(Active 1859-1895). North American painter and photographer Villroy L. Richardson arrived in Lima - Peru in 1859, contracted to work at the B.F. Pease studio. Soon after, he moved to the Pedro Emilio Garreaud studio. He opened his own studio in Lima in 1862, under Fotografía Americana imprint. Richardson's well executed cdvs were much in demand as were his images of the Lima to La Oroya railroad line. In the 1860s he produced photomontages, placing political personalities on the bodies of animals and later produced a series of popular political caricatures on cdvs. When he did not heed government warnings to cease, Richardson was arrested and released only after his political favorite became President.
He was in La Paz, Bolivia during the unsuccessful 1875 insurrection against the government of Tomas Frias and made three photographs of the burned and gutted presidential palace (known today as "El Palacio Quemado"), which were forwarded by U.S. Legation minister Robert M. Reynolds to the Department of State in Washington. Those photographs are still held in the U.S. National Archives.
Around 1880 he opened a studio in Iquique, Chile at Plaza Arturo Prat n°2. In 1895, the local newspaper La Patria reports its studio as in Thompson Street.
[Courtesy of Renato Mazzoni, 8 April 2013]
Villroy L. Richardson
Portraits
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Genealogy of Villroy L. Richardson
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