Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

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

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Eugène Cuvelier oder Die Legende vom Wald, March - May 1997

While Cuvelier is known to have favored paper negatives in his work, a close examination of this print suggests that it may have been made from a glass plate negative.  The high level of visible detail, particularly in the reeds of the foreground, would likely have been unattainable with a paper negative, which always imparted some of its fibrous texture to the finished print.  The sky area, where the texture of the paper negative is usually most apparent, is surprisingly clear in the print offered here.

By the 1860s, when Cuvelier did the bulk of his work, the paper negative was somewhat antiquated, most photographers having by then moved on to using collodion-coated glass plate negatives.  While Cuvelier continued to work with paper negatives, he would have been more than familiar with the use of glass plates, having worked with Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, and other painters in making cliché-verre images.  The present image bears a striking resemblance to a cliché-verre print by Daubigny, possibly made with Cuvelier's assistance in 1862, entitled 'The Clump of Alders' (Melot, Graphic Art of the Pre-Impressionists, D. 145).  Daubigny's placement of the slim, diagonally slanting tree trunks against the background of a reed-bordered body of water, with the far shore distant in the background, is compositionally quite close to Cuvelier's photograph, which was made roughly during the same period.    

Gauss lists only one print of this image: the salt print offered here.