Lot 1: MITREITER, TORVALD (19TH CENTURY) Serbian Officer

MITREITER, TORVALD (19TH CENTURY)
Serbian Officer, variously inscribed in Cyrillic, titled twice, once in Cyrillic, and numbered “No 242” on the reverse.
Albumen print, hand-coloured with watercolour and oil, laid on cardboard, 23.5 by 17.5 cm.
Executed c. 1860s–1870s.

Provenance: With the B. Avanzo Art Shop, Moscow, c. 1890s–1900s (stamp on the reverse).
Private collection, Europe.

Torvald Mitreiter was a Danish photographer active in Russia in the late 19th century, working for the Imperial Court. Between 1879 and 1897, Mitreiter was affiliated with the Rumyantsev Museum, Moscow’s first public museum, which commissioned a photographic album from him. In 1867 he participated in the Moscow Ethnographic Exhibition, with a series of photographs of mannequins wearing Russian folk costumes. Four works from the offered here Mitreiter collection were possibly included in this exhibition. He owned a salon in Moscow, Viennese Photography. Some of his photographs are in the collection of the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St Petersburg.