Edouard Baldus - Palais de Versailles, grand et petit Trianon, motifs de decoration (title page), 1876
Maker: Edouard Baldus (1813-1889)
Born: Germany
Active: France
Medium: heliogravure
Size: 12 5/8 in x 18 in
Location: Paris
Object No. 2016.1135a
Shelf: J-42
Publication: Palais de Versailles, grand et petit Trianon, motifs de decoration interieure et exterieure, Paris, A. Morel et Cie, Libraires editeurs. 1876
Other Collections:
Provenance: Hotel des Ventes d'Enghein, Photographies, Autographes, Fond Max Nordau, November 16, 2016, Lot 13
Notes: Beginning in the mid 1860s, and lasting until the early 1880s, Baldus primary commercial activity centered on the production of photogravures, a process he first explored in 1854. This plate is part of his first major publication in gravure form, a series of 100 heliogravures published in 1866 reproducing ornamental engravings of past masters, including Aldegrever, Master IB, Beham, Boyvin, de Bry, Delanne, Durer, Ducerceau, Holbein, Jansz, Lepaurtre, van Leyden, Marot, Solis, Vico and Woeiriot. This work had nothing to do with promoting artistic photography or his own photographic work; instead it was an industrial application of photography that brough credit and financial gain to Baldus as an inventor and entrepreneur rather than an artist. Printed by Delatre. Originally trained as a painter and having also worked as a draughtsman and lithographer before switching to photography in 1849, Édouard Baldus (1813–1889), became a central figure in the early development of French photography and acknowledged in his day as a pioneer in the still-experimental field, was widely acclaimed both for his aesthetic sensitivity and for his technical prowess. Establishing a new mode of representing architecture and describing the emerging modern landscape with magnificent authority, he enjoyed high patronage in the 1850s and 1860s. Yet, despite the artist's renown during his lifetime, his name is all but unknown today, his work savored only by connoisseurs. Baldus made his reputation with views of the monuments of Paris and the south of France, with dramatic landscapes of the Auvergne, with photographs of the New Louvre, and with a poignant record of the devastating floods of 1856. But it is his two railroad albums—the first commissioned in 1855 by Baron James de Rothschild for presentation to Queen Victoria, the second in 1861 by the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee railroad company—that are his greatest achievement. Here he brought together his earlier architectural and scenic images with bold geometric views of the modern landscape—railroad tracks, stations, bridges, viaducts, and tunnels—to address the influence of technology (of which both the railroad and the camera are prime examples). In so doing, Baldus anticipated the concerns of Impressionist painters a decade later and those of many artists of our own day, meeting his task with a clarity and directness not since surpassed. (source: MET).
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Edouard Baldus - Palais de Versailles, grand et petit Trianon, motifs de decoration (title page), 1876
Maker: Edouard Baldus (1813-1889)
Born: Germany
Active: France
Medium: heliogravure
Size: 12 5/8 in x 18 in
Location: Paris
Object No. 2016.1135a
Shelf: J-42
Publication: Palais de Versailles, grand et petit Trianon, motifs de decoration interieure et exterieure, Paris, A. Morel et Cie, Libraires editeurs. 1876
Other Collections:
Provenance: Hotel des Ventes d'Enghein, Photographies, Autographes, Fond Max Nordau, November 16, 2016, Lot 13
Notes: Beginning in the mid 1860s, and lasting until the early 1880s, Baldus primary commercial activity centered on the production of photogravures, a process he first explored in 1854. This plate is part of his first major publication in gravure form, a series of 100 heliogravures published in 1866 reproducing ornamental engravings of past masters, including Aldegrever, Master IB, Beham, Boyvin, de Bry, Delanne, Durer, Ducerceau, Holbein, Jansz, Lepaurtre, van Leyden, Marot, Solis, Vico and Woeiriot. This work had nothing to do with promoting artistic photography or his own photographic work; instead it was an industrial application of photography that brough credit and financial gain to Baldus as an inventor and entrepreneur rather than an artist. Printed by Delatre. Originally trained as a painter and having also worked as a draughtsman and lithographer before switching to photography in 1849, Édouard Baldus (1813–1889), became a central figure in the early development of French photography and acknowledged in his day as a pioneer in the still-experimental field, was widely acclaimed both for his aesthetic sensitivity and for his technical prowess. Establishing a new mode of representing architecture and describing the emerging modern landscape with magnificent authority, he enjoyed high patronage in the 1850s and 1860s. Yet, despite the artist's renown during his lifetime, his name is all but unknown today, his work savored only by connoisseurs. Baldus made his reputation with views of the monuments of Paris and the south of France, with dramatic landscapes of the Auvergne, with photographs of the New Louvre, and with a poignant record of the devastating floods of 1856. But it is his two railroad albums—the first commissioned in 1855 by Baron James de Rothschild for presentation to Queen Victoria, the second in 1861 by the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee railroad company—that are his greatest achievement. Here he brought together his earlier architectural and scenic images with bold geometric views of the modern landscape—railroad tracks, stations, bridges, viaducts, and tunnels—to address the influence of technology (of which both the railroad and the camera are prime examples). In so doing, Baldus anticipated the concerns of Impressionist painters a decade later and those of many artists of our own day, meeting his task with a clarity and directness not since surpassed. (source: MET).
To view our archive organized by Collections, visit: OUR COLLECTIONS
For information about reproducing this image, visit: THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE