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Napoleon’s scholars. Yet he recognized the inherent
difference in mediums—the engraved illustration as an
idealized summation of multiple sketches and measure-
ments versus the photograph as carrying the impress
of the physicality of a place at a specifi c moment. He
offered his photographs to his readers as the “records
of his sensations” as he experienced the ancient sites
of Egypt.
Both formally and intellectually, Teynard’s work
is connected to pre-photographic projects to order
and record ancient Egypt. His work rests squarely on
French scholarship begun by the cadre of scholars who
accompanied Napoleon’s Army of the Nile in 1798. The
Description de l’Egypte, which included ten volumes
of highly detailed engravings based on sketches and
measurements made by the over 100 scholars and en-
gineers, was the summation of the work of Napoleon’s
scholars. It offered an encyclopedic treatment of Egypt
and became the foundational text in the developing
discipline of Egyptology. Teynard’s engagement with
the Description was not perfunctory. His approach to
complex sites such as Karnak and Philae was mod-
eled on that in the Description. He provided site plans
upon which he indicated camera positions and angles.
Captions of photographs related the images to the
site plan. Where possible, he photographed structures
from vantage points that replicated the illustration in
Description. Napoleon’s teams of scholars had not
ascended the Nile into Nubia; there he turned to Gau’s
Antiquités de la Nubie, published in 1822 and conceived
by the author as the continuation of the work of the
earlier scholars. Again, Teynard photographed, almost
exclusively, the structures and sites illustrated by Gau,
choosing vantage points which yielded views which
corresponded to Gau’s illustrations. While Teynard’s
debt to earlier models can be seen in choice of subjects
and viewpoints, the startling immediacy of photographs
made in the shadowed recesses of colonnades and across
the desolate sweep of desert reinforce his description
of the photographs as the record of sensations. The ten-
sion between positivist record and romantic experience
distinguishes his work from that of others practicing in
Egypt at the time.
After his return, Teynard’s photographic activity was
confi ned to scientifi c and technical experimentation. In
1862, he submitted the winning solution to the problem
posed by the Academie des Sciences for the Prix Bordin,
a problem on optical focus. He continued to investigate
the focusing properties of lens and submitted work to
the Academy. In 1869 he was among the invited guests
of the Khedive at the opening of the Suez Canal. He
died outside of Grenoble in 1892.
The publication history of Teynard’s photographs
is complicated. His work was fi rst issued as Voyage en
Egypte et en Nubie: Sites, Monuments, Bords du Nil in
thirty-two livraisons of fi ve prints beginning in 1853 by
Maison Goupil et Compaigne, Paris. It was only in 1858
that the complete book was published by Goupil et Cie
in two volumes under the title Egypte et Nubie: Sites et
Monuments les plus interessants pour l’etude de l’art et
de l’histoire. The 160 prints were accompanied by his
short descriptive texts. The two volume set commanded
a very steep price, 1000 Francs. The size of the edition
is unknown but fewer than 15 complete copies of the
two volume work are known to exist.
Kathleen Stewart HoweSee also: Calotype and Talbotype; Du Camp,
Maxime; and Goupil & Cie.Further Reading
Howe, Kathleen Stewart, Félix Teynard: Calotypes of Egypt. A
Catalogue Raisonné. New York, London, Carmel: Kraus,
Hershkowitz, and Weston, 1992.
——, Excursions along the Nile: The Photographic Discovery
of Ancient Egypt. Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara
Museum of Art, 1993.
Perez, Nissan, Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East,
1839–1885. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988.THOMAS, JOHN (1838–1905)
Born Glan-Rhyd, Cellan, West Wales, John Thomas
left his draper’s assistant post in Lampeter in 1853 and
walked to Liverpool to start a similar post. Ill health
prompted an outside job and he became a ‘Town Agent
on Commission’ for a fi rm trading in stationary and
photographs of famous personalities along the North
Wales route, from Liverpool to Holyhead. It was the
absence of any Welsh personalities that prompted him
to take up photography in 1863. He became the manager
for Harry Emmens Studio in Liverpool, photographing
mainly non-conformist ministers. In 1867 he launched
his own business, producing carte-de-visites, also -in
memoriam, under such titles as bards, poets, musicians,
singers, missionaries, church dignitaries and ministers.
While he spent most of his time tramping round North
Wales his wife ran the mail-order business from the
Cambrian Gallery, Liverpool, which lasted for around
40 years. Before his death, he selected 3113 plate nega-
tives which were bought by Sir O. M. Edwards who used
them to illustrate articles in his Cymru magazine. This
collection is now in the National Library of Wales. Along
with his depictions of tradesmen, working women, town
characters, the almshouses, farm yard and market streets,
the coming of the railways, building the reservoirs, he
accomplished the most important depiction of life in
19th century Wales, and one of the earliest sustained
documentary projects in the history of photography.
Alistair Crawford