ITALY, THE NETHERLANDS, AND MEDITERRANEAN TRAVEL ALBUM WITH 259 PHOTOGRAPHS, CIRCA 1900–1910

Item #1727

The album measures 11.25 × 15.5 × 2.75 inches and is composed of heavy, rigid leaves.

The first 193 photographs are smaller amateur images apparently made during the journey. Especially strong in their attention to everyday life, they include shipboard portraits, railway travel, markets, street vendors, workers, women and children, fishing communities, regional dress, dog-drawn carts, canals, boats, and vernacular architecture. Italian locations include Venice, Perugia, Pompeii, and other cities; the Netherlands section appears to include the traditional fishing communities of Marken and/or Volendam. Two particularly striking photographs show a pair of smartly dressed Black girls posed aboard ship with a dog.

The remaining 66 photographs are larger albumen prints, many commercially produced and bearing captions, negative numbers, or photographers’ credits. Locations include Naples, Pompeii, Pozzuoli, Vesuvius, Amalfi, Sorrento, Rome, Tivoli, Florence, Gibraltar, and elsewhere. Notable subjects include Vesuvius in eruption; the ruins and plaster casts at Pompeii; Egyptian mummies in the Naples museum; Neapolitan street children; a milk seller with goats; ox- and donkey-drawn transport; working-class neighborhoods; the Roman Forum and Pantheon; the Villa d’Este and waterfalls at Tivoli; the Ponte Vecchio and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence; and views along the Amalfi Coast. Credited photographers and publishers include Alinari, Giorgio Sommer, Anderson, and Egidio Giannini.

An unusually rich travel record combining the intimacy of amateur photography with an extensive collection of images by prominent Italian photographic firms. Its greatest strength lies in its numerous photographs of ordinary people, labor, street life, transportation, traditional customs, and the travelers’ experiences aboard ship.

The covers are detached and considerably worn, with losses to the covering material. The heavy album leaves remain largely intact. Photographs show varying degrees of fading, silvering, creasing, and surface wear; several of the larger albumen prints have clipped or rounded corners, apparently to accommodate the mounts. Overall, the photographs remain an extensive and visually compelling record of turn-of-the-century European travel.

Price: $650.00