Hand coloring is surely one of the most striking elements of Beato’s photographs of people. Beato wasn’t the first photographer to hand color photographs in Japan; nevertheless, Beato was the photographer who developed a comprehensive inventory of hand-colored photographs that would establish the model for his contemporaries and for subsequent photographers in Japan.
It is generally believed that at first, his friend and business partner Charles Wirgman was the painter. This job was then taken over by Japanese artists whom Beato employed for this purpose. In the more successful painted photographs, the application of pigment is sparse: only a couple of colors, applied in transparent washes that allow details to show, highlight details of anatomy and attire.