1186
be precisely served by Régnault’s involvement in the
highest circles of power in the Académie des sciences,
Académie des beaux-arts, and the Second Empire gov-
ernment. With his ties to British photographers such as
Sir John Herschel and Sir David Brewster, Régnault
would also serve as a link between the British and
French photographic worlds. His scientifi c expertise
and faith in empirical method, moreover, made him a
superior technical expert, and he duly focused his ef-
forts for the S.F.P. on extracting rational methods and
practices from the informational disorder surrounding
the nascent medium. In this way, he presided over the
fi eld of European photography for nearly fi fteen years,
guiding discussions of technical, professional, and oc-
casionally aesthetic concerns and serving as arbiter of all
debates presented to this most infl uential photographic
organization on the Continent.
Although he is known to have practiced wet plate
photography and other process variants as they ap-
peared in the late 1850s and 1860s, Régnault’s principal
photographic work was confi ned to his paper negative
photography of the early 1850s. Increasing professional
obligations and poor health curtailed his leisure pho-
tography after 1855, but he continued to serve actively
as president of the S.F.P. until his resignation in 1868.
Crushed by the death of his son, the celebrated painter
Henri Régnault, in the Franco-Prussian War, he with-
drew from public life and died in 1878, on the seventh
anniversary of Henri’s death.
Without exhibition reviews or other discussions of his
work in the photographic press of his day, Régnault’s
photography was overlooked by historians until the
late 1970s.
Laurie Dahlberg
Biography
Victor Régnault was born on 31 July 1810, in Aix-
la-Chapelle, France (present-day Aachen, Germany).
A devoted experimental chemist and physicist in the
Académie des sciences, Régnault fi rst experimented
with daguerreotypy around 1840. Introduced to paper
photography in 1841 by J.-B. Biot, who gave him sam-
ples of Talbot’s sensitized paper, Régnault eventually
became a serious practitioner of calotypy, which he ap-
plied to multiple purposes in the early 1850s, including
scientifi c use, portraiture, still life, and landscape. He
was a founding member of the Société héliographique
in 1851, and the fi rst president of the Société française
de photographie (1855-1868). Appointed director of
the state porcelain factory at Sèvres in 1852, Régnault
also experimented with vitrifi able photography and
convinced the state to allow photographic documenta-
tion of the Sèvres wares. A technical expert and au-
thority, Régnault experimented with all photographic
processes, but only his paper photography survives.
He died in 1878.See also: Calotype; Robert, Louis; Société
héliographique; and Société française de
photographie.Further Reading
Bajac, Quentin, “La photographie à Sèvres sous le second Em-
pire: du laboratoire au jardin,” La revue du Musée d’Orsay 5
(Autumn 1997): 74-85.
Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, no. 1, April
1982 [special issue devoted to Victor Régnault]
Dahlberg, Laurie, The Bull in the China Shop:Victor Régnault
and the Culture of Photography, 1840–1870 (MS currently
under review),
Jammes, André, “Victor Régnault, Calotypist.” In Van Deren
Coke, ed., One Hundred Years of Photographic History:
Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall. Albuquerque, NM:
University of New Mexico Press, 1975: 77–83.
Jammes, André and Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French Calo-
type, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Victor Régnault 1810–1878, Oeuvre
Photographique, essays by Romeo Martinez and Pierre Gas-
sman, Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 1979.REID, CHARLES (1837–1929)
Scottish
Charles Reid was born at Turriff, Aberdeenshire in 1837
and operated a photographic studio in Wishaw, North
Lanarkshire.
Reid specialised in animal studies and it is for these
small albumen and large carbon prints that he is known
today, producing a large quantity of high-quality studies
of sheep, cattle, birds, horses etc. The resulting prints
are usually monogrammed C.R. and numbered in the
negative. Many were printed and published by G.W.
Wilson and Company.
Reid’s pictures are always well composed and show
good technique and many examples of his small studies
were purchased by artists as reference for their paintings
and sculptures. His large carbon studies of Highland
cattle and sheep graced many late Victorian parlours.
Reid travelled extensively around Scotland and the
North of England fi nding suitable animal subject matter
and he showed considerable patience in working with a
wide range of creatures and producing such good quality
work ,which rarely shows a hint of blur. He exhibited his
photographs in the 1880/90’s and also gave lectures to
the Edinburgh Photographic Society during this period.
He published an article ’Some Notes on Animal Photog-
raphy’ in The Practical Photographer in 1895.
His sons continued his business well into the 20th
Century.
Ian Sumner