621
them is not known. None of the existing Constantine
photographs were ever mounted, none were given to
any of the French institutions to which Greene had given
his Egyptian photographs, and although four of these
photographs are known to have been posthumously
exhibited in Brussels in 1856, where they won an hon-
orable mention, there is no other reference to them in
contemporary literature.
Greene was clearly concerned from the beginning of
his career with ensuring the preservation of his legacy.
He donated important collections of his prints to the
Institute de France, the Bibliothèque nationale, and the
Société française de Photographie. He also announced
that Goupil would publish a 60 print album of his Egyp-
tian photographs and commissioned Blanquart-Evrard
to make the prints, although album never materialized.
(The album Le Nil, Monuments, Paysages. Explorations
Photographique par John B. Greene, in the collection of
the Société française de Photographie, which is credited
to the “Imprimerie photographique de Blanquart-Evrard,
a Lille, 1854” on its letterpress title page may be the
dummy for the proposed Goupil publication.) Greene
published a two part report on his excavations at Medinet
Habou, Fouilles exécutées à Thèbes dans l’année 1855,
illustrated with lithographs of hieroglyphic inscriptions
copied from his photographs. An article in the Bulletin
Archéologique de l’Athenaeum Française on a fragment
of Egyptian sculpture he found and photographed in the
museum at Cherchelle, Algeria, was his fi nal profes-
sional effort.
The major holdings of John Beasly Greene’s photo-
graphs are in the French institutions collections to which
he gave the work, as well in as the Musée d’Orsay, which
holds the defi nitive archive of Greene’s Egyptian pho-
tographs, the comprehensive set of prints and negatives
that had been deposited with Egyptian Department of
the Louvre sometime after Greene’s death by Théodule
Devéria, the son of the lithographer who made the il-
lustrations for Fouilles exécutées à Thebes, Greene’s
contemporary and probably a friend, and like Greene, a
trained Egyptologist. Interestingly, apart from complete
set photographs from the excavations at the Le Tombeau
de la Chrétienne, none of Greene’s Algerian photographs
are in the French collections; the National Gallery of
Canada owns the most extensive institutional collec-
tion of this material. The other important collections
of Greene’s photographs (both Egyptian and Algerian)
are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and by the
Museum of Modern Art, in New York; and in the J.Paul
Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
The spelling “Beasley” that appears in almost every
current reference is incorrect. The correct spelling is as
given here, without the second “e.” The authority for this
is the family tomb in Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris,
which is the only place I have ever seen Greene’s full
name spelled out. (He usually signed his name as “J.B.
Greene,” sometimes as “John B. Greene.”) The spelling
with two “e”s originated, unfortunately, in a confused
phone conversation I had with a prominent dealer in
the earlym 1980s, shortly after I located the Greene
tomb. The Greenes usually used either the mother’s
maiden name or a deceased fi rst wife’s maiden name
as the middle names for a son. I have never been able
to determine the name of John Bulkley Greene’s wife
(or wives), however, it is worth noting that one Reuben
Beasley (also spelled Beasly in the records) was the
American consul in LeHavre when J.B. Green was
born there in 1832. John Bulkley Greene and ReubenGreene, John Beasley. The Nile.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift,
2005 (2005.100.63) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.