Felice Beato - Later Years

Later Years

From 1884 to 1885 Beato was the official photographer of the expeditionary forces led by Baron (later Viscount) G.J. Wolseley to Khartoum, Sudan, in relief of General Charles Gordon.

Briefly back in England in 1886, Beato lectured the London and Provincial Photographic Society on photographic techniques. By 1888 he was photographing in Asia again, this time in Burma, where from 1896 he operated a photographic studio (called "The Photographic Studio") as well as a furniture and curio business in Mandalay, with a branch office in Rangoon. In 1899 he left F. Beato Ltd (which would go into liquidation in 1907), but he worked in "The Photographic Studio" until 1904 and may have continued work under his own or another name after that. Although Beato was previously believed to have died in Rangoon or Mandalay in 1905 or 1906, his death certificate, discovered in 2009, indicates that he died on 29 January 1909 in Florence, Italy.

Whether acknowledged as his own work, sold as Stillfried & Andersen's, or encountered as anonymous engravings, Beato's work had a major impact:

For over fifty years into the early twentieth century, Beato's photographs of Asia constituted the standard imagery of travel diaries, illustrated newspapers, and other published accounts, and thus helped shape "Western" notions of several Asian societies.