676
photomechanical printing would not be pursued seri-
ously for another decade. These early attempts, along
with silver-salt based paper photography, initially were
eclipsed by Daguerre’s process.
Many reasons exist to explain this triumph of the da-
guerreotype. The photosensitivity of silver nitrates had
been known since the 18th c. and Thomas Wedgwood’s
experiments with the camera obscura at the turn of the
19th had been circulated through the scientifi c commu-
nity by his friend Humphry Davy. Other experiments
in the fi rst decades of the 19th century (by Thomas
Young in England and Samuel Morse in America,
among others) are also documented. In 1839, then,
the daguerreotype process not only seemed to be the
most innovative but also, because of its precise detail
compared to the fi rst paper photographs, the most im-
mediately useful in terms of scientifi c applications.
Its most tangible scientifi c success in 1839 was in the
fi eld of miscroscopic photography, as practiced by
Alfred Donné in Paris and John Draper in New York.
Also in 1839, Daguerre’s process was employed by
Arago and Jean-Baptiste Biot to study the polarisation
of light, and by Edmond Becquerel to study the ef-
fects of solar radiation. Conversely, the Académie des
beaux-arts favored the more traditional processes on
paper supports, whereas they dismissed any discussion
of the daguerreotype in relation to art. Nevertheless,
Daguerre’s fi rst images infl uenced the fi rst generation
of photographic artists, many of whom learned the
daguerreotype process from the inventor himself dur-
ing public demonstrations in September of 1839. Also
beginning in September, Daguerre began giving weekly
consultations to daguerreotypists at the Conservatoire
des Arts et Métiers. He also oversaw the production of
daguerreotypes at the shop of Alphonse Gustave Giroux,
the son of his art dealer and the fi rst manufacturer of
daguerreotype equipment. These images produced at
Giroux’s shop, like the dedication plates Daguerre sent
to European heads of state, comprised views of Paris
and still-life arrangements of plaster casts, architectural
fragments, bas-reliefs, and copies of sculpture.
Views of Paris, in particular vistas of the Louvre,
Tuileries, or Notre Dame taken from bridges and build-
ings along the banks of the Seine, were among the fi rst
images produced by aspiring photographers and then
exhibited in England, Belgium, Denmark, Poland,
Germany, Italy, and the United States. The introduction
of smaller, more portable cameras during the course
of 1839 facilitated exterior photography. Architectural
and city views also were improved through the use of
prismatic lenses that corrected the lateral reversal of
camera images, although many photographers, particu-
larly in France, continued to produce reversed views. By
November 1839, the artists Horace Vernet and Frédéric
Goupil-Fesquet left France to photograph Egypt, where
they encountered the Canadian, Joly de Lotbinière. Their
original daguerreotypes of the Middle East, unlike those
of Joseph Philibert Girault de Prangey from the early
1840s, have not been recovered, most likely because
they were used in the production of etchings for the
Excursions daguerriennes.
The widespread production of cityscapes and archi-
tectural views was partially due to constraints of the
early daguerreotype process, before the use of acceler-
ating substances made commercial portraiture feasible.
While the same holds true for still-life arrangements of
sculpture, it also can be said that such images fi t within
the growing 19th century concern with museums, col-
lections, and the preservation of history. Daguerre
created his still-lifes at the same time that the French
government funded a plaster cast museum at the Ecole
des beaux-arts and was considering a proposal for a
new museum of French historical monuments. In his
still-lifes, Daguerre sometimes included reproductions
of sculpture from France or in French collections, such
as Germain Pilon’s Les Trois Graces, the 13th-century
Justice bas-relief from the Saint-Etienne portal of Notre
Dame cathedral, or the Crouching Venus, a version of
which was installed at the Louvre in 1828. He also
included sculpture not in French collections, and thus
available only through copies or casts, such as a bust
copied from the Verospi Jove at the Vatican or the Venus
de Medici, which had been returned to Florence after the
fall of Napoleon in 1815. These still-life combinations of
sculpture from different periods and schools infl uenced
many of the fi rst daguerreotypists, including Alphonse
Eugène Hubert, Alphonse Fortier, Baron Armand Pierre
Séguier, and Bayard.
Stephen C. Pinson
See also: Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé; Niépce,
Joseph Nicéphore; Daguerreotype; Talbot, William
Henry Fox; Cliché-verre; Calotype and Talbotype;
Herschel, Sir John Frederick William; Florence,
Antoine Hercules Romuald; Bayard, Hippolyte;
Donné, Alfred; Fizeau, Louis Armand Hippolyte;
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese; and Girault de
Prangey, Joseph-Philibert.Further Readings
Bajac, Quentin, The Invention of Photography, New York:
Abrams, 2002.
—— and Dominique Planchon-de Font-Réaulx, Le Daguerréo-
type français: un objet photographique, Paris: Réunion des
musées nationaux, 2003.
Batchen, Geoffrey, Burning with Desire: The Conception of
Photography, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Buckland, Gail, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography,
Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.
Frizot, Michel and Jean-Claude Gautrand, Hippolyte Bayard,
Naissance de l’image photographique, Amiens: Trois Cail-
loux, 1986.