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

Another print of this image:

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 342

Daniel Challe and Bernard Marbot, Les Photographes de Barbizon: La Fôret de Fontainebleau (Bibliothèque Nationale, 1991), pl. 18

As the title of this photograph indicates, the image was taken near La Reine Blanche, a name which was given both to individual trees and whole areas within the forest of Fontainebleau.  According to Felix Herbert, in his Dictionnaire historique et artistique de la Forêt de Fontainebleau (Fontainebleau: Maurice Bourges, 1903), La Reine Blanche was a name given successively to individual trees in the Bas-Bréau section of the forest, sometimes a beech, sometimes an oak.  At the death of one tree bearing the name, a new tree would be chosen.  The name was last bestowed upon a stand of oak trees in Bas-Bréau, near the Route de Paris, that was later destroyed by high winds in 1893. 

Gauss does not account for this salt print in her census, but lists one albumen print, which is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale.