901
into his own image-making and his commercial career
soon undercut his active photographic endeavors. While
never giving up entirely on photography, he closed
down his business in 1926. He spent the remainder of
his life reviving his early street photography of the late
Victorian era, saw many of his pictures published in
the popular press, and became a favorite lecturer in his
beloved camera clubs showing his images and relating
his experiences. He published his autobiography in 1939
and died in obscurity during World War II, but major
holdings of his prolifi c imagery exist in many collec-
tions with the bulk of his archival materials surviving in
the Gernsheim Collection at The University of Texas at
Austin, the Fine Arts Library of the University of New
Mexico, and the National Museum of Photography, Film
and Television in Bradford.
See also: Eastman, George; and Kodak.
Further Reading
Flukinger, Roy, Larry Schaaf, and Standish Meacham. Paul Mar-
tin, Victorian Photographer, Austin & London: The University
of Texas Press, 1977.
Bill Jay. Victorian Candid Camera: Paul Martin, Newton Abbot:
David & Charles, 1973.
Martin, Paul. A Diary of Events Personal and General, during
the Life of Paul A. Martin: Unpublished manuscript, 1944.
[Owned by the Fine Arts Library, University of New Mexico
General Library, Albuquerque.]
Martin, Paul. Victorian Snapshots [introduction by Charles
Harvard (C.H. Gibbs-Smith)], London: Country Life Ltd.,
1939.
MARVILLE, CHARLES (1816–c. 1879)
French photographer and illustrator
Marville was born in Paris and worked there all his
life, but little is known about his biography. He had
aspirations to a career as a painter, but seems to have
had minimal access to academic training. By 1835 he
was designing wood engravings, contributing a number
of minor illustrations to Léon Curmer’s illustrated edi-
tion of Paul et Virginie. He continued producing wood
engraving designs and lithographs through the 1840s,
providing illustrations for numerous publications, in-
cluding Charles Nodier’s La Seine et ses bords (1836),
and Pierre Boitard’s guide Le Jardin des plantes (1842).
Marville also designed the panoramic view of Paris
which graced the masthead of L’Illustration (1843). In
July 1848 he received his only documented painting
commission, a copy of Le Sueur’s La Mort de Saint
Bruno, for a provincial church. Around 1850 Marville
started to make photographs.
Where and with whom Marville learned photography
is unknown, but by the end of 1851 he had begun pro-
ducing negatives for Louis-Desiré Blanquart-Evrard’s
manufactury in Lille. Many of these fell into the genres
of landscape and monument views with which Marville
was familiar, and an equal number were reproductions of
works of art, work he had undertaken to a lesser degree
in lithography. Marville contributed more negatives to
Blanquart-Evrard’s publications than any other photog-
rapher—at least one hundred, spread throughout most of
the fi rm’s albums, including all the views for the 1853
travel album Les Bords du Rhin. Around the same time
he secured a position as photographer at the Louvre,
where he photographed diverse works of art and the
interiors of renovated galleries, such as the “Salle des
Caryatides” published by Blanquart-Evrard. A vague
pattern of working methods emerges here: Marville
seems to have held some sort of contractual relation-
ship with Blanquart-Evrard, the Louvre, and perhaps
others, and he retained at least some negatives to use at
his discretion. The nature of his work is further hinted
at in an 1851 letter to the Ministry of Public Works,
wherein Marville identifi es himself as Artiste-Peintre
and member of the Société héliographique (the only
evidence of his membership in the society), and seeks
access to state-owned historical monuments to make
exterior and interior views, as well as photographs of
objects housed in the buildings, for “an important pho-
tographic publication in preparation”—presumably one
of Blanquart-Evrard’s albums.
As early as his engagement with Blanquart-Evrard,
Marville probably intended to earn a living by his pho-
tography. Like many photographers of the moment, he
contributed inventions to facilitate photographic work:
a negative chassis designed for travelling in 1851, and a
method for transporting collodion negatives from glass
to paper in 1857. But Marville never joined the Société
française de photographie, which was slanted towards
the rarifi ed world of amateurs, and he would not share
the secrets of his negative transport method with that
group. On the other hand, he managed to secure an as-
signment to photograph collections of old master draw-
ings in Milan and Turin for the Louvre; he also forged a
relationship with the painter Ingres, who commissioned
Marville to make photographic records of many of his
drawings. All three of those drawing collections earned
the photographer money for the rest of his career.
In 1856 La Lumière reported Marville’s use of the wet
collodion process to record the arrival of the Imperial
Family at Notre Dame, for the baptism of the Prince
Imperial. By 1858 Marville’s shift to collodion was
complete, as was his turn to contemporary Paris for
photographic subjects. That year he was hired by some
branch of Haussmann’s administration to document the
newly refurbished Bois de Boulogne, a jewel of Napo-
leon III’s modernizing plans for Paris, and an important
piece of propaganda at home and abroad. The album he
produced (exhibited at the 1862 International Exposition