204
of a unique work, this aspect of photography made pos-
sible the discipline of art history.
The reproductions of drawings were especially ac-
curate because they were printed by special processes
that replicated the color of the original and also did not
fade. Recognizing the impermanence of albumen prints,
which tended to discolor depending on how carefully
they were processed and kept, the Braun Company
experimented with non silver methods of printing.
They turned fi rst to Woodburytypes and then to carbon
printing. Both methods were based on early discoveries
by the amateur Scottish scientist Mungo Ponton that po-
tassium bichromate (now called dichromate) hardened
when exposed to light. The Woodburytype, named for its
English inventor Walter B. Woodbury, used dichromated
gelatin to form a relief matrix, from which a print could
be produced under pressure. Made without screens or
any particulate matter, it was exceptionally accurate, but
required trimming, which increased production costs.
Following improvements to the sensitivity of dichro-
mated potassium by Edmond Becquerel and the addition
of carbon black coloring matter by Alphonse Poitevin,
the carbon process took shape. It was made practicable
fi nally by the manufacture of carbon tissues in various
colors by a company set up in London by Joseph Wilson
Swan. In 1866, Braun purchased a franchise for carbon
printing in Belgium and France, and the art reproduction
business entered a period of growth. Despite three wars
fought in the region of Alsace, the Company, which
eventually substituted gravure printing for the carbon
process, produced art reproductions up through the
mid-twentieth century. In an effort to demonstrate the
artistic potential of photography, Braun also produced
a number of large-scale original compositions based on
popular “after-the-hunt” scenes. The Braun enterprise
symbolized the idealism felt by many nineteenth-cen-
tury artists, inventors, and scientists that photography
would bring untold cultural and economic benefi ts to
ordinary people.
Naomi Rosenblum
Biography
Jean Adolphe Braun was born on June 13, 1812 in
Besançon, France to Antoinette Regard and Samuel
Braun, a mounted police offi cer. He was the fi rst of
three siblings (Charles Nicholas Braun, born 1815 and
Marie Barbe Madeleine, borne 1823). On the father’s
discharge from the police force in 1822, the family
moved to the ancestral homeland in Mulhouse in Alsace.
As an industrial center that specialized in the printing
of textiles—especially cotton fabric—and wallpapers,
Mulhouse offered young men training in design, chem-
istry and mechanics. The young Braun demonstrated
talent as a draftsman and in 1828 was sent to Paris to
complete his education in decorative design. In 1834,
he married Louis Marie Danet, with whom he had
three children, Marie, Henri and Louise. Also in 1834,
with his brother Charles, he opened the fi rst of several
unsuccessful design partnerships, fi nally succeeding in- Two years later he published Recueil de dessins
servant de matériaux, destinés à l’usage des fabriques
des fabriques d’étoffes, porcelaines, papiers peints &.
&. Dédiés à Mr. Daniel Dollfus par son ami A.Braun
[Collection of Designs Offering Materials Intended for
Use by Manufacturers of Textiles, Porcelains, Wall-
papers, etc. Dedicated to Mr. Daniel Dollfus by his
Friend, A. Braun]. The dedication of the album, which
consisted of thirty plates of drawings in black and white
and some with color mainly of fl oral motifs reproduced
by lithography, attests to his ongoing connections with
the business community of Mulhouse, of which Dollfus
was a member. On the premature death of his wife in
1843, Braun sold his Paris design studio and returned
to Mulhouse. There, in the same year, he became chief
designer in the studio of Dollfus-Ausset and married
Pauline Baumann, the daughter of a famous horticul-
turist, with whom he fathered two children, Gaston
and Marguerite. In 1847, Braun opened his own studio
in Dornach, a suburb of Mulhouse, which became the
headquarters for the expanding textile design business
that counted English as well as French clients. In the
early 1850s, Braun became interested in the newly
announced collodion process of photography, which
made possible the multiple reproduction of positive
prints from the glass plate negative. To improve the
fl oral decoration on textiles by presenting the actual
appearance of botanical material, in 1854 Braun issued
an album of three hundred photographic prints on albu-
men paper of cut fl owers, shrubs, wreaths, fruit, leaves,
and grasses entitled Fleurs Photographiées [Flowers,
Photographed]. At the Universal Exposition held in
Paris the following year, he exhibited a second series
of prints. These were highly commended in 1856 in
an article in Le Moniteur universel by Ernest Lacan, a
leading critic of photography. In 1857, Ad. Braun et Cie,
as the company was known, embarked on a project to
photograph well-known sites and monuments in Alsace,
completing L’Album del’Alsace [Album of Alsace] in - From that date, also, the company began making
stereoscopic views and landscapes taken in France,
Germany, Italy, and Switzerland in various sizes and
formats, including panoramas. These were taken by
hired cameramen, among them his brother Charles
and son Gaston. In 1867, Braun issued a series of large
format images (32 × 24 inches) entitled Panoplies de
gibier [After the Hunt Scenes], which were printed by
the carbon method. Two years later, the company em-
barked on a project to produce small scale images in a
variety of sizes and formats, entitled Costumes de Suisse