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Victoria and Albert Museum, 1853–1900, at the Sterling
and Francine Clark Art Institute. It is preserved in the
Windsor castle and counts 25,000 prints. Since 1842,
the Queen had inaugurated the accumulation of private
souvenirs of family photographs, such as her trips and
the outstanding events of her reign (1837–1901). The
queen’s interest for photography was more personal,
and precocious and followed than Napoleon III’s. Her
husband, Prince Albert, had the same taste for the new
medium: he became member of the Royal Photographic
Society and collected Le Gray marines and numerous
reproductions of works of art.
A comparison can be made with Pedro II, Brazil’s
emperor from 1831 to 1889. Like Queen Victoria, the
emperor had acquired since 1840, at the age of four-
teen, a daguerreotype camera. His collection, mostly
protected, is preserved to the Print Department of the
National Library of Rio of Janeiro. By its nature, it is
situated between Napoleon III’s and Victoria’s. One can
fi nd albums commissioned by Pedro II on Brazil major
themes, scientifi c albums in particular ethnographic,
some other offered by European commercial compa-
nies as advertisement, family portraits, celebrities in
visit, and travel and exploration albums on Egypt, Italy,
Persia, France, Madagascar. Pedro II, who didn’t leave
his country until 1871, when he was 45, largely took
knowledge of the world through the photographic prism.
Moreover, by commissioning adventurous photogra-
phers and businessmen installed in his country, he gave
to Brazilian photography an unexpected importance.
Those princely collections are certainly the most im-
portant ones of that period, containing various subjects.
The princely fi gure as aesthete and art protector invited
the others to follow this model. Aristocrats, rich amateurs
but also architects and artists bought photographs for
aesthetic and documentary interest. In France, Duke of
Aumale, Dollfus-Ausset (industrialist), Ignace Chauffour
and Alfred Bruyas can be taken as example to show the di-
versity, the taste and the destination of their collections.
In 1886, Henri d’Orléans, duke of Aumale (1822–
1897), fi fth son of king Louis-Philippe, gave the Chan-
tilly castle and collections he had gathered therein to
the France Institute. Known for his very important
paintings collection (Raphaël, Poussin, Watteau, Ingres,
Delacroix...) and painted manuscripts dating back to
the middle age, the castle also preserves an important
collection of old photographs. This collection counts
almost 1.400 photographs from the second part of the
19th Century. Firstly, photography was a means for
the prince, who lived exiled in Britain from 1848 to
1871, then from 1886 to 1889, to see places he had
known or lived during his youth and where he couldn’t
go anymore. For instance, the Louvre and Tuileries,
photographed by Baldus and Bisson brothers, and more
generally, Napoleon III Paris then in transformation.
His collection also contains family portraits, views of
his castle and reportage on the Crimean War. But the
other purchases can only be explained by a real taste of
the prince for the new art that photography constituted.
The collection is composed of all the photographic
movements from 1855 to 1897, except Pictorialism. For
instance, he bought views of Great Eastern by Howlett,
fi ve marines by Le Gray, some views of Switzerland by
Adolphe Braun, purchases which can be explained like
“love at fi rst sight” buys. In 2001, an exhibition and a
catalogue of this photographic collection had been set
up in the Chantilly castle.
Daniel Dollfus-Ausset (Paris 1797–Riedisheim 1870)
is an important collector fi gure, really out of common. A
great textile industrialist in Mulhouse (Alsace, France),
passionate by mountain, he ordered an important series
of daguerreotypes of high mountain in 1849 and 1850.
Looking for bigger images, he ordered a new series to
the Bisson brothers. After the Bisson success with a big
panorama of the Aar glacier, Dollfus-Ausset became
their patron in 1855. But from that time on, he had al-
ready gathered an important photographic collection. In
December 1856, the Society of Art friends of Strasbourg
organized an exhibition of more than 250 photographs
from the private collection of the Mulhousian industrial-
ist. This contained lots of Bisson prints, made in Paris,
landscapes and views of architecture from Heidelberg,
Strasbourg and Basel. Other important photographs
were presented: a marine of Gustave Le Gray, two
countryside views and a portrait of the empress Eugenia
by count Olympe Aguado, a view of Rome by Ferrier,
fl owers of Adolphe Braun, views of Pyrenees by count
de Vigier, an effect of water and sky by Alphonse Giroux,
a fountain by Edouard Baldus and an incunabulum of
photography, the Pencil of Nature of Fox Talbot of 1844,
publication illustrated by original calotypes. Unfortu-
nately, it doesn’t exist anymore.
A contemporary and without doubts a friend of his,
Ignace Chauffour, an intellectual, member of Scientifi c
society, member of the Martin Schongauer Society in
Alsace, is one of the earliest photographs collectors.
His curiosity for the new medium was precocious: he
began to buy prints from the “second birth of photog-
raphy,” the expand of paper process. Ignace Chauffour
collection counted almost 550 prints and proposed
signifi cant examples, beginning with a series of nine
photographs by Henri Le Secq, a rare print on salt pa-
per of François Renard (view of Notre-Dame of Paris),
and views of Fortuné Joseph Petiot-Groffi er, Edouard
Baldus, Olympe Aguado, Bisson brothers. Ignoring
the development of the Dollfus-Ausset collection after
1856, one can’t maintain the comparison with the one
of Chauffour, which continued with Adolphe Braun and
James Anderson (ten views of Italian architecture.) But
the most important part of Ignace Chauffour collection