An Important Collection of Photographs by Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier

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Lot 34
  • 34

Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 USD
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Description

  • Eugène Cuvelier
  • BIRCH TREES, FONTAINEBLEAU
salt print, numbered '251' by the photographer in the negative, mounted, 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

Literature

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 251 (this print)

Catalogue Note

The silver birch trees that figure so prominently in this photograph are native to Fontainebleau, where they thrive in the forest's sandy soil.  The high rock formations visible through the trees on the left side of the image suggest that this photograph may have been taken in Franchard, the rocky area on the forest's western border.  Along with oaks and beeches, birch trees were in danger of being cut down during the unchecked harvesting of timber in the 1800s. 

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