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perfectionnements ingénieux découverts par ces deux
habiles photographes, ils ont trouvé le moyen de prendre,
avec un objectif ordinaire, des images de toute grandeur et
sans déviations” [Among other ingenious improvements
discovered by these two skilled photographers, they have
found a means of taking, with an ordinary lens, images
of all sizes and without distortion] (L’Observateur, 29
October 1849). Large prints were a speciality, as attested
by one surviving example, featuring the Brussels town
hall, which measures 77 × 66.5 cm.
Rogier referred Claine’s request to the Académie
royale de Belgique [Royal Academy of Belgium], which
set up a commission to investigate the matter. While
Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1872), the infl uential secre-
tary of the Academy, expressed his scepticism, Claine
found a staunch defender in Joseph-Ernest Buschmann
(1814–1853), man of letters, publisher and himself an
experimenter in photography. Buschmann’s intervention
in Claine’s favour was decisive in persuading the Acad-
emy to adopt a motion that “la photographie sur papier
peut devenir une auxiliaire des plus utiles pour les sci-
ences et pour les arts, et qu’elle mérite en conséquence
de recevoir les encouragements du gouvernement”
[photography on paper can become a most useful aid for
the sciences and the arts, and consequently deserves to
receive the government’s support] (Le Moniteur belge,
12 January 1850).
Unable to fi x a fee per print, the Interior Ministry
awarded Claine the lump sum of 1,250 francs. Claine
used the award in part to fi nance a study trip to Paris,
where he spent most of May 1850 familiarising himself
with the latest innovations, selecting a lens for fi eld
work more effi cient than any obtainable in Brussels,
and meeting leading practitioners including Gustave
Le Gray. Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor initiated Claine
into his albumen-on-glass process, which led Claine, on
his return to Brussels, to make a somewhat hasty pro-
nouncement: “Jetez la photographie sur papier au feu!
Le verre a triomphé!” [Throw paper photography onto
the fi re! Glass has triumphed!] (letter to Joseph-Ernest
Buschmann dated 8 August 1850).
Claine’s championing of this new process would
have fateful consequences. Following their initial con-
tacts the previous year, Buschmann had entered into a
prolifi c correspondence with Claine and Jacopssen on
their shared interest. He now began an intense practical
collaboration with Claine, the purpose of which was
to commercialise the albumen process. Their attempt
to construct a machine for albumenizing glass plates
failed, and further experiments were brutally curtailed
in November 1850 when Buschmann was committed to
a mental asylum. Among the reasons advanced by his
family for his medical state was “...une idée fi xe, mal
fondée du reste, de gagner des millions par de nouvelles
découvertes dans cette science” [...a quite baseless ob-
session with making millions through new discoveries
in this science, i.e. photography].
Bereft of his collaborator, Claine completed the as-
signment for the Interior Ministry in 1851, the fi rst state
commission granted to a photographer for drawing up an
inventory of Belgium’s cultural heritage. This landmark
achievement was repeated the following year when
Claine made a further series of 44 views of monuments
and sites for the municipality of Brussels, at 60 francs
per print. Claine’s fi nal legacy is a series of ten plates
published by L.-D. Blanquart-Evrard in 1854, under the
title Bruxelles Photographique. Measuring up to 48 ×
36 cm each and priced at 10 francs apiece, they were
the largest and most expensive prints produced by the
Lille establishment.
On 31 August 1853, Claine moved back into Brus-
sels. Abandoning photography along with his freelance
status, he was appointed a municipal clerk. Photography
had outgrown the opportunistic enthusiast fortunate
enough to benefi t from public subsidy. Guillaume Claine
ended his days as a museum caretaker, dying in Brussels
on 1 March 1869.
No comprehensive set of the Interior Ministry com-
mission of 1851 has been located, but the Bibliothèque
Royale Albert Ier, Brussels, owns several prints, as
does the Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi. The
Brussels municipal archives possess the full series of
views commissioned in 1852, and the Bibliothèque
municipale, Lille, has a complete copy of Bruxelles
Photographique. The Museum voor Fotografi e, Ant-
werp, owns Buschmann’s surviving salt prints, as well
as the manuscripts composing Claine and Jacopssen’s
correspondence with him, along with an annotated
transcription in typescript.
Steven F. JosephBiography
Evrard-Guillaume Claine was born in Marche-en-
Famenne, province of Luxembourg, Belgium, on 12
January 1811. A failed journalist, he was working as a
court stenographer when he began practising the calo-
type around 1847. Specialising in landscape work, he
entered into two signifi cant collaborations, fi rstly with
Louis Jacopssen (1797–1877), an artistically inclined
landowner from Bruges. Claine’s correspondence with
Joseph-Ernest Buschmann (1814–1853), man of letters
and publisher in Antwerp, plots their joint experiments
and pivotal steps in the introduction of glass-plate pho-
tography to Belgium in 1850. Claine’s series for the
Interior Ministry completed in 1851 constitutes the fi rst
state commission granted to a photographer for drawing
up an inventory of Belgium’s cultural heritage. In 1852
Claine made a series of 44 views of monuments and
sites for the Brussels municipality. Claine abandoned