its invention, besides being complex and time-consuming, photography was very expensive. Bauduin captured images of colleagues, students, friends and acquaintances, as well as Nagasaki and its environs. His portraits, especially, are far more intimate than those shot by professionals in a photographic studio; Antoon knew his subjects personally, and they were more relaxed posing for him than for anybody else. The collection offers a unique window onto a country undergoing change. The photographs show ships at anchor in Nagasaki Bay, samurai, farmers during harvest, and Bauduin himself in a portrait with a Japanese colleague from the hospital where he taught. In addition to the photographs that Antoon took, possibly together with Albert, the brothers also purchased photographs, especially when they were travelling in Japan and on the long outward and homeward voyages – the vast amount of equipment required to take photographs meant it was almost impossible to do so while travelling. A selection of these purchased images is also included in the exhibition.
Following Antoon and Albert’s departure from Japan, in 1870 and 1874 respectively, the collection of photographs was held in safekeeping by their family. It was only following a fire at the family’s home in 1985 that the photographs were rediscovered in the chest that had saved the photographs from complete destruction. Until that moment, no one knew of the existence of these remarkable images. In 2016 the family donated some of them to the Rijksmuseum so that these highly fragile objects could be restored and conserved for future generations. Now that the restoration of the fire-damaged photographs is complete, we are able, for the first time, to mount an exhibition based on the collection of Antoon and Albert Bauduin.
Vital support
The Rijksmuseum is grateful for all forms of support it receives. It is clear that government subsidies, corporate contributions and support from funds, as well as donations, legacies and Friends are, and will remain, essential to the Rijksmuseum.
