The Primitives of Photography

The daguerreotypists: Chevalier and Lerebours. — Richebourg. — Vaillat. — Legros. — Thierry de Lyon. — Claudet de Londres. —The caricaturist Randon. — The photographers: Bayard. — Poitevin. — Paul Perier. — Bertsch et Camille d’Arnaud. — Gustave Le Gray. — Moitessier. — Taupenot. — Fortier. — Olympe and Onésyme Aguado. — Édouard and Benjamin Delessert. — Edmond Becquerel. — Bareswill and Company — Van Monckhoven. — Léon Vidal. — Adam Salomon. — Numa Blanc. — Hampsteingl, of Munich. — Mayer and Pierson. — The painter Ballue. — The brothers Bisson and their operator Marmand. — Marville. — Adrien Tournachon. — Alophe (Menut). — Berne-Bellecourt. — Louis de Lucy, Lafon de Carsac, Mathieu Deroche. — Carjat. — Bertall. — Photosculpture: — the printer Lemercier. — Disdéri. — Warnod. — Lazerge and Dallemagne. — Braun, of Dornach. — Lewitzski, Lejeune, Joliot. — Luckhard, of Vienna. — Alessandri, Daziaro, Abdullah. — Séverin, of The Hague. — The brothers Sarony. — Ghemar, of Brussels. — Silvy. — Walery. — Nadar.

We are in an era of exasperated curiosity that explores everything, men and things; in the absence of the great history that we no longer know how to produce, we pick up the crumbs of the small histories with such zeal that our attention becomes wide-eyed in front of a stamp-collector.

More justifiably, then, the extraordinary researchers of the past perhaps will have an interest in receiving certain indications, even in summary form, of our primordial practitioners, workers in the first hour, whom we have known or only encountered. This task falls on the one who, because of the modestly enviable benefit of accumulated years, finds himself today the dean of working photographers, and he carries it out while there is still just enough time.

*

So the Daguerreotype would cede its place to Photography, but not without having had its moment of glory in the hands of the engineers Chevalier and Lerebours and also of the optician Richebourg, who never failed to add to his signature the Masonic ∆: it seems that this was a title in those days. Other practitioners took no less advantage of the silver plate: the excellent Vaillat and the ineffable Legros, that flamboyant man, wearing secondhand gowns, would galvanize the last beautiful days of the Palais-Royal, whose local region never managed to fall out of love with them and would finally be extinguished with them. In the meantime, the Rhône and the Saône were still in raptures before the plates of the good Thierry from Lyon, and even the caricaturist Randon had touched on them in passing. But the daguerreotype was finished with the advent of photography and, as they said then, “This would kill That.”

In the movement of this first period of photography and in the avant-garde of the small, still sacred contemporary battalion of Niépce and Daguerre, I detect Bayard through the haze of the horizon, brother of the prolific collaborator of Scribe and uncle of the late artist Émile Bayard.¹ Beside this noble father of photography—who came to photography, as the legend has it, from fruit farming—there appears to me, no less correct in every respect but more enduring, another amateur and precious researcher, Paul Perier, Casimir’s nephew. Then, small and lean, showing that he is somewhat fragile, Bertsch, who first applied photography to the micrograph and megalograph, as precise and meticulous when observing planets as when observing microscopic insects, in his tiny attic in the rue Saint-Georges: we did what we could! And even though this garret was narrow, and cluttered with stacked bowls and bottles, there was still room at Bertsch’s elbow for his inseparable and equally ingenious collaborator, Camille d’Arnaud, who, irresistibly drawn to the new phenomena, had for them abandoned the management of Houssaye’s journal, The Artist—the good Arnaud, who wished to be and was my master.

We will find more than one other in this elite, abandoning everything in order to march toward this new star: Tripier, the son of Codes, whom we called “the Baron,” the alter ego of Leclanché, nicknamed “Farouchot,” the translator of Cellini; Gustave Le Gray, leaving painting behind in order to propagate the method on paper that our benefactor, Poitevin, had just invented; and other zealots still, Moitessier, Taupenot, Fortier (a dyer), and the two brothers Olympe and Onésyme Aguado, no less passionate and indefatigable than Édouard and Benjamin Delessert and my dear classmate Edmond Becquerel, who had not yet sat at his father’s chair at the Institute which he would pass on to his son; all dedicated researchers, clearing our path and offering us new processes every day, improvements that Bareswill and Davanne modestly and carefully registered, noting the part in the game that the others played.

The push was universal. Not to mention the wonder that could be satisfied only by producing images that had never gone through a School of Design, the most summary apprenticeship was more than sufficient to produce mediocre results: it was up to the more refined to look further. With regard to expenses, the initial outlay was insignificant and the earnings were so much greater since they remained optional, entirely dependent on the manufacturer’s discretion. There were no expenses except those of the laboratory, Adam Salomon not yet having reported from Munich the costly retouching of Hampsteingl, as necessary as it was harmful, as detestable as it was indispensable.²

So everyone unqualified or wishing to be qualified called themselves a photographer: the professional student who had neglected to appear on time on payday, the tenor singing in a café who lost his voice, the concierge seized with artistic nostalgia—they all called themselves: artistic!—Failed painters, unsuccessful sculptors, rushed in, and we even noticed a glowing cook: Hasn’t it been said that cuisine is itself a form of chemistry?

But it’s not just a matter of this little world, which happens to be a very select flock—egregium pecus³—with which we are concerned. Let us evoke these few glories of a day in which each passing hour ends by thickening the dust of oblivion …

*

Gustave Le Gray⁴ was a painter, a student at the then celebrated workshop in which “Father Picot” continued, the last to do so, the traditions of the School of David, Gérard, and Girodet. “Father Picot” was numbered among the constellations in the gray sky of Mr. Paul Delaroche and of the other “father,” Father Ingres—“this Chinese,” as Préault said, “wandering in the streets of Athens.” It was the time of what we called—Oh, great gods!—“The Historical Landscape,” and while we booed Géricault and reared up against Delacroix, Father Picot held as appropriately as others his place in that fuliginous galaxy in which stars were called Alaux, Steuben, Vernet, and other glories of the Versailles Museum. The Impressionists have swept all this away, and who could blame them, even if they were sometimes wrong? If there remains someone decorated by this St. Helena,⁵ still resistant in front of the open-air school, if there is still a last one whom our good Manet, first so scorned, still frightens, let him console himself by contemplating again Oath of the Horatii, The Rape of the Sabine Women, and Atala on the Tomb of Chactas.

But the School would remain obstinate, standing firm, and Le Gray was ill at ease there. The food was insufficient for him and the robust stomach of this little man with the restless spirit wanted something other than the perennial boiled turnip in marshmallows. This all-too-young father of a family, struggling tirelessly between the obsessive need to produce, the embarrassment of material life, and intimate sorrows, this agitated man was annoyed to be wasting away so unproductively in the same spot in his workshop on the covered walkway of the Barrière de Clichy.

He had always been attracted to chemistry, and painting had not kept him from the laboratory where, next to his workshop, he pursued the secret of making definitive, immutable colors, the fabrication of which, according to him, was too often left to the greedy indifference of merchants. It is on this stage of the road to Damascus that he was suddenly illuminated by the first ray lit by Poitevin. If there was one among us that the wonderful discovery of Niépce had seized, it was him. Photography whistled for him. Le Gray came along, and almost immediately he published the first, I believe, Method of Procedures on Paper and Glass. The die was cast: what remained in him of the painter was taste exercised by study, a habit, a science of form, the practice of the effects and dispositions of light, not to mention our old knowledge of chemical agents and reactions, all to the profit of the photographer.

And it was high time that Art came to intervene a little bit, because this recently born photography was already threatening to go wrong.

Paris and our provinces knew only one house: Mayer and Pierson; from everywhere, people were gathering there. But the two men who had created this house, who were indeed smart, found themselves, by origin and because of their earlier trades, total strangers to any aesthetic.

Their portraits factory installed in the center of the boulevard confined itself very profitably to a single style and even to a nearly unique format, singularly practical for the small spaces of our bourgeois households. Without somehow dealing with the disposition of lines from the point of view most favorable to the model, nor with the expression on his face any more than with how the light was illuminating all this, they would install the client in an invariable place and would obtain from him a single shot, dull and gray, any old how. The proof, just washed, would pass immediately onto the table of the painter working in the shop, who had taken notes, summary notes like those of a passport: regular complexion, blue or brown eyes, chestnut or black hair, and the thing—paid for in advance—would be delivered entirely framed and tied up, in an envelope. We scarcely had the right to open the package before being shown the door. Claims were not permitted, except, as an exceptional favor, when a client had received as her portrait that of a client unknown to her; otherwise, it would be impossible to return. In this revival bursting with everyday cares, we did not have the time to dwell on such trifles.

The specialist painter who earned a good living by making these miniature portraits was a good little man, very gentle beneath his mischievous and even formidable bearing. His name was Ballue and he was not without some worth. To relax from his workdays and to take revenge on the gray watercolors of Mayer and Pierson, he rediscovered himself as a mad colorist, and inundated the Jouffroy passageway (which had just been opened) with ferocious small pastels, with rabid “Díaz-like” paintings of women in pure carmine in fantastic landscapes with pistachio terrains, under blue trees and nacarat skies.⁶

But with all this, if photography strictly speaking was not involved, she ran the risk of having everything to lose. The painters who had welcomed her with distrust would remember their first apprehension and did not have any difficulty treating her with supreme disdain.

It was necessary that without any further delay photography be freed from the Infidels, from the inflicted travesties, and that she show herself exactly as she should let herself be seen, without veils, as truth.

Le Gray had appeared just at this moment and simultaneously with him the Bisson brothers, Adrien Tournachon, and a fourth of whom we will need to say a bit more—and soon the sculptor Adam Salomon, Numa Blanc, the painters Alophe, Berne-Bellecourt, Louis de Lucy; the caricaturists Bertall, Carjat, etc.

*

In this first hour of enthusiasm Le Gray had easily found a rich sponsor, the Count of Briges, who, in order to house him, rented, at a high price, a determined cubic volume of ambient air over our Parisian zone.

I’m not kidding. This intangible volume, suddenly converted into the most palpable and resonant material, was encountered on a roof over a large building in a chicken coop, inadequate only in relation to all the houses of wealthy Paris, sumptuously constructed in carved stone.

*

But this house, which is not a house and which is so much better than a house, this fateful hut deserves its little page of history.

It was inexorably devoted to photography.

Such that, as in tragedy, and in relation to this Greek temple of the Odéon, it would suffice to turn it inside out, like the skin of a rabbit, in order to obtain unrestricted access, inside, to the classic décor dear to the three unities.

The architecture in question, which did not exhaust the imagination of the architect, stands in a very interesting perimeter at the corner of boulevard des Capucines and rue Saint-Augustin—just the place that would be occupied in 1848 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in front of which, on the evening of February 23, the shot was fired that brought down the throne of Louis-Philippe, despite its apparent solidity. It is true that what remains linked to appearance is not worth much.

At that time—and this will appear surprising today—at least sixty years ago, the Madeleine quarter was not frequented very much, and some shops were as modest as window-shoppers were rare. The vast area was subsequently bought, as they say, for a piece of bread, and no less economically the purchaser, an old baroness who understood business well, decided to establish there in the most summary way a series of shops, identically positioned on a single level divided into cube-like compartments.

It was exactly then that the aforementioned expansion of Paris toward the west happened. In these things, as in all others, both the rise and the fall accelerate according to the accumulated speed. From good, the area was becoming excellent. There was an extension measuring some tens of meters and, on the first floor above the mezzanine, a terrace due north that photography could not resist eyeing up first.

Almost simultaneously two major studios started up there, including that of Le Gray, leaving between them room for the photosculpture that arrived with Mr. de Marnhyac, while on the Bisson brothers’ ground floor, sponsored by Dollfus de Mulhouse, a sumptuous boutique opened in which, before an enchanted audience, the beautiful prints from the library of the Louvre and views of Switzerland were showcased in dimensions previously unknown. Only Marville (still a painter!) was able to match them in the very remarkable collections he left to the City archives.

It was the first period of the wet process: one who has passed through the acrimonious moments of the collodion process still remains amazed in front of the impeccable execution of these immense shots. The Bisson brothers had succeeded in discovering and giving form in the laboratory to a simple municipal guard who, with his arms stretched, covered completely—without any alteration, without any streaks, without any blowholes, without a speck of dust—a glass plate one meter by eighty centimeters. This good man, who had his hour of relative fame, perhaps deserves to have his name retained in this legend: he was called Marmand.

The Bissons’ boutique was all the rage. It was not only the extraordinary luxury and good taste of the window display nor the novelty and perfection of the products which made passersby stop: they would find no less interest in contemplating through the glass of the store windows the illustrious visitors who followed each other on the velvet auricula of the great circular divan, passing from hand to hand the proofs of the day. In truth, it was like a rendezvous with the intellectual elite of Paris: Gautier, Cormenin Louis, Saint-Victor, Janin, Gozlan, Méry, Préault, Delacroix, Chassériau, Nanteuil, Baudelaire, Penguilly, the Leleux—everyone! I saw there, at least twice, another amateur fairly eminent in his field, Mr. Rothschild—Baron James, as he was called—, quite affable, incidentally, and already managing not to look young anymore. And all these splendid people of high status, coming out of the Bissons’, finished the rounds there by stopping by the studio of the portraitist Le Gray.

*

But all that glitters is not gold. This public so brilliant, of the highest order, usually pays with a different currency than the current one and, except for Rothschild, is not exactly the one who puts the coal under the pot.

Now, while upstairs the excellent Le Gray, generous like all poor people, exhausted his products and his packing materials to shower each of his visitors with free prints, downstairs, the good brothers Bisson did the same—it’s so good to give!—so well that the two sponsors, both in the store and on the roof, manifested a certain agitation and the beginning of an anxious fatigue from always shelling out and never receiving. The installation costs had already exceeded the normal estimates, since the building where we met justified more than any other its name of building. In fact, in the boutiques, as on the only floor, nothing had been done except the plasterwork of the four walls behind the windows, which had been chosen most economically. Tenants were free to clothe these naked walls with rich papers, that is, draperies, to replace the Saint-Gobain glass, to buy themselves fireplaces, if they were sensitive to the cold, and even, they say, to dig cellars if they needed basements. A more than strict management, a true school for landlords, confined itself to renting out the place to them: nothing else. It was a “principle”—and every mind firm in its intentions knows what a principle is. Moreover, no one had the right to complain: no one had really been forced. Each tenant had been in the position to understand if the hand he was going to shake was too tightfisted—each had the right to opt, perfectly freely, having sniffed the place, to enter or to flee.

As for Le Gray, he had been even less favored than our Bisson brothers. He did not even have to wipe the plasterwork since for him there wasn’t any; he had to provide it himself. On this virgin roof, he was renting only the space to put it—a square of atmosphere, of open sky, where he had to build his home—, with good and valuable materials, please, well and duly weighted by the architect of the property, a ruthless eye!

These initial impedimenta, and even these formidable installation costs—which will pursue us and hound us until the end, implacable as any original sin—, it was perhaps still possible to escape them, but under the firm condition of possessing to a high degree this je ne sais quoi, this mundane and divine gift, called the commercial spirit. It is precisely that spirit that was lacking in the good Le Gray and in the equally
excellent brothers Bisson—as in some others still, whom I know … And in this case the lack was so pronounced that, while Le Gray was wearing himself out cramming his prints, free of charge, into the crook of his visitors’ arms (just as later
the munificent Le Pic loaded the biceps of anyone leaving with his canvases), the two Bissons, totally intoxicated by the sudden exhilaration of the new situation, immediately had thought of building on Saint-Germain, on the bank of the Seine, two charming twin cottages, from which they would arrive in the morning and to which they would return in the evening, in a carriage with two horses. Thus I saw them one morning, by the Bois de Boulogne: the elder Bisson very appropriately adorned the carriage with ladies; the younger Bisson, on a sorrel horse, covered the door.

It was beautiful, I admired it; but I got frightened. Pho-tography on horseback! One must know how to behave well …

*

And meanwhile, from everywhere, every day other photographers emerged, full of ardor and no less apt to prove through their work that they, too, knew how to see and render nature.

Then, a decisive blow: the appearance of Disdéri who, with his business card, offered twelve portraits for some twenty
francs, when, until then, one could pay fifty or a hundred francs for a single portrait.

It was a rout. One had to submit, that is, to go with the flow, or resign. Le Gray’s primary interest in art had pushed him toward photography; he could not resign himself to changing his studio into a factory: he gave up.

His very well-equipped establishment was unlikely to remain empty even for a moment in this house dedicated to the
arts. Le Gray’s name was immediately replaced by that of another artist, Alophe (Menut), known for his innumerable romance titles in lithography.

It would be unjust here to forget in this memento a lost lithographic work by Alophe, a lithograph that had enjoyed a popular success equal to that of Vigneron’s celebrated Convoy of the Poor: under a gray sky, a dog all alone following a third-class hearse. Under the same inspiration, Alophe had drawn, in a miserable attic—with sketches and palette against the wall, brushes scattered—a dog licking the hand of its young master, dying or dead on the bed, thin as is indicated in such cases, but combed and smoothed with the impeccable exactness of Alophe himself. Title: The Last Friend.

And while the Bissons, finally unseated themselves, too, abandoned the heights they would never find again, Le Gray embarked for Egypt, even more tired after his last fruitless attempt, overwhelmed with grief of every kind, on the verge of despair …

He was nevertheless still fighting. Without saying his final farewell to photography, he took up painting again and was appointed Professor of Drawing at the University of Cairo by the Egyptian government. The very curious newspaper l’Intermédiaire in which everything ends up was telling us just yesterday that Le Gray had been chosen to give lessons to the Princes Tewfik (later Khedive), Hussein, Ibrahim, etc., whom we have seen for a long time in Paris.

But bad luck seemed to plague Le Gray. He broke a leg in a riding accident and finally died around 1882 in a distress that was certainly undeserved.

He was an industrious and remarkably intelligent re-
searcher, a generous soul, above all an honest man. Such men do not all have their own houses and do not know how to become rich by exploiting others or simply how to fish for annuities in a marriage contract.

*

I just mentioned Disdéri.⁷ But in evoking his name, which nevertheless has raised for a quarter of a century more ruckus than that of a general and especially more than that of a benefactor of the people, I feel myself halted by doubt: I wonder if these retrospective notes on departed personalities, special here but often rather secondary, can have any interest for others, except for our professionals—and even for them?

On the other hand, I think of so many other personages,
major or great, word-merchants, sellers of air, dealers of healing potions and meager nourishments, political wheelers and dealers, and other traders, about whom we hear continuously, day after day: very illustrious, but whose entire life’s work will not amount to that of a board planer or a laboratory assistant—but let’s skip all of this: my reader will be able to do the same, as he pleases.

*

Disdéri has left, even outside the world of photography, the memory of the most considerable fortune made at a time that could be called the golden age of photography. In a single year, he made what would be sufficient, even at the present time, to secure the future of a family, and this prosperity seemed never to run out or slow down.

Finally, this man, who had acquired many millions, passed away some years ago in profound distress near Nice where, sick, helpless, he had finally ended up, living only thanks to the help of some colleagues who knew his situation.⁸ Having become almost completely blind and deaf, he died on the threshold of the asylum where Public Assistance was going to receive him …

*

A certain intuitive genius had pushed Disdéri, among the first, toward the door that photography had just opened to all those without a profession.

Of an evidently more than modest origin, deprived of elementary instruction and even of the most basic education, ignorant of even the ordinary forms whose use convention indicates and imposes, forms even more important and unequivocal for him because of his appearance, since all in all he was scarcely
attractive, even repulsive—but of a real practical intelligence, well served by special natural gifts, active and quick by nature, imperturbable in a faith that does not doubt anything and especially not himself, he might have just as well, with the same aplomb, the same certainty, the same specific verbosity, and most likely the same success, manufactured and even sold an entirely different kind of “article” and played to completely different audiences.

One of the coincidences of Parisian life led him to meet with the designer Chandelier, the inseparable close friend of Gavarni. Just at that moment, Chandelier happened to inherit from an uncle of his, an old country priest, but a friend of savings, the sum of eight hundred thousand francs. Even though he was renowned for his defiance, Chandelier allowed himself to be taken in by the irresistible sales pitch. They teamed up and Disdéri began to work straightaway. But his first attempt led to a bad end; a judge even had to get involved … Let’s move on.

But Disdéri was not one of those whom a disgrace can bring down. We do not know or we have forgotten if he had tried his luck again, somewhere else and with someone else, until the day he was installed at the boulevard des Italiens, where his fortune awaited him.

The really extraordinary success of Disdéri was actually legitimately due to his ingenious idea of the carte de visite. His industrialist intuition had come up with the right idea at the right time. Disdéri had just created a real fashion that would infatuate the entire world all at once. Even more, by reversing the economic proportion established until then, that is, by giving infinitely more for infinitely less, he decisively popularized photography. Finally, we must recognize that the number of these small images produced with prodigious speed in front of the endless parade of customers did not lack either a certain taste or charm.

A singularly unexpected, exceptional (Disdéri had to say: exclusive!!! …) circumstance appeared one day to give the final push to this already unprecedented trend: Napoleon III, passing with great pomp and ceremony along the boulevards at the head of the army corps leaving for Italy, stopped short in front of Disdéri’s establishment in order to be photographed (this gesture, in itself, wasn’t it already more like the model than his photograph?)—and behind him the whole army, the ranks massed on the spot, weapons at hand, waited for the photographer to take the shot of the Emperor … With this coup, the enthusiasm for Disdéri became a delirium. The whole universe came to know his name and the road to his house.

It would be difficult to assess the number of millions who passed by his cash register during these years of overabundance, and it was certainly Disdéri who was least aware of it. People talked about nothing else but luxury then, about Disdéri’s country houses, his stables (ah! The poor little horse of my poor Bisson brothers! …). Passersby, stupefied, stopped at the sound of his horse carriages, à la russe, which he drove himself, since he naturally had a taste for spectacle, for excessive pomp—and he must not even for a moment have doubted that this triumphant spontaneous beginning, without precedent and without limits, would last forever.

*

But, our parents would teach us, this is not the way to build good houses. There is no treasure that does not run out, and profusion always ends up creating a vacuum. So quick was Disdéri’s ascent, and it reached such a height, that he was dazzled by vertigo. Still under the sway of his fascinations, Disdéri had for a long time disdained to follow the progress of the photography to which he had owed so much, even though every day would bring us something to learn from it.

From then on, the man was lost, like his establishment. The fall was as rapid as had been the rise. Already his clientele was disseminated across other established or new institutions, more concerned with the dignity of their work, more organized. Disdéri had to abandon his house in Paris and to sell even his name.

Courageously, but in vain, he tried to return to work a little everywhere, and this is how many of his former clients saw again with astonishment, in boutiques or even in stalls in Cauterets, Biarritz, Monaco, etc., that name so brilliant yesterday. But everywhere he failed: the talisman was broken. Fortune is a woman, and she does not forgive someone who misses an opportunity.

*

We can say, in modern parlance, that a thing is “launched” when caricature becomes aware of it and targets it. Among all its other very essential roles, caricature today retains that of the ancient character who mocked and jeered behind the triumphal chariot. It is the supreme consecration of every glory.

The time had come in which photography could not escape it. There was not even a corner of an illustrated newspaper where the impertinent pencil did not occupy itself with our heroes. Needless to say, all these games could only be and only were benevolent. Nothing against, everything for.

Thus, in the abundance of his everyday work, without peace or truce, the greatest of our athletes, inordinate genius, brilliant as Benvenuto even in the most frivolous little detail,⁹ Daumier sculpted daily on the lithographic stones of Charivari various scenes from our studios.

*

Nothing more was needed for the apotheosis of Photog-raphy—nothing but a first general Exhibition for which, just born yesterday, it was entirely ripe.

This first Photography Exhibition took place in 1855 at the Palace of Industry. It was wildly successful.

Certainly the luxury of the installations, through which habit has rendered us indifferent today, had no part in this success, which was justified even more by the novelty of the surprising invention. The public would throng with an almost breathless curiosity in front of the innumerable portraits of well-known people whom they did not yet know, of beauties of theater whom they had been able to see only from afar, and who were revealed to them in these images where thought itself seemed to live.

While the initiates, the specialists, were examining the indelible proofs of Poitevin, Moitessier, Taupenot, Charles Nègre, Baudrand, and La Blanchère, and the lithographic transpositions of Lemercier—anticipating through the breakthrough of these first paths the limitless immensity of the domain henceforth secured for photography—the multitude of the other bystanders crammed, like bees at a bee hole, at the entrance of a mysterious small dark cubbyhole, where you could go in only one at a time, and where, fleeing daylight for an artificial, almost hieratic half-light, the famous parrot of our dear Becquerel already prophesied that photography would one day victoriously take on color reproduction. People would throng in front of the display windows of the exhibitors, and in truth they had never seen anything like them—I wouldn’t even hesitate to affirm that, since then, we have not seen anything superior to the great expressive faces of the mime Deburau junior by Adrien Tournachon (another one who escaped from painting)—, to a marvelous 30 x 40 live portrait of Frédérick Lemaître, by Carjat, wide like a Van Dyck, deep like a Holbein, to many others still, among which we should not fail to acknowledge Warnod’s impeccable positives on glass. What is more: Warnod was an eminent aesthete, a writer of real worth; Carjat, first an industrial designer, became a portrait designer: the eye that has been through such an education knows how to see. We have not forgotten the qualities of observation and technique of the numerous caricatures magnificently drawn by the pencil of the good Carjat—who was moreover an orator and, what is more, occasionally a poet.

*

It is important to note here that the perfection of these exposed proofs was and has remained all the more interesting since it owed nothing to the touching up of the negatives. The proofs themselves were not corrected by the brush or the pencil—at most they were retouched in one or two spots where a speck of dust had managed to perforate the layer of nitrate.

Yet the touching up of negatives, excellent and detestable at one and the same time, like Language in Aesop’s fable, but certainly indispensable in numerous cases, had just been envisaged by a German from Munich, named Hampsteingl, who had hung against the light, at the end of one of the galleries of the exhibition, a retouched negative with proofs before and after the retouching.

This negative opened a new era in photography, and I assure you that the curious were not slow to come and look. The approval was general, especially from the most interested, the “professionals.” We immediately realized how useful the blessed discovery of this Hampsteingl would be for us, a resource for which everyone had yearned but never known, as everyone had imagined it without naming it.

*

In addition, two steps away, the demonstration was made complete by the sculptor Adam Salomon’s show, crammed with portraits of various notables from politics, finance, from the world of fashion, in which all the negatives, not to mention the proofs, had been retouched according to the new method, which, more sensible and more diligent than us thanks to his Israeli blood, Adam Salomon had taken the trouble to learn from the Bavarians.

The retouching of these negatives, constrained by a prudent reserve, worked wonders there, and if people thronged in front of other exhibitions, in front of this one they crushed, they suffocated.

No less practically, Adam Salomon had adopted a unique format of small dimensions, from which he refused to depart under any circumstances. In this restricted space, at the same time that his prudence enabled him to avoid deformations, disdaining the vain glory of triumphing over them, the smallness of heads would leave the field open for him to develop the bodies, with which criticism has the least to do, and for the arrangement of costumes and draperies, dear to all sculptors. Moreover, the ensuing unity of the format would finally give the entire and very considerable production of the photographer Salomon the character, the respectability, of an Oeuvre.

Under the concurrence of such conditions, and with the powerful initial benevolence of the brothers Émile and Isaac Pereire, it is not surprising if, from the very first day to the last, and for many years, Adam Salomon kept fashion conquered in this way.

Fantastic and whimsical like Hoffmann’s Master Coppelius, under the alluvium of his overcoats and superimposed scarves, even more exaggerated by the narrations of the legend that, among all of us, he was the best suited to stay alive, this little man, all dried up, frightening in appearance, even a little sinister with his small eyes lost in the depths of his bony cheeks, hoarse with a falsetto voice like a castrated rooster, and remarkably unbearable for his logorrheic flow of puns, was known moreover for at times mistreating quite brutally his aristocratic female clientele—who did not seem to get discouraged by this.

The fact is that what repairs and erases everything—affability, graciousness, the exquisite distinction of a superior soul and spirit—was right next to him.¹⁰ And it is not only in the Jewish family that the man must bow before the supreme, benevolent, and incontestable superiority of women …

*

Let us also recall here the photographic work, transient but very interesting, of two other artists, painters of merit, Lazerge and Dallemagne.

Gil Blas observes somewhere: “Every little man is decisive”; yes, certainly, and it is necessary to say “decorative” when the little man is in the Arts.

Indeed, we see almost certainly that, sculptor or painter, the smaller in size the artist, the more he tries to rise by working on a large scale. In our time, the homunculus Meissonier, obstinate in his pedicular painting, from which he was never able to depart, would be, I think, almost unique, the exception we usually invoke to confirm the rule. But if he painted on a small scale, at least during the siege he made up for it with the immense boots into which he disappeared, swallowed up, atop a horse from the largest cavalry. Short arms seem to be born for grand gestures. The entire universe, part of which is the episcopate, knows that such a valiant diehard photographer is great mainly through his works: well, from his studio, a portrait would never come out in which the owner of the hardware store in the corner would not have the majestic look of a Saxon marshal or the haughty gesture of the Grand Condé throwing his baton into the enemy ranks.¹¹

Lazerge, taken by a sudden passion for photography, did not have much trouble sharing his enthusiasm with his colleague and friend Dallemagne. A special workshop was immediately installed in the quaint little Hôtel Dallemagne, behind the Invalides.

But born “decorative,” due to his lack of stature, Lazerge would certainly have remained unsatisfied with the pure and simple reproductions of his contemporaries, given the banality with which they were produced elsewhere. He had gone digging in the grand epochs where, as Veuillot would tell me: “… we were given one architecture per reign! M …”—and he had chosen various models of highly tasteful décors, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI—especially Louis XIV: Lazerge would naturally get along better with Louis XIV.

In the copies of these paintings, executed on a large scale, every model which presented itself was willy-nilly stuffed into one of these backgrounds, standing in a pose of felicitous majesty, and through the foliage, the embossments, the vermiculations, he found himself heroically crowned in laurel or more modestly under an oak wreath.

At times, in order to give the final touch, Lazerge, on tiptoe, would throw onto a corner of the painting an ample velvet curtain that seemed to fly in the wind, as in the large paintings by Mignard or Van Loo.

The sincerity of our current taste, simplistic in appearance, might seem to suffer from this excess of pomp; we must nevertheless recognize the real artistic sentiment and the beautiful allure of these compositions. A few months ago, we experienced true enjoyment when we saw the curious collection of Lazerge and Dallemagne, where we came across, with great emotion, in a pomp that was not at all displeasing to us, many beloved faces among these celebrities of the preceding generation …

*

If something was missing from Van Monckhoven’s first encounter with Léon Vidal, our other master, it was certainly not the comic element.

Van Monckhoven, always lying in wait for anything that concerned his beloved photography, was beside himself after seeing Vidal’s early works. He had only one idea, one obsession: to see, to get to know Vidal!

Many kilometers separated him from this desired Vidal. But decisiveness was one of Monckhoven’s cardinal virtues. He writes to Vidal that he cannot wait any longer, that he is about to devour the kilometers. Departing from Gand the night before, he would arrive the next morning at the train station in Marseille, where Vidal should wait for him.

I have talked on another occasion about the extreme youth, the almost childlike look of this Monckhoven, already famous in the photographic and even scientific world. As for Vidal, another child prodigy, I do not really know whether our two antediluvians together reached any more than fifty years between them.

In the confused disorder of the station when the train arrived, Vidal looked out for the famous doyen whom he was waiting to welcome in full reverence, while Monck was peeking in every corner in search of the other veteran, this Vidal to whom the acquired notoriety attributed by right gray, if not white, hair.

Since neither the one nor the other found the person they were looking for, tired of waiting, they decided, each on his own, to leave, with all the bad mood of the disappointed, when Vidal noticed Monckhoven’s name on the suitcase carried by the last exiting passenger, a blond adolescent:

— Is this Mr. Van Monckhoven’s suitcase? … Vidal asks with hesitation and caution.

Receiving an affirming nod, he presents himself. At that point, Monck continues, no less coldly:

— Sir, your father was not able to come?

— But my father was not expected to come. I am Léon Vidal!

For a moment, they measure each other up, their eyes wide open—then they burst into laughter:

— Only the devil knows why, says Monck, but imagine that I was filled with the idea—I was convinced, I would have bet that you were an old gentleman, an old merchant retired from his business and devoting himself to photography to keep himself busy during his free time! But let us go quickly to see what you do—and to have lunch!

And until the so lamented death of our dear Monckhoven, the closest friendship reigned between these two noble men, an unwavering friendship based on mutual esteem and respect. It is to Vidal that Monckhoven reserved the honor of the dedication of the seventh (and last!) edition of his grand General Treatise on Photography, as if he had wanted to designate, with this glorifying preference, the most worthy, not to replace him, but to succeed him.

*

Léon Vidal actually seems to be the most suitable person to inherit such a noble legacy and to represent, after the One who is no longer here, the science and interests of photography.

If, in our chronology, hardly rigorous after all, Léon Vidal cannot be properly counted among the “primitives of photography,” he at least will be included in the top ranks of our forerunners. Since 1851 in fact, and far away from the Parisian center, he worked on processes with inert powders when Poitevin’s great discovery had just been reported. Devoting himself from then on to the study of photography with all the fervor of a consecrated neophyte, he would soon found the Society of Marseille, he would invent the photometer for negatives, publish first Calculation of Exposure Time, and later, one after the other, a series of books and brochures which together would constitute a practitioner’s essential library: Practical Treatise on Carbon Photography, Practical Treatise on Phototypy, The Art of Photography Considered from the Industrial Point of View, Photography Applied to the Industrial Arts of Reproduction, The Practical Manual of Reproduction, Photoglypty, The Tourist’s Practical Manual, Photography for Beginners, Practical Manual of Orthochromatism, Photography at the 1899 Exhibition, etc. At the same time in Marseille, and later at the Sorbonne and everywhere in Paris, he held courses and delivered widely attended lectures, he took over the technical management of the Monitor of Photography, manufacturing, after his Autopolygraph, the En-Cas Vidal, the first manual device invented after the appearance of bromide gelatin, and founded the Photographic Union, inspired by the model of the associations created by our most beneficent, admirable Taylor.

In addition to all this, evidence of an incessant laboriousness guided by a remarkably perspicacious intelligence and by the purest love for science, who among us could forget the amazing results that Léon Vidal obtained with his Photochromy, a process that covered colored backgrounds with a photoglyptic proof. Never had such an ingeniously simple idea produced such striking effects. The wonder was universal in front of these reproductions of ceramics, textiles, paintings, jewelry, copied, when necessary, with stereoscopic relief in prestigious trompe-l’oeil, “… rendering,” according to Paul de Saint-Victor, “as no brush could have done, the matt glow of the pearl, the dark blue of the sapphire, the intense red of the ruby, the turbid colors of the opal: assimilating, as in the baking sun, the milky whites, heavenly blues, rutilant flames, bright or diaphanous colors of porcelain; the glossy enamel, the clear-cut décor, the metallic reflexes, the endless nuances of the majolica, etc.”

It has been for many years now that, with a perfect disinterest equal to his popular success, Mr. Léon Vidal has run his public course on photography at the School of Decorative Arts. Besides his great and unquestionable scientific value, he has something that is extremely rare: character.

Mr. Léon Vidal has never been decorated …

*

This incomplete list of the “primitives of photography”—today almost an obituary—will soon come to an end.

When I have recalled Braun from Dornach, with his splendid balloon views of Alsace and Switzerland, and the Russian Lewitzki, a technician of the first order, a man distinguished from every point of view, who appeared in Paris only to found there the Lejeune House (later Joliot), when I have mentioned our first enamel photographers, Louis de Lucy, apprentice at Paul Delaroche’s studio, author of a method which is still in use today, Lafon de Camarsac and the Mathieu Deroches, the latter always standing and attending to his work, I will no longer know whom else to mention except for our veterans abroad: the French Claudet, daguerreotypist in England, the master of masters Luckhard from Vienna, Alessandri in Saint Petersburg, Daziaro and Abdullah in Constantinople, Séverin at The Hague, the Sarony brothers in Brighton and New York, Ghemar from Brussels and our compatriot Silvy in London.

There is no photographer of a certain age who has not held in his hands some photographs by Luckhard, Alessandri, Daziaro—the classics—, and did not admire the perfect results, due to the precision of the execution—no less than the originality of the poses and the audacity of the effects produced by the Saronys, unparalleled painters and draftsmen.

*

Like the Saronys and many others among us, Ghemar was a painter, and particularly a portraitist. A precise and fast pencil, like the calligrapher’s pen, he was an esteemed colorist even in that noble land of Flemish art, and also a passionate and polyglot traveler; the high life of the entire world flowed into his palette.

He could not resist the attraction: one fine day the painter renounced his clientele of kings and queens to modestly declare himself a photographer and to found in Brussels, under the precious counsel of our dear Monckhoven and with his younger brother, endowed with all the complementary administrative skills, an establishment with which nobody even dreamt of competing.

His benevolent availability, his generosity, his radiating good humor, a little too loud for these placid parts of the country, had long won everybody’s sympathy. Through his fecundity of imagination, exceptional and quotidian at one and the same time, of burlesque and, most often, comical improvisations, always picturesque and decorative, with which he never failed to entertain the crowds, he managed to create for himself a real popularity which remained faithful to him until the very end. In his sometimes immense, spontaneous gaieties, this little Brabantian who was exemplarily sober, but who looked instead as if he had been made ruddy by all the wines of Burgundy, combined the mocking vivacity of an urchin of La Villette with the ardor of a son of the Cannebière.¹² In this land of the kermesse,¹³ there was not a mayor who, a little worried about his cavalcade, would not seek a consultation with Ghemar, from which he would return quickly and triumphantly to his constituents. In amiable countries where the creators of spectacles decide Constitutions, the good Ghemar was rightly appointed and acclaimed director of Public Joy.

His last phantasy was his crowning glory.

Ghemar had announced with great fanfare that he was about to paint, all by himself, an entire universal exhibition, and let’s be clear: an exhibition of the major works of contemporary art, in which all the masters of all modern schools would be represented by their principal works, not in a format meanly reduced, but in the same proportions as the originals.

Despite the precision of the terms, everyone expected a formidable trick, in the style of the “humbugs” familiar to Master Ghemar.

But very soon, one could see in the center of Brussels, like ants on an anthill, architects, carpenters, construction workers, gathering within the wide perimeter chosen by Ghemar for the improvised site of his exhibition.—On the scheduled day and at the scheduled hour, the doors opened up for the besieging crowd …

There were three large halls: 1. Square Hall, 2. Hall O, and 3. Hall T—this last hall was marked as unsuitable for families, something like the “hell” of a library. A note in the catalog, signed by the editor, warned with the utmost seriousness: “If the mother wishes to take her daughter to Hall T, it is at her own peril.” I am quoting; but we must pass through these pranks and other innumerable non sequiturs, experiencing their terroir, in order to reach the very serious side of this gigantic farce.

For the first time, the brush replaced the pencil in the animated satire of these paintings. Ghemar had kept his promise and, of all the contemporary painters I know, he was the only one who could keep such an audacious promise: the works of our masters were reproduced with their defects and, even more incredibly, with their merits, with such perfection that the illusion was produced and that, from a certain distance, you could have believed that you were indeed in front of the original.¹⁴

There actually were—and in their best rendering—the color-
ful kaleidoscope of Isabey, the explosions of Díaz, the furious mixture of colors of Decamps, the attractive veilings of Corot, the sun of Marilhat that cooks the stones, the moon of Daubigny which refuses to eat them, the dark and striking coarseness of Millet’s proletarian exhortation, the exquisite preciousness of Fromentin, the pre-Raphaelite nobility and linearity
of Puvis, the cruel and charming precision of Millais and Mulready, the deep fogs, mists, and rains pierced by the gaslights of de Nittis, the pale yellow palette of Clays, and the good humor of Jongkind, and the chlorosis of Hamon, and the elegant modernity of Stevens and Wilhems. Couture, the man of “process,” yields the presidential baton to Offenbach in the grand supper of our French Decadence, Troyon moos, Palizzi bleats, Jacque clucks and grunts next to the stove in which Rousseau revives his foliage between Courbet’s trowel and the bitumen bath where Robert Fleury drowns, while Doré, a Genius at times, gets lost …

They all meet there, beginning with Géricault, whose “Trumpet” becomes—naturally—“Jericho’s trumpet,” up to Caillebotte with his violet Place de l’Europe “as seen leaving Manet’s studio.”

To make sure that nothing is missing from the madness of his tour de force and “de farce,” Ghemar has modeled symbolic frames, analogous to the subjects of his canvases. He does not fail to nail nails, real and enormous nails, under the soles of Horace Vernet’s zouaves; elsewhere he amuses himself by fixing a real oar, a wooden oar, to the edge of a boat, and in The Horse Fair by Rosa Bonheur he makes a stallion’s mounted head stick out, with hay between his teeth.

Do we need to say that the proceeds of this “Ghemar Museum”—of which, more than twenty years later, people were still talking from Brussels to Ixelles—had already been straightaway predestined to charity?

As for the expenses, apart from his personal work, Ghemar was happy to get away with two hundred thousand-franc notes on the table. He had entertained others and he had himself, as they say, taken his share.

Vicissitudes, human failures! Eventually this amazing collection of the “Ghemar Museum”—which caused quite a stir in its time, and which it would have been of the greatest interest to preserve as a whole—was dispersed a few years ago, abroad, quietly, incognito, in an auction without an echo, in a virtually empty salesroom.

Ghemar was no longer there: suddenly, after that apotheotic explosion of the most ingenious incoherence, that burst of laughter was forever frozen in an unfathomable sadness—and the “poor Yorick!” so good, so cheerful, so lively, so open and welcoming to all brilliant ideas, was wasted, somber, his temples tightened by the screw of the atrocious black idea …

*

Entirely different from these memories of Ghemar—always present—the figure of Silvy, whose works and at least as much his personality perturbed London’s “Nobility” and “Gentry” for several years, appears in our recollection.

There are some people who seem to constantly attract public attention, which persists in following them, independently of what they do or do not do. Silvy was essentially one of these.

He was a member of the diplomatic corps and had already secured a brilliant career when, following an inspiration which was very unexpected, but very understandable at the time, he quit everything to establish a photography studio in London. A photographer and a business that, as we shall see, were unparalleled.

From an excellent French family, Silvy revealed obvious Italian origins in his mask of the young Michelangelo, in the utterly academic rigor of his statuary and the classical purity of form that makes the graciousness, the eurhythmics of the gesture. In the mornings at Hyde Park, which a man of such elegance could not fail to observe with liturgical punctuality, in the continuous comings and goings of horsemen and Amazons whose “snapshots” have been provided by the indefatigable pencil of Guys, Brummel and d’Orsay would have recognized at first glance in the fugitive from the Parthenon, riding a thoroughbred which provoked the envy of more than one lord, the perfect sportsman, the impeccable, the last follower of a dying dilettantism. With a very personal originality, whose impeccable taste in clothing would be horrified if it were to be confused with eccentricity, this “sensational” man moved the crowds without ever appearing to notice it.

What lines of long and deep looks, petrified by the ravager’s passing! How many long-dreaming misses and entranced mothers! On certain occasions, wasn’t Silvy led to complain to the press because of some unfounded, legendary rumors which had distressed him, and which eventually could have cast some discredit on him?

It is not surprising that the afternoons, following these mornings, did not furnish enough hours to satisfy the aristocratic clientele that all came running to Silvy, and never tired of coming, and even less of coming again, requesting weeks and months in advance the inspection tour that would permit the lucky ones to find themselves for a few minutes before the charming Master in strictly formal attire, with white cravat—and, on the entrance of each client, he used to throw his pair of white gloves, somewhat negligently, into an already full basket, only to pick up another, brand-new pair …

Moreover—and why would this glory count less than all our other glories?—everyone was sure to find his or her name the following “Christmas” printed in the golden book of the customers of the year which, with the same regularity as that of the Gotha almanac,¹⁵ Silvy addressed with the most generous courtesy to all his followers! What an attraction, especially for the little world of the “Gentry” in this “Vanity Fair”!

The wait, to which everyone in Silvy’s salons was tenaciously
resigned, could be long, but not boring. The establishment—if I dare to use this commercial term—perfectly arranged and furnished, occupied a wide perimeter, in the very center, near Hyde Park, within that area of London where land is measured in banknotes. At their discretion, the customers, men and women, could be distracted by watching the parade of equipages, the aristocratic male and female equestrians, who, one after the other, passed endlessly before the camera lens, always ready to shoot, or by admiring the decorative riches generously laid out in the galleries with irreproachably good taste and with a profusion of limitless sumptuosity. In the details, layout, and selection of the furnishings in this exhibition, singularly limited as it was, the astonished Englishman could get a glimpse of the Latin genius. I should say, however, that it was in Flanders that this gorgeous tapestry of the time of Charles the Bold had blossomed, woven with gold and silver, which I could not stop admiring …

Silvy, though, had made at a certain point a concession to British quiddity: THE QUEEN’S ROOM!—furnished, exceptionally, in the purest English style.

Every visitor, in his or her combined trajectory, inevitably had to pass this room with its two open doors, but defended from all public access by a high wrought-iron gate, a beautiful Florentine work of the sixteenth century. Across the room, on the central fireplace, an equestrian statuette in pure silver for which Silvy had paid thirty thousand francs in cash, a considerable amount of money then, to the favorite sculptor of that epoch, Marochetti: THE QUEEN!!! … To this apparition, all good Englishmen, all purebred English ladies, bowed in respectful silence, only daring to satisfy with a furtive glance the terrible, I do not dare say the beastly need for objective curiosity, one of their national characteristics.

No one was allowed to enter the QUEEN’S ROOM—except for THE QUEEN—and no one ever did:

— … Not even the Queen, Silvy told me, laughing, in fact I’m still waiting for her … But it doesn’t matter: it looks good! …

One can see that the perfect gentleman, the artist and the man of the world, had a certain greedy intuition about “business” and its procedures. This has probably already been understood.

And he was thus able to accumulate enormous sums. I assume that he also knew how to spend them generously, given that his aristocratic manners were not a vain affectation. He was born with open hands, and his delicate spirit and friendly face were also open.

In one of those moments of fatigue that we all know very well, Silvy was taken with the idea of giving away his English house. He came to Paris to talk with me about it, and at his invitation I went to visit him in London.

But had he already abandoned the idea he had just conceived, through one of the oddities of his restless spirit that seemed to give him an additional graciousness? Whatever the case, he did not speak one word about it during my brief stay in London; I maintained the same silence as he did, and we parted very amicably, without having breathed a word on the matter. This characteristic was very typical of Silvy: perhaps it was of me, too, a little bit.

But it seemed to me that his tactfulness made him feel uncomfortable about the unnecessary trouble he had caused me. At the moment of saying goodbye, he absolutely wanted to offer me a casket containing the only known daguerreotype of Balzac, which he had received from Gavarni. Obviously, no gift could have given me more pleasure.

What became of that house of such great renown then, whose name is now no longer even mentioned? What became of that radiant and triumphant Silvy? In whose hands did all this splendor end up? Where is the rich tapestry of Charles the Bold? Where is Marochetti’s “Queen”? Where is Marochetti himself? … The death that mows us down at least concedes more time to things …

*

In this nomenclature, very approximately chronological, of our “primitives” and of our lost ones, that I try to evoke, without any documents, with only my memories, I have surely forgotten more than one deserving person. I ask for forgiveness in memory of those who have passed away, and from the survivors.

One of the last to come and the last to leave, Walery, has left recent and above all too many good memories for his name to escape us.

Walery—by name Count Ostroróg¹⁶—was born in Russian Poland, one of the three partitions that exiles call “the Poland of the Kingdom.”

Like several other remarkable personalities of the successive emigrations of these courageous people who will never consider themselves defeated, Count Ostroróg was initially educated in the Corps of Pages, in Saint Petersburg.

We will find him again, during the Crimean War, captain of the Polish lancers serving in the sultan’s army, and already producing daguerreotypes while he was in the Warna garrison.

At the same time, a talented musician and a researcher into everything, he receives a gold medal for an invention related to the percussive elements in organs.

But it is above all photography that fascinates and attracts him: around 1864, he opens his first atelier in Marseille, on the boulevard du Musée.

Soon after he secures his success, he sells his business in order to create another one in Paris, on the rue de Londres.

Walery’s indefatigable activity, his always lively ingenuity and his general intelligence for everything artistic, his practical spirit, his personal distinction, his gentle manners, above all his constant presence on the ground of everyday struggle—a real presence, a precious quality in every industry leader—all these elements ensured the great success of his creative activity.

But when, after barely four years, the establishment was growing and prospering, Walery no longer found any stimulus for his still relentless work. He had to go even further, elsewhere, in order to create something else. He wishes to sell, to sell at any price; he sells his studio at half its value, returns to Marseille, hurries to Nice, and, without wasting too much time, after two unsuccessful attempts, finally arrives in London where, after passing the inevitable test of the initial slowness and hesitation of all the Anglo-Saxon public, he reaches the heights of Silvy and Sarony, when brutally, all of the sudden, an aneurysm strikes, with a complete and definitive victory, this indefatigable fighter.

Walery had the most and the best of the native charm of the Polish people, a charm that was immediately attractive despite a hint of banality, and it is especially regrettable when the man of intelligence and action is at the same time a man with a heart. He never harmed anyone and he only did good.

*

Let’s conclude.

In this chronology, I need to say a little about the one who is writing these lines and who remains, he believes, the doyen of French professional photographers, as long as his eighty years do not prevent him from being the first in his studios every morning.

Thus, a fortuitous accident transformed me from the journalist that I was when I was young into a sketch artist. I mean sketch artist without knowing it, as people used to say in the age that was so dear to Veuillot,¹⁷ the age of the grand style that we will leave there wrestling with good French. I had never taken a single drawing class: the thousands of sketches published under my N confirm this confession all too clearly. I just took advantage of a certain attraction, perhaps a certain, more than limited, native aptitude toward aesthetics, and an inexhaustible fecundity of themes and legends in these times of militant politics.

Lack of technical training and talent was no problem at that time thanks to the indulgence of an era so different from today’s, in which the whole world is talented; but it was still necessary to respond to the inexplicable and encouraging interest expressed by publishers and the public. Now, demand greatly exceeded our production. Art having nothing to do with this, and all the glory being awarded elsewhere, the camaraderie of the pencil eventually created a sort of social cause, a union, as one would say nowadays, whose brand was that prolific N of which I found myself to be the managing editor, and which emerged in the overwhelming majority of illustrated magazines of the time. Real artists, Nanteuil, Gavarni, Couture, Voillemot, Bayard, Foulquier, Darjou, Béguin, Prevost and others still, occasionally dropping into our studio, did not disdain to leave their sketches in pencil, and some of them even stayed longer.

When we had the idea of the Panthéon Nadar, which was meant to contain in its four serial pages a thousand portraits— writers, playwrights, painters and sculptors, musicians— and which withered soon after the publication of the first issue, the importance of the endeavor made us think.

There were many reasons to do so.

To be honest, the first significant difficulty was resolved. Nothing was actually easier than making all our models come to that home to which each of them knew the way; by a singular grace, I had friendly relations—intimate or benevolent—with all the illustrious people of the time.

What remained was the execution of the work, the hic: to transfigure those hundreds of different faces into comicalities, while preserving for each the imponderable physical resemblance of the features, the personal bearing—and the character, that is, the moral and intellectual resemblance.

To underline, for example, in the so sympathetic face of Dumas the father, the most popular of all at the time, the lineaments of the exotic race and to force the simian analogy of a profile that seemed to provide immediate evidence that Darwin was right, especially by accentuating the dominant note of the person’s character, that is to say, the extreme, infinite goodness: to flatten the nose, too thin in the model, enlarge his delicately etched nostrils, make his eyelids’ benevolent smile more oblique, exaggerate, in the manner of Mesopotamia, that fleshy lip always jutting forward to kiss, amplify the power of that proconsul nape, without neglecting to make more frizzy, more flaky, what Jules Janin used to call “his mop” and, not to forget the last detail, to further minimize the pinna of his microscopic ears.

But if it is possible to encounter those with whom, as we say, everything runs smoothly, nature already having arranged everything to our benefit and having worked on our behalf to such an extent that one no longer knows whether the model is the portrait or the portrait is the model—as, for example, in the case of Champfleury—, it is less easy to maintain a glimmer of resemblance by altering the oriental beauty and Olympic tranquility of Théo!

Is there not, all the same, something there that resembles an impiety, an irreverence worthy of a Scarron or an Offenbach,¹⁸ of which one has no need to take any account?

And there are many others still for whom the impertinence, whatever it be, will never be enough. How can the clumsy, boorish pencil ever translate, in the most vulgar language, the delicateness, the exquisite finesse of Branville?¹⁹

And, finally, how to infer the individuality, so personal, and the strangeness, so ingenuously and perfectly sincere, of that complicated man Baudelaire, born, indeed, in the land of the Hippogriff and the Chimera?²⁰

Photography, which was just being born, offered, at least to my lack of ability, the virtue of not exhausting the good will of my models for too long, even as it opened paths of which I had hitherto been unaware …

An old friend—although then we were young—, Camille d’Arnaud, who had quit the board of d’ Houssaye’s magazine, The Artist, to share the research conducted by the practitioner scholar Bertsch, offered to train me in the trade.

At this time in which jobs, today so simplified, were so difficult and complicated, with such a loving patience, never exasperated, this excellent man committed himself to educating the reluctant animal that I was, inattentive, with my mind elsewhere and my wandering look, always unbearably impatient to see the end before the beginning!

How many mornings, for hours and hours, with implacable and methodical good will, did he insist on making me hold the glass plate between my thumb and index finger—up to thirty times in a row—following the ritual, before allowing me, in one go, to throw the colloidal layer upon it, as people used to do in those heroic times!

But only in this way are good fingers created, and it is, above all, good fingers that build good houses; and it is this result that, doing my best, I have been trying to achieve, maintaining a touching memory of my beloved master who passed away before me …