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RÉGNAULT, HENRI-VICTOR
The Stereoscopic Magazine fi rst appeared in July
1858, and continued until early 1863, publishing three
stereo images per month, by Fenton, Howlett and oth-
ers, with accompanying texts ‘by Writers of Eminence.’
Reeve also published periodic sets of stereo cards under
the umbrella title The Stereoscopic Cabinet.
The Conway in the Stereoscope with text by James
Davidson and twenty stereographs by Roger Fenton,
was published in 1860, and additionally contained ad-
vertisements for other proposed publications and sets
of images, several of which are presumed never to have
been published. Many of the images from the book were
re-published in The Stereoscopic Magazine.
John Hannavy
RÉGNAULT, HENRI-VICTOR (1810–1878)
French photographer and scientist
Henri-Victor Régnault was born on 31 July 1810 in
Aix-la-Chapelle (now Aachen, Germany). Régnault,
who used the given name “Victor,” was the only son
of André Privat Régnault, a military geographic engi-
neer in Napoleon’s Imperial Corps, and Marie Thérèse
Massardo. His father died on the Russian campaign
in 1812 and his mother died six years later, leaving
the eight-year-old Victor and a younger sister without
family or means. In 1830, Régnault won entrance to
the prestigious École polytechnique. Graduating third
in his class, he continued his training as an engineer
at the École des Mines, where he studied with the
celebrated chemist L.-J. Gay-Lussac. After his elec-
tion to the Chemistry section of the Académie des
sciences in 1840, Régnault turned his interest to the
emerging fi eld of experimental physics. His major re-
search topics were patently useful to the state’s plans
for industrial development, and brought him lucrative
government research commissions. Régnault also
received multiple academic appointments, including
Gay-Lussac’s coveted chair in chemistry at the École
polytechnique (1840), and the chair in physics at the
Collège de France (1841).
Like many of his academic colleagues, Régnault
was captivated by the promise of photography as a
tool of empirical science. Known as a master of precise
scientifi c method and measurement, Régnault would
apply this talent to refi ning the inexact practices of
early photography. In 1841, when William Henry Fox
Talbot sent Jean-Baptiste Biot samples of his photo-
graphic paper, Biot passed them on to Régnault, who
was already experimenting with daguerreotypy. Rég-
nault soon adopted Talbot’s paper negative process and
in 1843, Richard Calvert Jones wrote to Talbot from
Paris, telling him he had been making calotypes with
Régnault and Hippolyte Bayard. Little else is known of
Régnault’s photographic activities prior to 1847, when
Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard devised improvements
to the English process that circumvented Talbot’s patent
restriction in France. Régnault was charged with ex-
amining Blanquart-Evrard’s process for the Académie
in April of 1847. He subsequently became one of the
most avid practitioners of paper negative photography
and contributed at least fourteen images to Blanquart-
Evrard’s Imprimerie Photographique editions in the
early 1850s.
In January of 1851, Régnault joined a diverse group
of artistic, literary, and scientifi c fi gures in founding
the Société héliographique, which precipitated a sud-
den increase in his photographic activities. Always
worried that he was not devoting his full energy to his
scientifi c career, Régnault claimed that did not take
up photography for pleasure, but because he intended
to illustrate a physics textbook with photographically
derived illustrations, for which he invented a method of
chemically reducing photographs to line drawings. This
project, while never realized, may be connected with ten
photographs of staged acoustic experiments Régnault
made in 1851. Two substantial portrait series also date
from this time: portraits of his colleagues in science and
academe, and a large group of intimate portraits of his
family. He also contributed two methods to the techni-
cal discouse: the use of pyrogallic acid (which quickly
superceded gallic acid as the premier developing agent)
and the use of a vacuum pump in uniformly sensitizing
photographic paper.
In 1852, Régnault’s photographic and scientifi c ca-
reers came together with his role as a government arts
administrator when he was appointed to the prominent
directorship of the state-owned Manufacture Impériale
de porcelaine de Sèvres. At Sèvres, he found another
devoted calotypist in Louis Robert, the head of the
painting atelier, who had begun working in photography
around 1850. Both men frequently photographed the
factory environs in the early 1850s. Régnault also took
advantage of the pastoral scenery around Sèvres to cre-
ate his most artistically ambitious images: large format
(approximately 35 × 44 cm), atmospheric landscapes
of the Seine and woodlands around Sèvres. Several of
these lush landscapes were exhibited in London in 1852
and 1853, courtesy of Régnault’s friend John Stewart.
These appear to have been the only public exhibitions
of Régnault’s work in his lifetime. His photographic
practice was essentially private, notwithstanding his role
as a central fi gure and technical expert in photographic
circles of the 1850s.
Régnault accepted the presidency of the newly
formed Société française de photographie (S.F.P.) in- With their unanimous vote, the new society’s
members recognized Régnault’s ability to bridge the
concerns of science, art, and industry, a goal that would