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), no. 338

The image offered here, with its high degree of contrast and slightly subdued detail, bears a striking resemblance to images made with the cliché-verre process.  Cuvelier's father, Adalbert, had introduced the cliché-verre process to the artists of the Barbizon school, and Eugène continued to work with painters, printing the glass plates upon which they had drawn or etched.  The process offers a wide degree of latitude as to the appearance of the final image.  When a design was scratched into the collodion-coated glass plate, the resulting delicate lines resembled those of an etching.  Looser, more gestural lines could  be achieved by drawing on the plate with a metal brush.  

Corot's cliché-verre compositions utilize these techniques and others, and his body of work within this medium is stylistically diverse.  A number of Corot's clichés-verre make very effective use of negative space, with large areas of a picture taken up by black forms.  A few of these offer interesting comparisons to Cuvelier's 'Belle-Croix,' specifically 'The Daydreamer' and 'Souvenir of the Fortifications at Arras' (Melot, Graphic Art of the Pre-Impressionists, C. 43 and C. 44), both printed by Adalbert Cuvelier, and 'The Ambush' (Daniel, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot, rear cover). 

Gauss accounts for two prints of this image: the one offered here and another albumen print.