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GOUPIL & CIE (active 1850–1884)
French art publishers and art dealers
Henry Rittner (1802–1840), a young German immigrant
with experience in the London print trade, opened a print
establishment in Paris in 1827. This was the beginning
of what was to become the most powerful art-publish-
ing company of the nineteenth century. Two years later,
Rittner formed a partnership with Adolphe Goupil
(1806–1893), second son of a pharmacist and, through
his mother, a collateral descendant of the rococo painter,
François-Hubert Drouais. The Maison Goupil—Rittner
& Goupil and its successors—remained in business for
almost a century, until the ultimate successor, Manzi,
Joyant & Cie, ceased active operation in 1917. In 1921,
a print dealer from Bordeaux, Vincent Imberti, acquired
all of the remaining stock: hundreds of thousands of
prints, photographs, engraved copper plates, glass-plate
negatives, illustrated books, and archival documents
(although in this last category there were many gaps). In
1987 and 1990, Guy and Gabrielle Imberti ceded what
remained from this ensemble to the City of Bordeaux,
which placed it in a new museum, the Musée Goupil.
From 1829, Rittner & Goupil published as well as
sold prints from their premises in the Boulevard Mont-
martre and distributed them through correspondents
in Europe and the United States. After Rittner’s death,
Adolphe Goupil admitted two new partners, Théodore
Vibert and Alfred Mainguet. During the 1840s the three
partners built a vertically integrated business with its
own printing facilities and, as of 1846, an art gallery.
After buying original artworks (including copyrights),
the fi rm commissioned every kind of relevant repro-
duction, fi nally selling both the original work (usually
retaining the copyright) and its various reproductions at
a substantial profi t. To expand distribution, they opened
branches abroad, beginning with New York in 1848,
then London, Berlin, The Hague, and Brussels. By the
1860’s, a multinational empire was in place. Goupil &
Cie was at the very heart of an informal, international
network of art dealers and publishers, all of whom dis-
tributed one another’s merchandise—paintings, prints
and photographs. Apart from Goupil, this network,
constituent parts of which remain in existence today,
included Colnaghi, Agnew, and Gambart in England,
Sachsé in Berlin, Van Gogh in The Hague, and Knoedler
in New York. Michael Knoedler had been Goupil’s New
York manager, arriving in the city in 1852, and although
he purchased the branch for his own account in 1857,
his house remained intimately allied with the parent fi rm
until the end of the century.
Because they made it possible to generate multiple
prints from a single negative, William Henry Fox Tal-
bot’s discoveries were highly applicable to publishing.
The Maison Goupil fi rst showed interest in photography
when they co-published the groundbreaking Excur-
sions daguerriennes, completed 1842. In May 1853,
the company released the fi rst installments of major
photographic publication: Félix Teynard’s Voyage en
Égypte et en Nubie (160 plates in total), Benjamin Deles-
sert’s Notice sur la vie de Marc-Antoine Raimondi (67
photographs mounted on 59 plates in total), and, as a
single plate, Gustave Le Gray’s Portrait of Napoléon III.
Though not attributed in Goupil’s catalogue, the seriesGOUPIL & CIE
Teynard, Félix. Abu Simbel.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The
Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation
Gift, 2005 (2005.100.60) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.