Photo 247/1

Collection of 57 loose hand-coloured salted paper prints from calotype negatives, mounted on card measuring 348 x 470 mm, with contemporary hand-written captions. Originally contained in a portfolio, the collection has now been boxed. The collection contains topographical and architectural views of Calcutta, Chinsura, Barrackpore and Chandernagore. Of German origin, Fiebig's early career in India was as a lithographer in Calcutta in the 1840s, where he published a number of topographical views of the city, including a multi-part panorama from the Ochterlony Monument. He is also presumably the same figure as the 'Fiebeg' who is recorded as a piano teacher in the 'Bengal and Agra Directory and Annual Register' in 1849 and 1850. He is known to have visited Singapore in 1846, for the purpose of painting a panoramic view of the settlement, although this appears to be lost (advertisement in the 'Singapore Free Press,' 2 April 1846). He probably took up photrography in the late 1840s and in the early 1850s produced nearly 500 calotypes of the architecture and scenery of Calcutta, Madras, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Mauritius and Cape Town, these last two locations presumably photographed on the voyage back to Europe. One of his views of Ceylon is dated 1852, so he presumably visited the island in the course of a journey which produced his Madras photographs (see Photo 248), where a brief article in the 'Indian Illustrated Journal of Arts' (Madras, 1852, p. 32) notes the appearance of the 'expert German professor of the art, M. F. Fiebig, who has been engaged for nearly three years in taking views in China, Moulmein, Rangoon, and Calcutta. We saw 7 or 800 views of Calcutta and 60 or 70 of Madras which had been taken with the greatest accuracy and minuteness of detail.' Work by Fiebig from China and Burma has not come to light, and may represent an embellishment of the breadth of his travels, while the seven to eight hundred views of Calcutta may also be an exaggerated figure. By 1856 Fiebig was in England and in that year wrote to the East India Company from 4 Champion Grove, Camberwell, stating that 'during my travels in India I employed my leisure time in taking photographic views of the principal buildings and other places of interest at Calcutta, Madras, the Coromandel Coast, Ceylon, Mauritius, and the Cape of Good Hope' (IOR, Miscellaneous Letter Received, vol.193, 1856). These prints he offered for sale at £60 per set hand coloured, £40 uncoloured, the East India Company purchasing a full set of the coloured views. The sale of his work to the East India Company is the last documentary record of his movements and no further information regarding his subsequent career has so far been traced.