Saturday 13 February 2016

Ponte Vecchio in the 19th century

I hope you like this late 19th century photograph of Ponte Vecchio in Florence,
hand coloured by me:




Friday 12 February 2016

Yokohama in the 1880s

Yokohama was an important port city already in the 19th century. This is a photograph from the 1880s, hand coloured by me:



Here is some additional information about Yokohama:

Yokohama, officially the City of Yokohama, is the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo, and most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. It is a major commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area.
Yokohama's population of 3.7 million makes it Japan's largest incorporated city.[2] Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century, and is today one of its major ports along with Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Hakata, Tokyo, and Chiba. (Wiki)

Thursday 11 February 2016

Soprano Christina Nilsson (19th century photograph)

Here is an early portrait of the great 19th century Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson. Colour added by me:


Additional information about Christina Nilsson from Wikipedia:

Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, (20 August 1843 – 20 November 1921) was a Swedish operatic soprano. She possessed a brilliant bel canto technique and was considered a rival to the Victorian era's most famous diva, Adelina Patti. --

Christina Nilsson was born Kristina Jonasdotter in the village of Sjöabol, near Växjö, Småland, to the peasants Jonas Nilsson and Cajsa-Stina Månsdotter. From her earliest years, she demonstrated vocal talent.[1] She taught herself to play on the violin and flute, and sang in the peasants' fairs in Sweden with her brother. She was discovered by a prominent civil servant when, aged 14, she was performing at a market in Ljungby. He soon became her patron, enabling her to have vocal training. She was a pupil of Franz Berwald for two years.

In 1860, she gave concerts in Stockholm and Uppsala. After four years' study in Paris, she had her operatic début 1864 as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris.[1] After this success she sang at major opera houses in London, Saint Petersburg, Vienna and New York. She also appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's inaugural performance on October 22, 1883 in Gounod's Faust.
Christina Nilsson was married in Westminster Abbey to the French banker Auguste Rouzaud, who later died in 1882. In 1887 she married Angel Ramon Maria Vallejo y Miranda, Count de Casa Miranda, who died in 1902.[1] In correspondence, Nilsson often signed her first name as Christine, and during the last part of her life she was generally known as the Countess de Casa Miranda.
She died in Växjö, Sweden in 1921. Unfortunately, unlike Patti, she never made gramophone recordings of her voice.



Monday 8 February 2016

Imperial Russia in colour

Here are five old photographs from imperial Russia. I have tried to make them a little more lively by adding colour:

Tsar Nicholas and Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (1905 official photograph)

Portrait of Maxim Gorky (about  1905)

Dmitri Trepov, Governor-General of St. Petersburg (1905)

A guard in St. Petersburg during the revolutionary year 1905.

Tsar Nicholas II on his morning ride (1905).