381
Joseph became director of the municipal gasworks. Pre-
sumably educated locally at Jesuit college, Armand Dan-
doy showed early artistic inclinations, and he attended
the Atelier Saint-Luc, an academy which spearheaded the
Realist movement in Brussels. Here he joined his child-
hood friend, Félicien Rops (1833–1898), whose preco-
cious talents were already marking him out as a artist and
engraver of promise. Their friendship would be lifelong,
attested by an extensive correspondence and underpinned
by a shared passion for rowing, especially on the river
Meuse which fl ows through Namur province.
Armand Dandoy opened his fi rst photography studio
in partnership with his elder brother Héliodore (1831–
1909) at Rue de Gravière 14, Namur, on 1 July 1856
under the denomination Dandoy frères [Dandoy broth-
ers]. Armand alone exhibited portraiture and “instanta-
neous” studies of horses at the Brussels photography
exhibition of 1856, and again at the Société française de
Photographie in 1857. The studio transferred to Rue de
Fer 82 in about 1858, from which address the Dandoy
brothers issued a set of stereo views Bords de la Meuse
[Banks of the Meuse]. Héliodore opened a branch
studio in Spa, Place Royale 454, in May 1861, which
traded as Dandoy frères until its closure in April 1866,
and for which Rops produced an advertising poster in
lithography. From 1862, Armand continued running the
Namur studio under his own name.
Jeanne Dandoy acquired a plot of land in 1865 on the
site of recently dismantled fortifi cations, on which she
had a customised portrait studio constructed. Title of the
premises at Rue de la Station 6, renamed Rue Mathieu,
was transferred to her son Armand, who opened the
studio on 10 September 1866. He operated it continu-
ously until his death thirty-two years later, secure in
his reputation as portrait photographer of choice to the
regional bourgeoisie.
Armand Dandoy married Charlotte De Coster
(1831–1912), known as Caroline, on 24 October 1867.
She was the sister of Charles De Coster (1827–1879),
prominent man of letters and member of the same
loose-knit group of Namur artists as Dandoy and Rops.
Dandoy immortalised the “colony” in a group portrait,
taken on a river excursion at Anseremme, in the Meuse
valley, in 1875, in one variant of which the photographer
himself appears to one side.
Affable and clubbable, Armand Dandoy served on
the municipal fi ne-arts committee and the commission
des fêtes [festival committee]. A long-standing mem-
ber of the Cercle artistique et littéraire, he exhibited
landscapes at the club’s triennial salons from 1868 to
the year of his death. A painting companion of Rops,’
Dandoy’s artistic reputation was high enough for him to
be a serious though ultimately unsuccessful candidate
for the post of professor of painting at the local Academy
on two occasions in the 1880s.
What raises Armand Dandoy above all this provin-
cial worthiness and places him in the forefront of early
Belgian photographers is the inventory of the historic
landscapes, monuments and cultural artefacts in the
Namur province which he realised over a ten year pe-
riod. In the tradition of the “missions” undertaken by
Guillaume Claine and Edmond Fierlants in previous
decades to record Belgium’s architectural and artistic
heritage, the idea ironically was the brain-child of an-
other prominent photographer. Joseph Maes addressed
a letter to the governor of Namur province on 1 May
1868, setting out his proposal for such a photographic
campaign, citing the advantages for promoting tourism
in the region and underlining the need for a visual inven-
tory of monuments, many of which were under threat
from redevelopment or the ravages of time. Dandoy
made a counter-offer in a letter transmitted and overtly
supported by the interior minister. After much debate
by the provincial council, and sustained lobbying by
Dandoy, which included undercutting Maes’ estimate by
a half, the authorities decided in Dandoy’s favour. The
Comité provincial des Monuments drew up an initial list
of seventy-one views in October 1868, and the following
July Dandoy agreed to take 100 full-plate negatives and
deliver three prints of each, in fascicles of ten prints, at
a price of 200 francs per fascicle.
The fi rst part of La Province de Namur Monumentale
& Pittoresque [The Province of Namur Monumental
and Picturesque] was completed in October 1869 but
the project would extend through the next decade, due
as much to the photographer’s lackadaisical character,
as to his perfectionist approach in matters of view-tak-
ing and print-making. View-taking required many fi eld
campaigns with a photographic wagon (visible in some
of the images) into idyllic but inaccessible countryside,
while the resulting richly toned albumen prints were
mounted on heavy litho-tinted bristol board, individu-
ally captioned and carrying the statement “Publié par
l’Auteur sous le Patronage de la Province et de l’Etat”
[Published by the Author with the Patronage of the
Province and the State]. Dandoy did not adhere strictly
to the list of monuments which the provincial commit-
tee had proposed, but in the end produced 140 plates.
Of these 110 are recorded as having been issued, in
eleven fascicles of ten plates, supplied to the authorities
and commercialised in parallel by the photographer in
partnership with the Brussels lithographers Simonau
and Toovey. The fi rst ten were issued between 1872 and
1875, and a fi nal part appeared in 1879. Selections were
exhibited widely and to critical acclaim in Belgium and
internationally, fi rstly at the international exhibition in
London in 1871 and most notably at the universal ex-
hibition in Paris in 1878, where Dandoy was awarded
a bronze medal.
Dandoy’s most accomplished achievement technically