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series such as the Album pittoresque de Bruges (1840)
and La Belgique monumentale, historique et pittoresque
(1844), as well as undertaking copy work, notably the
Album du Salon de 1845.
Ghémar moved to Edinburgh in 1849 to form a
partnership with the lithographer Frederick (Friedrich)
Schenck. The partners, operating from their establish-
ment at 9 Greenside Place, communicated an innovation
to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts in August 1849,
enabling lithographs to be “drawn, lithographed, and
cast off in three hours.” They published Portraits of the
Leading Reformers in the new process.
When exactly Ghémar came to photography is un-
recorded, but his career move parallels that of another
caricaturist and lithographer, Ghémar’s lifelong friend
Nadar. For both men, photography, making inroads
into the classic graphic processes, would principally
be used for portraiture. Ghémar did not practice com-
mercially in Edinburgh, but he may well have learned
photography there, since, very soon after his return to
Belgium in August 1854, he advertised himself as a
photographer. He opened a studio in Antwerp, at Rue
Houblonnière 1474, in partnership with Robert Severin
(1839–after 1883), son of Ghémar’s friend, the leading
Düsseldorf photographer and lithographer Wilhelm
Severin (1809–1888). A visiting journalist described
the studio as “...un atelier modeste de dimensions, mais
littéralement encombré d’œuvres très distinguées et de
portraits exquis” [a studio of modest dimensions, but
literally crammed full of very fi ne works and exquisite
portraits] (Le Précurseur, 23 February 1855). Ghémar
and Severin organised a well received exhibition at the
Cercle artistique et littéraire in August 1855, where they
showed the full range of their output, townscapes and
reproductions of artworks as well as portraiture.
Ghémar used his foothold on the Belgian market to
secure his new reputation as a photographic portraitist
and to prepare his return to the capital. The partners
sold the Antwerp studio to Auguste De Bedts in Febru-
ary 1856 and moved into premises in Brussels at rue
de l’Ecuyer 27. Using Ghémar’s contacts in artistic
circles and high society, Ghémar and Severin’s studio
enjoyed immediate success. On the occasion of Leopold
I’s silver jubilee in 1856, the king sat for them. One of
the resulting portraits, showing the king in general’s
uniform, was published as a lithograph by Simonau
and Toovey and became the most popular graphic rep-
resentation of the Belgian monarch. The portrait also
featured prominently in the partnership’s submission to
the photography exhibition held in Brussels in August
1856, where Ernest Lacan noted Ghémar’s characteristic
techniques of retouching in pastel and overpainting and
concluded: “En s’associant, MM. Ghémar et Severin ne
pouvaient produire que des œuvres de mérite. En effet,
l’un est peintre de talent, l’autre photographe habile.”
[By forming a partnership, Messrs Ghémar and Severin
could not but produce works of merit. One is a painter of
talent, the other a skilled photographer.] (Lacan, Ernest,
“Exposition photographique de Bruxelles,” La Lumière,
27 September 1856: 149)
By 1860, the partnership had been dissolved and
Severin moved to The Hague. Ghémar initially ran the
studio alone, then formed a partnership with his younger
half-brother Léon Louis Auverleaux (1832–1869) under
the denomination Ghémar frères. The new partnership
coincided with the introduction of the carte-de-visite,
and the studio would prosper riding the wave of popu-
larity enjoyed by this format in the early to mid 1860s.
Ghémar continued to receive royal patronage and in
1864 published a set of 37 portraits of the Belgian royal
family. He created another signifi cant series when the
took the portraits of all eighty guests at the dinner held
in honour of the exiled Victor Hugo by his publishers
Lacroix, Verboeckhoven in Brussels on 16 September- This event, which has gone down in history as
the “banquet des Misérables,” shows the raffi sh and
witty Ghémar’s talents at their best, as he passes each
one of the literary and artistic devotees and friends of
the French novelist in front of his lens, not as a hired
hand, but as an equal.
In June 1863 Auverleaux set up his own studio in
Brussels, but Louis Ghémar retained the company name
of Ghémar frères, instantly recognisable to the public
at large. Ghémar formed a liaison with the younger
Marie Catherine Jadoul (1844–1882) who bore him four
children between 1864 and 1871; they married on 15
July 1871. During his career as a photographer, Ghémar
maintained some output as an artist, and also traded in
paintings and objets d’art, at the Galerie Ghémar, at
Rue du Persil 4, open by 1865, and where he was also
domiciled from 12 December 1868. A highpoint of sorts
was constituted by his exhibition, the Musée Ghémar,
a satirical but affectionate side-swipe at the art world
held in 1870, and made up of 100 pastiches in oils of
contemporary artists, all painted by Ghémar himself.
Ghémar exhibited infrequently and only at presti-
gious venues, at the universal exhibitions in London
in 1862 and Paris in 1867. The reputation of his studio
was secure in any case. An atypical commission for
urban views of Brussels constituted his fi nal important
series. The Belgian Public Works Company, charged
with redeveloping the centre of Brussels and bricking
over the pestilential river Senne, entrusted Ghémar
with recording the picturesque corners of the capital
doomed to demolition. Ghémar produced a series of
twelve full-plate views entitled Assainissement de la
Senne. Bruxelles en 1867. Vues photographiques prises
à l’emplacement du nouveau boulevard... [Sanitising
the Senne. Brussels in 1867. Photographic views taken
on the site of the new boulevard...].