Frederick Fiebig

"St Paul's Cathedral, Calcutta," hand-coloured photographic print, by Frederick Fiebig. Dated 1851.

Frederick Fiebig was a photographer, best known for his photographs of India, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and South Africa taken in the 1850s.^[1]

History[]

There is very little information available about Frederick Fiebig. He was probably of German origin and became a lithographer in Calcutta in the 1840s. He should not be confused with his contemporary and German compatriot, the Letton born post impressionist and expressionist painter Frédéric Fiebig. He was possibly also a piano teacher for a time.^[2] With the advent of photography, Fiebig began producing hand-coloured prints of photographs captured using the calotype process. His photographs of Calcutta are some of the earliest views of the city. He later travelled to Madras, Colombo and Kandy in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and Cape Town in South Africa, meticulously cataloguing the monuments and people around him. The East India Company acquired roughly 500 of his photographs in 1856^[1] which are now part of the Oriental and India Office collections at the British Library.^[3]

Gallery[]

Photographs by Frederick Fiebig

Gateway to the former Danish settlement of Serampore (also called Frederiksnagore by the Danes) on the Hoogly River north of Calcutta, 1851.
A street in Chandernagore, French India. Hand-coloured salt print, 1851
English: "Photograph of Black Town in Madras, India, taken in c.1851.".
"St John's Cathedral, Calcutta," hand-coloured photographic print by Frederick Fiebig, dated 1851.