Lot 33
  • 33

Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
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Description

  • Eugène Cuvelier
  • 'BORNAGE DE BARBIZON'
salt print, numbered '328' by the photographer in the negative, mounted, titled in an unidentified hand in pencil on the mount, matted, 1860s

Provenance

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

Exhibited

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

Literature

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 328 (this print, misidentified as an albumen print)

Catalogue Note

The title of this photograph, Bornage de Barbizon, indicates that it was taken on the road that runs directly between the village of Barbizon and the Fontainebleau forest.  Barbizon was situated on the very western edge of the forest, and was therefore a convenient place for painters and tourists alike to lodge.  In his Dictionnaire historique et artistique de la Forêt de Fontainebleau (Fontainebleau: Maurice Bourges, 1903), Felix Herbert lists an established Route du Bornage de Barbizon that would take a visitor through the old-growth forest of Bas-Bréau and south to the Gorges et Platières d'Apremont.  The simple wooden structure amidst the clutter of felled trees by the side of the road was very likely used to support a temporary walkway along one of the forest's many paths.   Two such structures can be seen supporting a small footbridge along another walking path in Lot 15. 

With its depiction of thick stands of tall trees, likely beeches, arching over the rustic pathway, and a glimpse, on the left, of the bramble-covered forest floor, the photograph portrays both the grandeur and the chaos of the natural world.  The path, the wooden support, and to a greater extent the cut lumber, are all eveidence of man's impact upon the forest.      

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