New Old Portraits

Constanze Mozart, wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at 78 years of age, 2 years before her death. (Her maiden name was Weber). Bavarian composer Max Keller is seated center front, and to his right is his wife Josefa. The print is a 19th century copy of the original daguerrotype photograph taken October 1840, at the home of composer Max Keller. This copy was found in the Altötting state archive in 2004.

Constanze's House in Copenhagen

Toward the end of 1797, she met Georg Nikolaus von Nissen, a Danish diplomat and writer who was, initially, her tenant. The two began living together in September 1798, and were married in 1809 in Bratislava. From 1810 to 1820 they lived in Copenhagen, and subsequently travelled throughout Europe, especially Germany and Italy. They settled in Salzburg in 1824. Both worked on a biography of Mozart; Constanze eventually published it in 1828, two years after her second husband's death.

******

Arthur Rimbaud. Aden (Yemen) 1880

Alfred Bardey (coffee trader), Jules Suel, Arthur Rimbaud, and others in front of the Universe Hotel, Aden 

Rimbaud's House in Aden

Many books and magazines have had to make do with publishing images of Rimbaud as a youth, since, after abandoning his writing around 1875, travelling extensively (and mostly on foot) throughout Europe, deserting the Dutch Colonial Army after getting all the way to Indonesia, and working as a foreman at a stone quarry in Cyprus, Rimbaud all but disappeared into a life as a merchant in Aden, Yemen, in 1880.

Read more

In 1880 Rimbaud finally settled in Aden, Yemen, as a main employee in the Bardey agency, going on to run the firm's agency in Harar, Ethiopia.