1170
photographic manager of the company in 1856, William
Lake Price, Lebbeus Colls, and William Howlett. Con-
tributions by Oscar Rejlander and others were planned
but never published.
Before the company went into production, Pretsch
received a letter from Talbot requiring him to purchase
a licence, as he asserted that Pretsch’s process infringed
his 1852 patent. There were fundamental similarities.
Paul Pretsch was born in Vienna and trained as an
engraver. He moved to London in 1854 for the express
purpose of exploiting his new process. Two British
patents were granted in 1854 and 1855, and premises
established in London’s Holloway Road.
By 1858 the company had ceased trading, and Pretsch
later worked for de la Rue as an engraver.
John Hannavy
PREVOST, CHARLES HENRY VICTOR
(1820–1881)
French and American photographer
Victor Prevost was born in 1820 in La Rochelle,
France. As a young man, he studied art in Paris with
Paul Delaroche. He went on to work as a lithographer,
and exhibited several lithographs at the Paris Salons of
1845 and 1846.
Soon after this, however, Prevost decided to go to
New York City, where he began earning his living as a
lithographer. In 1848 and 1849, Prevost worked for the
lithographic forms of Goupil, Vibert & Co. and Sarony
& Major.
From 1850 until 1852, Prevost worked in a studio
with fi ve other artists. One of the other tenants was a
daguerrotypist, which may have piqued Prevost’s inter-
est in photography. Prevost’s workplace was also only a
few blocks from the Broadway studios and galleries of
the major daguerrian portraitists of the city.
During the early 1850s, the daguerreotype was
the primary photograph format in the United States.
Although in 1840 William Henry Fox Talbot had intro-
duced the calotype, a paper-based photographic process,
he took out a patent on the process and required anyone
interested in using it to license the technique. Only a
few American photographers cared to do so, none of
them in New York.
Meanwhile, the paper negative process was further
developed by several Frenchmen. Gustave Le Gray, a
French artist, developed a method of waxing the paper
negatives before they were placed into the sensitizing
bath, which allowed the negatives to be kept for two
weeks before exposure, and then to be kept for up to a
week before developing and printing. Le Gray published
his fi ndings in France in July 1851; they were translated
and printed in America in 1852. One of the few Ameri-
can photographers interested in the new paper process
was Victor Prevost.
In 1853, Prevost traveled to France to learn this new
method of photography from Le Gray. While there,
Prevost made a series of photographs of the French
countryside, which were subsequently published in an
illustrated edition of Twenty Years After, a historical
novel by Alexandre Dumas. In these early examples of
his photographic work, Prevost manages an exquisite
feel for composition, and shows a mastery of the new
technique.
Upon returning to New York in the latter part of 1853,
Prevost set up a photographic studio at 43 John Street.
Later that year, he entered into a partnership with Peter
Comfort (P.C.) Duchochois, whom he had met in France.
Duchochois became known for his prolifi c contribution
to the photographic scientifi c literature.
In a New York City business directory for 1853,
Prevost listed himself as a photographer. Other major
photographers in the city continued to list themselves
as daguerrians. The next four years were Prevost’s most
productive as a photographer, and resulted in the fi rst
paper-based photographs of New York City.
While some of Prevost’s images echo standard
scenes that were being engraved and lithographed for
public consumption at the time, his photos display a
more artistic sensibility, in keeping with his training. In
New York City, Prevost mainly photographed outdoor
scenes—commercial buildings, churches, backyards of
urban residences, larger country estates and residences,
and ships in dock on the Hudson. Similarly, the rural
estates and scenes he photographed in upper Manhattan,
West Point, New York, and several towns in New Jersey
display a sense of scale more in line with the Hudson
River School artists than with daguerrian portraiture.
Prevost entered some of his photographs in the
photographic competition at the New York Exhibition
of the Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in
1853–1854. He was awarded several honorable men-
tions but his photograph made from a waxed paper nega-
tive lost the prize to one taken with the wet-collodion,
glass-plate negative process. Nevertheless, Prevost was
intrigued by the exhibition and took many photographs
of the interior of the building, including several views
of neo-classical statues, as well as the large machines
exhibited.
In 1854, Prevost traveled to West Point to photograph
the solar eclipse on May 26. Many daguerrotypists pho-
tographed this astrological event, but Prevost appears
to have been the most prolifi c photographer, making
nineteen exposures onto waxed paper negatives in quick
succession. A subsequent album was made, showing the
consecutive prints, as well as a smaller composite image
printed from all the negatives.
That same year, photographs by Prevost and Ducho-