This article arose out of the master’s thesis I submitted to Ryerson University in 2013. As with my thesis, my greatest thanks are due to Robert Hill, whose remarkable generosity and enthusiasm for my work eased my way at many junctures, and Thierry Gervais, my supervisor and mentor at Ryerson, whose guidance and support were indispensable to ´ this project. I would also like to thank the A Process of Selection: Edouard second reader of my thesis, David Harris, my doctoral supervisor, Jordan Bear, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of this Baldus, the New Louvre journal. Their comments and suggestions both improved this article and opened new avenues of investigation. Finally, I owe a debt Photographs and Palais du Louvre of thanks to all of the scholars who assisted me in the course of my research, especially Malcolm Daniel. Without his groundbreak- et des Tuileries ing work on Baldus, this study would not have been possible. Unless otherwise stated, all translations are those of the author. Kate Addleman-Frankel Email for correspondence: [email protected] 1 – These constituted assignments to document France’s architectural heritage E´ douard Baldus, a prominent figure in the history of French photography, is (the Mission he´liographique, 1851), the known almost exclusively for his silver-based photographs of the 1850s and early Rhoˆne floods (1856), and the construction 1860s. Yet Baldus was also at the forefront of developments in photomechani- of the New Louvre (1855–57). cal reproduction, publishing seven albums of photogravure prints between 2 – Baldus’s non-governmental commis- 1866 and 1884. Palais du Louvre et des Tuileries. Motifs de de´corations,pub- sions culminated in the albums Chemin de lished in various editions between 1869 and 1875, was the first to reproduce his fer du Nord (1855) and Chemins de fer de own photographs rather than engravings by earlier artists. It depicts architec- ` ` ´ ´ Paris a Lyon et a la Mediterranee (1861). tural elements of the Louvre and Tuileries palaces, images that derive largely These form the subject of Malcolm Daniel’s from Baldus’s commission between 1855 and 1857 to document the construc- dissertation, ‘The Photographic Railway tion of the New Louvre. Drawing from analyses of Palais’s prints and their Albums of Edouard-Denis Baldus’, PhD corresponding photographs, this article examines Baldus’s photogravure pro- diss., Princeton University 1991. cess and his strategies as an editor and publisher of his own work. It further- 3 – Published in 1852, the process involved more demonstrates that he chose to illustrate Palais with photogravures rather submerging the paper in a gelatin solution than photographs for specific aesthetic and conceptual reasons in addition to prior to sensitisation and exposure. For a concerns about economy and the stability of silver-based prints. Lastly, this translation, see Malcolm Daniel, The ´ article argues for the significance of Baldus’s photogravure production to his Photographs of Edouard Baldus, New York: entire oeuvre and to the development of photomechanical processes in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1994, mid-nineteenth century. Appendix 12, 250–54. 4 – For ease of use, ‘photogravure’ will, Keywords: Abel Nie´pce de Saint-Victor (1805–70), E´douard Baldus (1813–89), Louis throughout this article, refer both to Figuier (1819–94), Alphonse Poitevin (1819–82), Charles Ne`gre (1820–80), Henri de Downloaded by [Kate Addleman-Frankel] at 07:26 11 August 2014 Baldus’s specific gravure process and the diverse range of photomechanical processes la Blanche`re (1821–80), Ernest Lacan (1828–79), photogravure, image reproduction, in use in France from the 1840s to the photographic books, Louvre, architecture, nineteenth-century France 1870s. 5 – These publishers included not only Ve. A. Morel & Cie – previously identified in Daniel, Photographs,246–47–butalsothe The French photographer E´ douard Baldus began his career in the late 1840s, and contemporary specialist firms Ch. Claesen, within little more than ten years had completed three documentary commissions which opened in Paris in 1871, and J. E. from the French government,1 two private commissions to promote the country’s Ogier. This was determined through the 2 examination of the title pages and catalogue new railways, and numerous entrepreneurial projects, including the government- records of various copies of Palais du Louvre supported Villes de France photographie´es (1853–57), a collection of art reproduc- et des Tuileries, including those held in the tions (1852–53), and the albums Vues et monuments de France (compiled ca. 1861) Robert Hill Collection, the Canadian Centre and Monuments de Paris (compiled ca. 1862). He had proven himself technically for Architecture, and Northwestern University’s Deering Library. The bookseller adept and flexible early in his endeavours, working variously with a calotype 3 and publishing company J. Baudry, which negative process of his own invention, collodion on glass negatives, salted paper announced the appearance of the fifth and albumen positives, and photogravure.4 However, it was the latter that would installment of Palais, probably constituted a hold most of his attention for the final twenty years of his career. He released seven fifth publisher. See Bibliographie de la France, Paris: Cercle de la librairie 1871, 318 and collections of photogravures onto the market between 1866 and 1884, either 5 997. publishing them himself or through external publishers. At the time, they History of Photography, Volume 38, Number 3, August 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2014.935099 # 2014 Taylor & Francis Kate Addleman-Frankel represented probably the largest body of work in photogravure ever produced by a photographer. 6 – See Jeff Rosen, ‘Lemercier et Over the past twenty-five years several studies have highlighted the intersec- Compagnie: Photolithography and the tions between French photography and printmaking during this period. Sylvie Industrialization of Print Production in Aubenas and Michel Poivert’s exhibition catalogue D’encre et de charbon: le con- France, 1837–1859’, PhD diss., Northwestern University 1988; Sylvie cours photographique du Duc de Luynes 1856–1867 (1994) investigated and brought Aubenas, ‘Alphonse Poitevin (1819–1882): attention to the Duc de Luynes competition, and Stephen Bann’s Parallel Lines photographe et inventeur: la naissance des (2001) demonstrated the extent to which photography, in the initial stages of its proce´de´s de reproduction photographique development in France, was viewed as a promising printmaking technique and a et de la photographie inalterable’, PhD diss., E´ cole nationale des chartes 1998; and Jacob potential means of achieving high-quality reproductions without recourse to Warren Lewis, ‘Charles Ne`gre in Pursuit of engravers. Les trois re´volutions du livre (2002), the comprehensive exhibition the Photographic’, PhD diss., Northwestern catalogue edited by Alain Mercier, treated the rise of photomechanical illustration University 2012. as a pivotal occurrence in the entire history of publishing. Likewise, the doctoral 7 – Examples of the dividing of Baldus’s dissertations of Jeff Rosen (1988), Sylvie Aubenas (1998), and Jacob Lewis (2012) work into ‘commercial’ photogravures and ‘artistic’ or ‘documentary’ silver-based showed that the development of a stable, reproducible photographic process was of photographs can be found in Primitifs de la primary concern to those participating or interested in photographic production in photographie: le calotype en France 1843– mid-nineteenth-century France.6 1860, ed. Sylvie Aubenas and Paul-Louis Mention of Baldus’s photogravures first began appearing in the scholarly Roubert, Paris: Editions Gallimard 2010; Barry Bergdoll, ‘A Matter of Time: literature in the 1980s, but they have generally been classified as commercial Architects and Photographers in Second products and not been assigned the artistic or historic merit of the salted paper Empire France’, in Daniel, Photographs, 99– and albumen prints Baldus created prior to the mid-1860s.7 However, it is arguable 119; and Malcolm Daniel, ‘E´ douard Baldus: that Baldus’s photogravures should be considered of equal significance to these Artiste photographe’, in Daniel, Photographs, 17–97. On the marginalisation earlier ‘art photographs’ (which were likewise produced for profit; Baldus made of photogravures as commercial products, few photographs for non-pecuniary reasons). Owing to their lack of chemistry they see Jeff Rosen, ‘The Printed Photograph and are better preserved, and technically and aesthetically they are equally accom- the Logic of Progress in Nineteenth Century plished: the grain pattern of the prints, a feature of the photogravure process, is France’, Art Journal, 46:4 (1987), 305–11. 8 – On this body of work, see Daniel, subtle; the ink is evenly deposited; the tones are rich, and continuous from black to Photographs, 95; and Bergdoll, ‘A Matter of white; and the details are finely described. Baldus took great care in producing Time’, 116–18. them, retouching and cropping to define or highlight certain areas, and to direct 9 – Baldus’s first photogravure publications the viewer’s attention to what he deemed the images’ most significant passages. were Recueil d’Ornements (1866), Œuvre de Marc-Antoine Raimondi (1867), and Œuvre These prints are furthermore intimately connected to a moment of widespread and de Jacques Androuet dit Du Cerceau (ca. ardent interest in photomechanical