An Important Collection of Photographs by Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier

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Lot 1
  • 1

Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
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Description

  • Eugène Cuvelier
  • 'ROUTE À BRIQUET'
albumen print, numbered '312' by the photographer in the negative, mounted, titled in an unidentified hand in pencil on the mount, matted, 1860s

Provenance

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

Exhibited

Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Eugène Cuvelier oder Die Legende vom Wald, March - May 1997

Literature

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 312 (this print)

Catalogue Note

This photograph was made along the Route à Briquet, a road that runs north-south in the western part of the forest of Fontainebleau (see also Lots 40 and 41).  Two stacks of cut lumber are visible upon the right side of the road.  Utilization of the forest's trees for lumber was a source of contention during Cuvelier's time.  Both lumber and granite, quarried within Fontainebleau, generated significant income for the state.  For the artists of the area, however, this use was regarded as desecration of a national French treasure.  Théodore Rousseau was a very vocal critic, and in 1852 he petitioned Napoleon III to set aside certain areas of Fontainebleau to be exempted from logging (see Lot 7). 

Gauss lists only one print of this image: the albumen print offered here.