Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

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

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot, October 1996 - January 1997 

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

This print:

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 213

Malcolm Daniel, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 13

This remarkable landscape, with its subtly modulating tones and minimalist composition, is unique within Cuvelier's body of work.  No other photograph in Cuvelier's oeuvre so capably conveys a sense of the atmosphere of its locale, and this is due to his expert handling of the paper negative used to make the image.  While the newer glass-plate negatives were capable of capturing a greater degree of detail, a paper negative always left some evidence of its inherent fibrous structure in the final print.  In Cuvelier's hands this aspect of the process, which was regarded by many as a detriment, became an integral part of the work.  In this image, the transferred texture of the paper negative aids Cuvelier in his evocation of this calm body of water in Fampoux, a village near his home town of Arras.  By the 1860s, when Cuvelier did the bulk of his work, the paper negative was essentially old technology; most photographers had by then switched to using glass-plate negatives.  Yet Cuvelier used both paper and glass negatives throughout the 1860s and, moreover, seems to have been deliberate in his choice of which media to use to achieve the appropriate artistic affect for each of his images. 

Gauss accounts for only one print of this image: the salt print offered here.