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DAGUERRE, LOUIS JACQUES MANDÉ
(1787–1851)
French painter, decorator, printmaker, entrepreneur,
inventor, and photographer
Daguerre was born on November 18, 1787, in Cor-
meilles-en-Parisis to Louis Jacques Daguerre and Anne
Hauterre. He later attended the public school of draw-
ing, and perhaps apprenticed to an architect, in Orléans,
where his father was a process-server in the bailiff’s
court. Daguerre arrived around 1803 in Paris, where his
godparents, the wine merchants Louis and Marie-Louise
Fromont, most likely received him.
Daguerre spent the majority of his career seeking pop-
ular support and offi cial recognition as an artist during
one of the most politically and socially complex periods
in French history, living through the French Revolution,
Empire, Bourbon Restoration, and July Monarchy. If his
contributions to photography eventually overshadowed
his work as a painter, the French government’s ultimate
support for the daguerreotype in 1839 nevertheless dem-
onstrates Daguerre’s ambition and entrepreneurial prow-
ess, as well as his determination, resiliency, and political
savvy. Perhaps his most signifi cant legacy to modern art
and photography was this ability to negotiate artistic and
political viability with popular forms of visual art.
Although Daguerre’s early years remain somewhat
obscure, he began his career in Paris around 1804, when
he was one of the fi rst students to enter the painting
studio of the Paris Opéra, then under the direction of Ig-
nazio-Eugenio-Maria Degotti. He may also have been a
student of Jacques-Louis David, and early biographies of
Pierre Prévost (who was hired by James Thayer to paint
the panoramas for his two rotundas in the Boulevard
Montmartre) state that Daguerre was one of Prévost’s
assistants, even though extant documentation does not
exist to support the claim.
Daguerre fi rst appears in the records of the Opéra
as a day laborer in December 1808 for the opera Al-
exandre chez Apelle and again in November 1809 for
Fernand Cortez. In 1810 Daguerre served as painter of
ornaments for La Mort d’Abel, and the same year, he
and Pierre-Luc Ciceri completed the decorations for
the second act of Les Bayadères. In 1812, Jean Baptiste
Isabey, who had assumed leadership of the Opera studio
in 1810, recommended Daguerre as one of the studio’s
four fi rst painters. Daguerre held various posts in the
painting studio through 1816, when he was named the
chief decorator of the Ambigu-Comique theater. He
returned briefl y to the Opera studio as co-chief painter
with Ciceri from 1820–22. Daguerre’s most prominent
work with Ciceri were the decorations for Aladin, ou la
lampe merveilleuse, which inaugurated gas lighting at
the Opéra on the rue Peletier in February 1822.
Daguerre’s early paintings share much in common
with the “troubadour” style exemplified by Pierre
Révoil and Fleury-François Richard, the gothic interiors
popularized by François-Marius Granet, and the work
of various artists in the weekly salons of Ciceri, includ-
ing Carle and Horace Vernet, Jean-Baptiste and Eugène
Isabey, Charles-Marie Bouton, and Jean-Pierre Alaux.
Despite the fact that Daguerre began his own career
under the Empire, and associated with several artists
in Ciceri’s salon known for their “bonapartist” tenden-
cies, he nevertheless was favored by the newly restored
Bourbon monarchy. Daguerre’s family was closely tied
to the Bourbons through an aunt, Marguerite Dully de
Chérix, who had raised his father. Upon her death in
1790, she left her fortune to Louis XVI, and Daguerre’s
father was placed under house arrest and was almost
incarcerated during the Reign of Terror because of this
will. Louis XIII purchased Daguerre’s fi rst entry into
the offi cial Parisian Salon, Intérieur d’une chapelle de
l’église des Feuillants (1814). Daguerre remained skilled