Eighteen loose photos (13 albumen, four gelatin silver and one autochrome), including five large images from ca. 24,5x30 cm (9 ½ x 11 ¾ in) to ca. 16,5x22,5 cm (6 ½ x 8 ¾ in); the rest of the photos are from ca. 12x16 cm (4 ¾ x 6 ¼ in) to ca. 7,5x12 cm (3 x 4 ¾ in). The autochrome image with studio ink stamp on verso (“Avanzo, Grand Morskoi, Petersbourg”) and printed captions on recto; five photos with Buchanan’s manuscript captions on verso. One photo with minor creases and tears on the extremities, a couple of photos mildly faded, but overall a very good collection.

Interesting collection of eighteen original photos of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, collected and taken by a noted U.S. diplomat who specialized in South America, William I. Buchanan. He visited Europe in the summer-autumn of 1909, in the course of international arbitration of U.S. claims to the Venezuelan government, sent to the Court of Arbitration in the Hague.

The albumen photos include six views of Saint Petersburg, showing Nevsky Prospect, city cabmen next to the General Staff Building and the Bronze Horseman (the equestrian statue of Peter the Great), Neva River embankment with St. Isaac’s Cathedral in the background, portico to the New Hermitage building with Atlanteans, and shoe shop of A. Tselibeyev. Six views of Moscow show the Kremlin taken from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (with Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge on the right) and from the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge; Red Square with numerous street carts, the Tsar Bell and Tverskaya Street with the Triumphal Arch in the background. The largest albumen photo shows Russian soldiers with horse-driven carts on a village street.

The autochrome photo shows Nevsky Prospect and a part of the Moika River Embankment with the tower of the Municipal Duma in the distance. It was taken by the studio of Jean-Baptiste Avanzo (1853-?), a member of the Russian Photographic Society since 1904. Four small gelatin silver photos with Buchanan’s manuscript captions on verso show “Russia from the car window,” Mikhailovsky Palace and the Church of Saviour on the Spilled Blood “from the window of my room at St. Petersburg,” and “German mail carts.” Overall a nice collection of original, well-preserved photos of Saint Petersburg and Moscow from the archive of an American diplomat.

W.I. Buchanan organized Corn Palace Expositions in Sioux City (Iowa) and was a member of the Iowa Commission of the World’s Columbian Exposition (in 1890 - chief of its Department of Agriculture; in 1891 – chief of its Livestock and Forestry Department). In 1894-1900, Buchanan served as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Buenos Aires, contributing to delineating the Agrentinian-Chilean boundary in the Puna de Atacama. In 1901, he was director-general of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and in 1902 – a U.S. delegate to the 2nd Pan-American Conference in Mexico, where he succeeded due to his “conciliatory attitude” and “profound and sympathetic knowledge of Latin America” ([Obituary of] William Insco Buchanan// The American Journal of International Law. Vol. 4, No. 1 (January 1910), p. 162). From 1903 to 1904, he served as the first U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Panama. In July-August 1906, Buchanan was the leader of the U.S. delegation at the Third Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro. In 1907, he represented the United States at the 2nd Hague Peace Conference and the Central American Peace Conference (Washington, D.C.). In December 1908 – February 1909, in the rank of the U.S. High Commissioner to Venezuela, Buchanan negotiated two claims of a U.S. company and a citizen with the Venezuelan Foreign Minister Francisco Guinan, restoring diplomatic relations between the United States and Venezuela. To supervise the arbitration of the other cases, Buchanan went to Europe and suddenly died in London while at work in October 1909.