Adalbert Cuvelier 1812-1871

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 

Malcolm Daniel, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 5 (this print)

Adalbert Cuvelier, a businessman in the northern French town of Arras, as well as an avid and talented amateur photographer, was connected to a number of the important artists of his day.  He first met Camille Corot in 1852, during one of the painter's frequent visits to Arras.  It was there that Corot was introduced to the cliché-verre process of image-making.  This involved the artist sketching or etching on a prepared glass plate, and then using the completed glass plate as a negative from which a contact print was made on photographically sensitized paper.  Corot became enamored of the process, and in the 1850s worked steadily on the creation of glass plates.  In all, he produced 66 images with the medium between 1853 and 1874, just before his death a year later.  

In Arras, there were a number of artists and photographers who were involved with the cliché-verre, and had a great belief in its application to art: the painter and photographer Constant Dutilleux, the drawing professor L. Grandguilliaume, the painter and photographer, Charles Desavary, and Adalbert Cuvelier.  Corot's initial clichés-verre were printed by Grandguilliaume in Dutilleaux's studio.  Between 1854 and 1857, Adalbert Cuvelier was the chief printer of Corot's plates.  Adalbert Cuvelier became a known authority on the cliché-verre, and in the January 1856 issue of the journal of the Société Française de Photographie he published the article 'Sur Plusieurs Méthods de Dessin Héliographique' which gave detailed instructions for several approaches to the technique.  Adalbert's son, Eugène, encouraged other artists, Jean-François Millet and Théodore Rousseau among them, to work in cliché-verre. 

While Adalbert Cuvelier is best known to art historians for his involvement with Corot and the cliché-verre, and to photo historians for teaching his son, Eugène, the craft of photography, the handful of extant photographs by him reveal Adalbert to have been a highly accomplished photographic artist in his own right.   These photographs, made in Arras and consisting of landscape views and a remarkable series of portraits of working men, show both a mastery of the photographic process and a subtle intelligence in its application. 

The photograph offered here, made on the Scarpe River, which flows through Arras, is believed to be the only print of the image extant, and shows a clever and restrained approach to a subject that might otherwise seem hackneyed.  Upon first glance, the photograph functions as a picturesque view of a landscape and river that makes great compositional use of the reflections of the trees in the smooth surface of the water.  Closer examination reveals a small group of artists sketching upon the left bank of the river, protected from the sun by white umbrellas.