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China
Portraits of high ranking Chinese Imperial officials and views of Peking and surroundings

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Fotografie des 19. – 21. Jahrhunderts (Katalog nur online verfügbar)
Auktionsdatum 6.6.2026

Photographer: Georges Auguste Morache (1837-1906). Portraits of high-ranking Chinese imperial officials and views of Peking and its surroundings. 1863-1866. 27 albumen prints, mounted to board. Each ca. 16,5 x 21 cm and smaller (mounts 44 x 34 cm). Each signed by the photographer in red ink below the image in the lower right corner of the mount; most extensively annotated in German in black ink, and each with title and explanatory text by the photographer in red ink on mount verso. Loose in a contemporary half-linen card portfolio.

Photographs by the amateur photographer Dr. Georges Auguste Morache are among the earliest known photographic views and portraits of people in Beijing and remain extremely rare. Morache had no commercial ambitions as a photographer; his work appears to have been driven primarily by personal curiosity and by the technical challenges of photography, which was still in an early stage of development during his stay in China. He organized his photographs into thematic groups, which he later presented as gifts to family members and close acquaintances.
Among the thirteen portrait photographs in this group, the images of high-ranking officials and dignitaries - identified by name and rank in inscriptions on the verso annotated by Morache - are of particular significance. These include portraits of Ouen-Siang (?), Foreign Minister and Vice-President of the Imperial Council; the Finance Minister and a member of the Imperial Council; the Korean ambassador; a high-ranking Buddhist monk; and several other civilian and military figures. The most widely known image is Morache’s portrait of Prince Gong, who emerged as one of the most influential figures at the Qing court in the aftermath of the Second Opium War.
Today there are only a small number of extant photographs by Morache which are dispersed among museums and private collections. Notably, examples are held in the Stephan Loewentheil Historical Photography of China Collection in New York. A further album, titled Vues de Pékin 1865-67 and comprising 29 photographs signed on the title page, is preserved at the Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library) in Tokyo, formerly part of the George Morrison Collection. The Musée du quai Branly in Paris also holds Morache photographs, and an additional bound album of approximately forty prints resides in a private British collection. The present group therefore constitutes a fifth surviving portfolio. Unlike the photographs in the aforementioned collections, each image here bears Morache’s signature on the front of the mount, possibly intended to distinguish his work from that of other photographers active in Beijing at the time.
Dr. Morache studied surgery at the naval medical school in Brest, continued his medical training in Strasbourg, and later attended the prestigious Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. His professional standing led to his appointment as a medical officer at the French legation in Beijing. In 1863 he traveled to China accompanied by his wife and his mother, Pauline Morache, who maintained close contact with diplomatic and intellectual circles in the city and closely observed local cultural and political life. Pauline Morache recorded her impressions and experiences extensively in German on the versos of the large mounts accompanying the photographs, suggesting a German cultural background. She was acquainted with the Countess of Stolberg-Stolberg, who introduced her to the family of Friedrich Viktor Strauss (later Viktor von Strauss und Torney), a prominent Protestant theologian, religious historian, and translator, best known for producing the first German translation of the Tao Te King. It is therefore highly plausible that the inscriptions on the mounts were written with Strauss directly in mind as their intended reader.

Provenienz: Descendants of Viktor von Strauß und Torney (1809-1899)

Literatur: Édouard de Saint-Ours. The Photography of Dr. Georges Auguste Morache (1837–1908): A Selection from the Stephan Loewentheil Historical Photography of China Collection (exhibition catalogue). London, 2016.