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that of the king’s stables in Place du Carrousel, 1852,
seem to foreshadow Baron Haussmann’s renovations of
the city in the 1860s when demolitions and construction
sites would appear throughout the city. Baron Hauss-
mann was clearing many of Paris’s old streets for his
renovation of Paris into wide, modern boulevards. Le
Secq’s intimate knowledge of and love for his native
city inspired his excursions with camera and tripod.
He was particularly tied to his old neighborhood, the
Saint Antoine section, which was being razed for the
extension of the rue de Rivoli. Le Secq also captured
the old Pont Neuf, Hôtel Dieu, as well as changes taking
place around Hôtel de Ville, and assembled them into
albums. In 1853 six of Le Secq’s negatives, including
those of Chartres, Strasbourg, and Beauvais, were used
by print publishers such as Lerebours and Lemercier to
make lithographs.
From 1851, Le Secq’s photographs were included
in exhibitions, including the Universal Expositions in
London in 1851 and 1855, where he was acknowledged
as one of France’s greatest artist-photographers, and
received a silver medal for work shown in Amsterdam
in 1855. In 1856, he made several photographic still
lifes, composed of objects, fruit, and vegetables. By this
time, Le Secq’s photographic career was drawing to a
close although as the paper negative went out of use and
the collodion on glass negative took its place. However,
Le Secq did reprint many of his waxed paper negatives.
For the rest of his life, Le Secq returned to painting and
regularly exhibited at the Salon and formed his own art
collection of contemporary printmakers and painters
such as Whistler, and Millet, as well as artists Jongkind
and Daubigny and major impressionists.
After the death of his wife and only daughter in 1862,
he sold a large group of his own painting and drawing
collections and began collecting forged iron, particu-
larly ancient keys, locks, and signs. In 1863 Le Secq
published a pamphlet on the reform of the Salon entitled
Les Artistes, les Expositions, le Jury, edited by A. Cadart
and F. Chevalier. The following year he wrote a second
pamphlet for the defense of artists entitled Aux artistes et
aux amateurs des Beaux-Arts. In 1882, Le Secq died in
Paris, leaving his art and iron collections to his sons.
Karen Reed Hellman
Biography
Henri Le Secq was born in Paris on 18 August 1818.
He began his artistic studies with the sculptor James
Pradier in 1835. In 1840, he entered the studio of Paul
Delaroche where he met fellow painter Charles Nègre.
In 1848, with the instruction of artist/photographer
Gustave Le Gray (also a student of Delaroche), Le
Secq and Nègre began to experiment with photographic
processes. In 1850, Le Secq and Nègre began using Le
Gray’s waxed paper negative process Even when his
contemporaries often used glass negatives, Le Secq kept
making photographs with paper negatives. Le Secq’s
fi rst use of photography was to make quick preparatory
sketches of posed fi gures in genre subjects for paint-
ings but soon began photographing architecture. By the
time Le Secq, along with Nègre, Le Gray, and others,
helped to found the Société Héliographique in 1851,
the fi rst photographic society to be established, he was
considered one of the best architectural photographers
in France. In 1851, Le Secq was included in the Mission
Héliographique, arranged by the Commission des Mon-
uments Historiques. Between 1849 and 1853, Le Secq
photographed old monuments, buildings, and churches
in various states of disintegration, which foreshadow
his later photographs of demolitions and architectural
documents made during Baron Haussmann’s renova-
tions of Paris in the early 1860s. By 1852, Le Secq had
also turned to landscape photography and photographed
stone quarries and woods around Montmirail. Le Secq
published two pamphlets on the reform of the Salon. Le
Secq died in Paris in 1882.
See also: Talbot, William Henry Fox; Waxed Paper
Negative Processes; Mission Héliographique; Société
Héliographique Française; and Lemercier, Lerebours
& Bareswill.Further Reading
Buerger, Janet, “Le Secq’s ‘Monuments’ and the Chartres Cathe-
dral Portfolio,” Image, vol. 23, no. 1, June 1980, 1–5.
Jammes, Andre, and Janis, Eugenia Parry. The Art of French
Calotype. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Janis, Eugenia Parry, “The Man on the Tower of Notre-Dame:
New Light on Henri Le Secq,” Image, vol. 19, no. 4 (Dec.
1976), 13–25.
——, Henri Le Secq: photographe de 1850 à 1860: catalogue rai-
sonné de la collection de la Bibliothèque des arts décoratifs,
Paris. Paris: Musée des arts décoratifs; Flammarion, 1986.
McCauley, Anne, “Henri Le Secq, Photographie de 1850 a 1860,”
Afterimage 15 (October 1987), 5–7.
Mondenard, A.d. “Mission heliographique, 1851: l’odyssee des
images,” Connaissance des Arts, no. 590 (January 2002),
60–67.
Rice, Shelley. Parisian Views. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1997.
Sartre, J. “La vision de peintre du photographe Henri Le Secq,”
Connaissance des Arts no. 415 (September 1986), 94–7.LEA, MATTHEW CAREY (1823–1897)
American photographer and author
Matthew Carey Lea, also known, as Carey Lea, son of
scientist Isaac Lea and Frances Carey Lea, was born
in Philadelphia on 18 August 1823. An acknowledged
authority on photochemistry in the late nineteenth
century and a member of the Franklin Institute, Lea