An Important Collection of Photographs by Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier

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Lot 35
  • 35

Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
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Description

  • Eugène Cuvelier
  • 'FLEURY'
salt print, numbered '160' by the photographer in the negative, mounted, titled in an unidentified hand in pencil on the mount, matted, circa 1860

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

Literature

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 160 (this print)

Catalogue Note

This photograph was made in the small village of Fleury-en-Bière, a short distance west of Barbizon and the forest of Fontainebleau.  When the photograph is examined closely, the blurred, translucent image of one, or possibly two, people can be seen on the road in the middle distance.  These figures must have remained stationary for only a portion of Cuvelier's necessarily long exposure time, and thus are rendered in the present image as 'ghosts.'

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