1267
His exhibition record comprises two portraits by wet
collodion shown at the 1855 Exhibition of the Photo-
graphic Society, and forty of his celebrated stereographs
at the 1858 Edinburgh exhibition of the Photographic
Society of Scotland.
Silvester’s stereos were usually produced in small
sets of three or four cards, or in much larger series, with
a strong moral theme and narrative character, and they
could be purchased either card mounted for viewing by
refl ected light in the drawing room stereoscope, or as
tissues for viewing by transmitted light. Themes like
The Hero’s Wife and The Dream of the Wedding were
popular entertainment. Look Before You Leap linked
sound advice with a strong Masonic theme, and depicted
aspects of Masonic ritual, while his most celebrated
genre card, Guardian Angels was one of his most overtly
religious. Similar treatments of many of the themes in
Alfred Silvester’s stereographs were published by his
major rivals John Elliot, and the London Stereoscopic
Company.
John Hannavy
SILVY, CAMILLE-LÉON-LOUIS
(1834–1910)
French photographer
Camille Silvy was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou, a market
town to the west of Chartres, on May 18, 1834, to Ma-
rie Louise and Onésipe Silvy, descendents of a notable
Provençal family with possible Italian roots. When his
father, mayor of Nogent, was appointed director of a
Paris bank in 1835, he moved his family with him.
As a child, Silvy was taught drawing by Hippolyte
Lalaisse, a teacher, lithographer, and painter of portraits,
genre scenes, and animals. Silvy studied law and gradu-
ated in 1852 taking up a minor diplomatic post. He took
up photography when he took a trip with Lalaisse to
Algeria in 1857 and realized his inadequacy at obtaining
exact views of the places he traveled through. He made
photographs and drawings on this trip, particularly of
Kabylia, newly conquered by France.
Silvy joined the Société française de photographie in
1858 and exhibited at the Salon the following year. Silvy
was one of a number of photographers who donated
prints to be sold to raise funds for the organization. Most
of the views he exhibited at the Salon were taken close
to his birthplace, at Gaillard at La Croix-du-Perche or in
Nogent-le-Rotrou. Like those of many of his contempo-
raries, Silvy’s photographs were made from large, wet
collodion glass negatives which most likely processed
his plates in one of the family’s houses in the area.
Silvy’s most well known photograph was taken near
Nogent-le-Rotrou of the river Huisne in 1858, and is
known today as “River Scene, France.” The version in
the Société française de photographie, where Silvy ex-
hibited the print for the fi rst time in 1859, was originally
given the title “Vallée de l’Huisne.”
Although it was made just a few years following
the inauguration of the Grande Ligne de l’Ouest from
Paris that passed through Nogent, “River Scene, France”
gives no indication of this new industrial access to Paris.
The scene is one of quiet, picturesque contemplation
where one’s eyes can explore the intricate and care-
fully composed details in the middle ground where
riverside houses, boat docks, and trees are refl ected in
the smooth mirror-like surface of the river. The glass
negative allowed a greater sharpness as well as faster
exposure speed. The people positioned along the riv-
erbank in River Scene, though staged, did not have to
stand stiffl y in order to be rendered. The composition
is reminiscent of topographic prints of the time, aimed
at creating picturesque views of leisuring tourists in a
landscape. However because Silvy’s photograph lacks
picturesque monuments such as the nearby Romanesque
castle and a church, he seems to be more interested in
the scene as that of local residents, enjoying their own
beautiful spot.
Because clouded skies were challenging in early
photographs, Silvy used a method fi rst invented by Hip-
polyte Bayard and made famous by Gustave Le Gray
that is to take a separate negative of a cloudy sky and
splice it with the negative of landscape in the printing
stage. In addition, Silvy had to paint in parts of the main
cluster of poplar trees as well as along the horizon in
order to blend the two negatives. Because of his suc-
cess with these techniques as evident in “River Scene,”
Silvy is recognized as one of the great craftsmen of
photographic printing.
In a review of the exhibition at the Société française
de photographie, Ernest Lacan praised Silvy’s land-
scapes: “These are ravishing tableaux which have the
merit of being as true as nature herself, while borrow-
ing from art a glamour which gives poetry to the most
ordinary places” (Photographic News, July 9, 1859, 1).
Such critical acclaim along with the writings of Louis
Figuier, a well-known science journalist, who declared
Silvy’s photographs to be “... true pictures in which
one does not know whether to admire more the profound
sentiment of the composition or the perfection of the
details.. .” (L. Figuier, La Photographie au Salon de
1859, Paris, 1859, 9) placed Silvy at the head of the
modern French landscape school.
In addition to landscapes, Silvy also made still-lifes,
such as Trophées de chasses of rabbits, game birds, and
fi sh hanging symmetrically like realist still-life paintings
of the time. In 1859 a wood engraving for the weekly
L’Illustration was made after his photograph of a group
of citizens in Paris gathered around a posting put up by
Napoleon III before his departure for Italy to join the