366
September of 1839, in addition to weekly consultations
to daguerreotypists at the Conservatoire des Arts et
Métiers. He also supervised daguerreotype production
at the shop of Alphonse Gustave Giroux, the son of his
art dealer and the fi rst manufacturer of daguerreotype
equipment. In 1840, Daguerre retired to the village of
Bry-sur-Marne. While he continued to work on the
daguerreotype, periodically sending news of improve-
ments to Arago, photography was no longer his affair. He
painted his last diorama for the church of St. Gervais-St.
Protais at Bry in 1842. In 1848, he constructed a natural
grotto in the park at Bry, returning to the source of his
original inspiration, the landscape. He died on 10 July
1851, the same year he was planning another religious
diorama painting, a cavalry, for the church at Perreux,
in the neighboring town of Nogent-sur-Marne.
Stephen C. Pinson
Biography
Louis Daguerre was born 18 November 1787 in Cor-
meilles-en-Parisis, France and attended public school in
Orléans before moving to Paris around 1803. In 1808,
he appears in the offi cial records of the painting studio
of the Opéra, where he held various posts through
1816, when he was named the chief decorator of the
Ambigu-Comique theater. He returned briefl y to the
Opera studio as co-chief painter with Pierre-Luc Ciceri
from 1820–22. Daguerre also exhibited fi ve paintings in
the offi cial Parisian Salon, was among the fi rst French
artists to experiment with lithography, and was the entre-
preneur of the popular spectacle known as the Diorama,
which opened in Paris in 1822. On 14 December 1829,
Daguerre formed a company with Nicéphore Niépce in
order to exploit Niépce’s invention of heliography, and
Daguerre’s improvements to the camera obscura. After
Niépce’s death (5 July 1833), Daguerre signed a new
contract on 9 May 1835 with Niépce’s son, Isidore. The
new contract changed the name of the partnership from
“Niépce-Daguerre” to “Daguerre and Isidore Niépce,” in
light of Daguerre’s recognition of the chemical bases of
the daguerreotype, iodine and mercury. A fi nal contract
was signed on 13 June 1837, naming Daguerre as the
sole inventor of the new process, which was announced
by the politician and scientist, François Arago, on 7
January 1839. Arago formally divulged the process
to a joint meeting of the Académie des Sciences and
Académie des beaux-arts on 19 August 1839, after the
purchase of the process by the French government. In
1840, Daguerre retired to Bry-sur-Marne, where he
painted his last diorama for the church of St. Gervais-St.
Protais in 1842 and died on 10 July 1851.
See also: Daguerreotype; Arago, François Jean
Dominique; Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore; and History:
- 1826–39.
Further Reading
Le Daguerréotype français: un objet photographique, exh. cat.
Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003/The Dawn of
Photography: French Daguerreotypes, 1839–1855, exh. cat.
On CD-ROM. New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2003.
Gernsheim, Alison and Helmut, L.J.M. Daguerre: The History
of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, 2nd rev. ed. New
York: Dover, 1968.
Gunthert, André, “L’Affaire Tournesol,” Etudes photographiques
13 (Juillet 2003): 2–5.
Paris et le daguerréotype, exh. cat. Paris: Paris Musées, 1989.
Pinson, Stephen C., “Daguerre, expérimentateur du visuel,”
Etudes photographiques 13 (Juillet 2003): 2–5.
——, Speculating Daguerre: Art and Enterprise in the Work
of L.J.M. Daguerre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
expected 2007.
Potonniée, Georges, Daguerre, peintre et décorateur. Paris: Paul
Montel, 1935.DAGUERREIAN JOURNAL (1850)
When the fi rst issue of The Daguerrean Journal ap-
peared on November 1st 1850, American photographers
experienced their fi rst specialist journal devoted to the
new art, and the world welcomed the fi rst commercially
produced photographic magazine. It was not, strictly
speaking, the fi rst journal to promote the daguerreo-
type—that goes to John Plumbe’s short-lived publication
The Plumbean in the late 1840s, but in terms of a widely
published and distributed periodical, The Daguerrean
Journal was an undoubted fi rst.
The editor and publisher was Samuel Dwight Hum-
phrey, born in Hartland Connecticut, himself a daguerre-
otypist in New York with several years experience, and
already by that time, co-author with M. Finley of the
1849 manual on the process, A System of Photography
Containing an Explicit Detail of the Whole Process of
Daguerreotype.
The publication’s full title—The Daguerreian Jour-
nal: Devoted to the Daguerreian and Photographic Art.
Also embraces the Sciences, Arts and Literature—made
Humphrey’s intention explicit.
The fi rst issue had, as its frontispiece, a portrait
of Daguerre, and while a year’s subscription of the
twice-monthly publication was set at ‘three dollars in
advance’ single issues could be purchased for twenty-
fi ve cents.
Initial reaction to the journal was highly positive
and, at the end of its fi rst year of publication, Jeremiah
Gurney, in a letter to the editor published in May 1851,
noted that “a journal, therefore, devoted as yours has
been to affording so many valuable hints in the operative
department of the new artist, is a most invaluable aid...
...We have at once in our power the means of union
and advancement. We have a medium through which,
no matter how distant we may be placed, we may inter-