Los 4020

Carrick, William
(1827-1878)Portraits of Russian military officers, monks, pilgrims and farmers

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Aus dem Katalog
Fotografie des 19. – 21. Jahrhunderts (Katalog nur online verfügbar)
Auktionsdatum 29.11.2025

Portraits of Russian military officers, monks, pilgrims, street sellers, craftsmen, nuns, farmers and ethnic types. 1860s. 48 albumen prints, mounted to original studio carte-de-visite. Each circa 8,5 x 5,5 cm. Each with photographer’s name printed below the image; verso with studio logo and address. Inserted in gilt-edged album window mats, each captioned and numbered in red ink beneath the image. Bound in half-leather lacquered album with a hand-painted genre scene on the front cover.


The Scottish-Russian artist and photographer William Carrick was born in Edinburgh and raised in Kronstadt. In 1844, his family moved to St. Petersburg, where he enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Arts to study architecture. During a brief return to Edinburgh in 1857 to deepen his knowledge of photography, Carrick met the photographic technician John MacGregor. The two returned to Russia together and established a studio in St. Petersburg, with MacGregor serving as Carrick’s assistant. Carrick quickly emerged as a pioneering photographer of Russian ethnographic subjects, documenting rural life with notable humanity and sensitivity. In 1871, the pair undertook a month-long journey through the Simbirsk province, producing a remarkable series of photographs depicting Russian and Mordovian peasants. Popular with contemporary tourists, these images are now exceptionally rare. The album presented here opens with portraits of Tsar Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. – Edges of album spine slightly rubbed, photos with slight fading in edges, otherwise in good condition and several with strong contrasts.