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

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

Paris, Musée d'Orsay, Eugène Cuvelier (1837-1900): Photographe de la Forêt de Fontainebleau, June - August

The present photograph was made in the northern French town of Arras, where Eugène Cuvelier was born and raised, and where he learned the craft of photography from his father, Adalbert.  From medieval times, Arras was renowned for the tapestries produced there, and was so strongly associated with these that 'arras' had become a popular term for a tapestry by Shakespeare's time: in Hamlet, the eavesdropping Polonius is discovered in his hiding place behind an arras and stabbed by the melancholy prince.  In Cuvelier's time, the city maintained a small but vibrant community of artists that included the Cuveliers; the painter, lithographer, and photographer Constant Dutilleaux; L. Grandguilliame, a professor of drawing at the engineering school in Arras; the painter and teacher Xavier Dourlens; and the painter and photographer Charles Desavery.  It was Dutilleaux's friendship with Camille Corot that brought the famous painter to Arras in 1851; he became a frequent visitor thereafter.  Rousseau visited Arras twice in 1865, staying with Eugène Cuvelier.  

The photograph offered here shows a portion of the extensive fortifications, built in the 13^th and 14^th centuries, that surrounded Arras.  Control of Arras oscillated between the French and the Spanish in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, each of whom added to the town's defenses.  Cuvelier's photograph shows a rigid line of the stone rampart, punctuated by an arrow tower, contrasting with a uneven line of bare trees receding into the distance.  By the 1890s, most of Arras's fortifications had been dismantled.     

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