1448
was also the fi rst occasion that photographs of members
of the royal family were put on public display. Pic-
tures of both Albert and the Duke of Cambridge were
amongst the exhibits. William Lake Price specifi cally
took a portrait of Albert for the exhibition, probably as
a sign of his approval and encouragement of the event.
In 1852, Albert also initiated a project that would use
photography to copy all the extant Raphael paintings and
drawings, both in the Royal Collection and elsewhere.
Photographers involved in the Raphael project included
Rejlander, Philip Delamotte, and William Bambridge.
The death of Prince Albert coincided with the advent
of the celebrity carte-de-visite and the growing market
for celebrity photographs. These two events caused a
fundamental change in the relationship between the
monarchy and the camera. From being significant
patrons, members of the royal family became valuable
sitters who were much sought after by commercial
studios. Patronage did continue in that the Prince of
Wales, for example, became President of the Amateur
Photographer’s Association in September 1861. Victoria
also maintained her strong personal interest in photog-
raphy, particularly when it came to using pictures of
the dead Prince as objects of mourning. She also ac-
cumulated many albums of pictures that document both
her burgeoning extended family and the contents of the
various royal palaces. However, after the early 1860s,
royal photographs moved uneasily between being family
pictures and media images. Photographers exploited the
monarchy rather than relying on it for support.
John Plunkett
See also: Diamond, Hugh Welch; Beard, Richard;
Kilburn, William Edward and Douglas T.; Wilson,
George Washington; Disdéri, André-Adolphe-Eugène;
Photographic Exchange Club and Photographic
Society Club, London; Downey, William Ernest,
Daniel, & William Edward; Bassano, Alexander;
Calotype and Talbotype; Eastlake, Sir Charles Lock;
Robinson, Henry Peach; Rejlander, Oscar Gustav;
Bedford, Francis; Fenton, Roger; Williams, Thomas
Richard; Daguerreotype; Price, William Lake; and
Delamotte, Philip Henry.
Further Reading
Dimond, Frances, and Roger Taylor, Crown and Camera; the
Royal Family and photography 1842–1910, London: Viking,
1987.
Ford, Colin, ed., Happy and Glorious: Six Reigns of Royal Pho-
tography, London: Angus and Robertson, 1977.
Gernsheim, Helmut, and Alison Gernsheim. Queen Victoria; A
biography in word and picture, London: Longmans, 1959.
Homans, Margaret. Royal representations; Queen Victoria and
British culture 1837–1867, Chicago: Chicago UP, 1998.
Plunkett, John, “Queen Victoria: the monarchy and the media
1837–1867,” Unpublished PhD, University of London,
2000.
Seiberling, Grace and Carolyn Bloore, Amateurs, photography
and the mid-Victorian imagination, Chicago: Chicago UP &
International Museum of Photography, 1986.VIDAL, LEON (1833–1906)
Leon Vidal is not well known today but during the latter
half of the nineteenth century was heavily involved with
public photographic display, instruction in photography,
promotion of photography and the development of
photographically linked printing processes in France.
He published numerous books that covered topics in
all these areas.
Vidal was born near Marseilles. His parents owned
a salt works at Port du Buc nearby. He was educated at
the Lycee St. Louis and the Sorbonne in Paris, majoring
in engineering. He moved back to Marseille and became
active in photographic endeavors. He invented the Au-
topolygraph, one of the fi rst automatic photographic
plate-changing magazine-type cameras, in 1861. He
met Poitevin and edited his works for publication. Also
in 1861 in Marseille he founded, published and edited
the journal “Le Moniteur de la photographie,” which
he continued to do for the rest of his life, taking it with
him to Paris when he moved there in 1875.
Perhaps the most beautiful, if not the most infl uential
work by Vidal was his devising of a color photographic
printing process in the early 1870s he called “photochro-
mie,” a term unfortunately used for a number of other
processes, and as a general term for color photography
around that time in Germany. His process was a three-
color separation process printed on a Woodburytype
black layer. It was put into use in Paul Dalox’s Tresor
Artistique de la France, Musee National du Louvre,
Gallerie d’Apollon (Imprimerie et Librarie du Moniteur
Universelle, Paris). The fi rst volume appeared in 1872,
the second in 1875. Copies of these volumes are held,
among other places, in the collection of the Getty Re-
search Institute. They are folio size. The images, while
not extremely high resolution, look quite sharp. They
appear to have almost the look of lacquer in their fi n-
ish. They reproduce colors very well, with a somewhat
cold tone. They shine (literally) in their reproduction of
metallic surfaces. Each object is posed in rather even
illumination in front of a uniform background. Some of
the most outstanding images are the Casque de Henri II
(Helmet of Henry the Second) in volume I, and the Epee
de Charlemagne (the Dueling Sword of Charlemagne),
Boite de Evangeliaire (Box of the Evangelist), and the
Statue Equestre (Statue of the Equestrian), in Volume
II. Reproductions of decent quality are to be found in
Farbe im Photo, 204 and 207. The colors are good, but
the surface luster of the original is absent. Of course,
the photographic three color separation process was
demonstrated in a famous experiment using projected
lantern slides by Maxwell in 1861, envisioned in various