Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
Standing nude, 1853-1854
Coated salt print from a paper negative
14.4 x 10.0 cm
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve was a French painter, lithographer and photographer. His photographic works are most closely associated with the painter Gustave Courbet who, during the 1850s, used some of Villeneuve's photographs as source material for his paintings.
This photograph appears to be Courbet's source for his muse in his monumental and mysterious painting "L'Atelier du peintre," now in the Musée d'Orsay.
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
The milkmaid, circa 1852
Paper negative
16.5 x 12.8 cm on 19.5 x 13.7 cm paper
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve was a French painter, lithographer and photographer. His photographic works are most closely associated with the painter Gustave Courbet who, during the 1850s, used some of Villeneuve's photographs as source material for his paintings.
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
Standing nude, 1853-1854
Coated salt print from a paper negative
15.3 x 11.4 cm
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
Seated female figure, 1853-1854
Coated salt print from a paper negative
16.5 x 12.2 cm
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
Reclining nude, 1853
Coated salt print from a paper negative
12.0 x 16.9 cm
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve was a French painter, lithographer and photographer. His photographic works are most closely associated with the painter Gustave Courbet who, during the 1850s, used some of Villeneuve's photographs as source material for his paintings.
Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (French, 1795-1866)
Young woman with tambourine, circa 1852
Paper negative
16.6 x 12.9 cm, ruled in pencil, on 18.8 x 13.7 cm paper
Unidentified photographer attributed to the Circle of Charles Simart
Male nude, clutching ladder, Folio 3 recto, from the album assembled circa 1856-1860
Salt print from an enlarged collodion negative
43.8 x 28.2 cm
Created in the mid-nineteenth century with barely a nod to conventional photographic practice, the pictures of nudes, branches of apples, and trees in L'Album Simart are filled with a great sense of purpose. Assembled circa 1856-1860, the album is the work of an unidentified photographer attributed to the circle of French sculptor Pierre Charles Simart. Large in format, this study of a male nude posed in a torqued gesture of dramatic action is charged with the same energy as a quick pencil drawing in an artist's sketchbook. With arms outstretched, head raised with eyes rolling heavenward, the model enacts a drama of physical and emotional strife, theatrics not uncommon in history painting.
The wet collodion process was used to produce the glass negative plate from which this salted paper contact print was made. The soft imagery of this print is occasionally punctuated by the crisp rendering of surface scratches, chemical mischief and artifacts of indelicate handling that are typically found on collodion negatives. The artist's copy methods are betrayed by the upholstery tacks used to attach the original print to a wood board. It was advantageous to capture such a dynamic pose with a smaller camera permitting a shorter exposure. Making an enlarged negative from the original print was more reliable than capturing the pose from life on a large plate.
Unidentified photographer attributed to the Circle of Charles Simart
Branch of apples (detail), Folio 1 verso, from the album assembled circa 1856-1860
Salt print from an enlarged collodion negative
32.3 x 43.2 cm
Sydney Richard Percy (English, 1821-1886)
Gypsy girls, circa 1855
Albumen print from a collodion negative
16.4 x 13.6 cm
Sydney Richard Percy Williams was the fifth son of the painter Edward Williams. Following his older brothers' example he learned to paint from his father and was launched as a professional artist by the 1840s. In 1842 Sydney made his debut at the Royal Academy. By the time he was twenty, Percy had dropped "Williams" from his name in order to avoid confusion with the rest of the Williams family painters. During the 1850s he took up photography using his images as source material for his paintings. Percy was unapologetic for his use of the medium, a highly unusual stance during a period when most artists went to great length to hide the fact that they used photographs as a method of organizing their canvases.
Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin (French, 1802 - after 1875)
"Emma" with Ziegler vase, 1953
Coated salt print from a glass negative
21.7 x 16.1 cm, corners clipped
Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin (1802-1875) first trained as a painter with Ingres. By 1849 he was selling daguerreotypes of nudes from his Paris studio before he began making photographic prints. He listed himself as a specialist in academies, or artist’s studies—a polite term for nude studies that often bordered on the pornographic—that were intended for artists to use as substitutes for live models. The vase in this albumen print of “Emma” is by Jules-Claude Ziegler, an accomplished ceramicist, painter, and photographer.
Gustave Le Gray (French, 1820-1884)
"L'escadre française en rade de Cherbourg," 5 August 1858
Albumen print from a collodion negative
30.1 x 38.3 cm
L’escadre française en rade de Cherbourg is a prime example of the seascape and naval views for which Gustave Le Gray was celebrated. Here he applied the many lessons he had learned in the making of seascapes since 1856. Without recourse to combination negatives that marked his practice in other examples of the genre, the present view was recorded in a single large glass negative. The photograph documents the official visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to the port of Cherbourg and its newest construction, the “Bassin Napoléon III,” a remarkable product of naval engineering that greatly expanded the port facilities to accommodate France’s modern fleet of battleships. On the invitation of Napoleon III, the royal couple and their retinue viewed a demonstration of France’s modern fleet in several maneuvers from the safety of their steam-powered yacht. This view was apparently taken on the day of the Queen’s arrival, when French ships greeted the royal couple in formation. What was intended as a gesture of trust between the two nations, however, was received by Queen Victoria as a disconcerting display of military might. The photograph records the readiness of the fleet, in a controlled cluster of ships led by the flagship Bretagne at far left. Upon closer inspection, the ships aren’t the only element in formation. Behind the royal yachts is a fast three-mast French vessel, the rigging of which is packed with dozens of sailors standing together in formation, as if preparing to cheer and wave their hats in the air on signal.
The sight of agile sailors waving boisterously from the rigging of ships in the fleet was what the artist Jules-Achille Noël recorded in his 1859 painting commemorating the diplomatic meeting. See Jules-Achille Noël's Napoleon III Receiving Queen Victoria at Cherbourg, 5 August 1858. Oil on canvas, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
Bruno Braquehais (French, 1823-1875)
Woman carrying basket, 1850s
Coated salt print from a glass negative
21.6 x 15.0 cm
Braquehais trained in the lithographic workshop at the state school for the deaf in Paris. His marriage to the daughter of a commercial daguerreotypist led to his professional shift to photography. The nude artist studies, or académies, made in the 1850s and used primarily by painters as preparatory studies are Braquehais’s best-known works. Peter Galassi notes in his essay for In the Studio “Scholars have failed to discover a distinction between the respectable market for ‘documents for artists’ and the market for soft pornography. This photograph is a curious hybrid. There is no reason to believe that it was made for a particular painting, though the woman’s dress and basket place the image within the popular category of sentimental depictions of peasants. The bared breast, admissible in a ‘study for artists’ makes explicit the sexual undercurrent that was typical of the genre.”
A close variant is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum (84.XP.218.14).