Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot, October 1996 - January 1997 

Malcolm Daniel, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), pp. 8-9 (this print)

Another print of this image:

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 345, and p. 113

This photograph was made in the Bas-Bréau section of Fontainebleau, in the forest's northwest corner.  Bas-Bréau comprised an especially impressive old-growth forest and was home to many of the area's most famous oak trees.  The Bodmer Oak, referenced in this photograph's title (although not pictured in it), was named for the Swiss-French artist Karl Bodmer, who had settled in Barbizon in 1849, and lived there until his death in 1893.  Bodmer painted the eponymous oak, but the tree is perhaps most memorably depicted by Monet in his 1865 painting of it, now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It is characteristic of Cuvelier's approach to photographing the forest that he would concentrate not on the famous and charismatic Bodmer Oak, which would have been an obligatory stop on a tourist's itinerary, but on the far humbler beech tree with its gracious canopy of shimmering leaves.  The beech's thick trunk, incised with carvings, testifies to the tree's longevity and hardiness.  Typically, Cuvelier was less concerned with documenting the identified landmarks within Fontainebleau forest, than with searching for compelling photographic subject matter wherever he could find it. 

Gauss does not account for this salt print, but lists an albumen print of the image.