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

Another print of this image:

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 280

The town of Chailly, although outside the environs of the forest of Fontainebleau, was an important way-station for residents and travelers in the area.  Located northeast of Barbizon, and within walking distance, the larger Chailly was the nearest postal center.  Once train service had been established between Paris and Melun in 1849, travelers typically took a coach from Melun to Chailly before embarking to Barbizon or Fontainebleau.   In Claude-François Denecourt's 1859 map of the forest and its surroundings, the paved road between Fontainebleau and Chailly is one of few well-established and linear roads depicted, and cuts through the old-growth forest Bas-Bréau (see Lots 16 and 19).  Aside from the photograph offered here, one other Cuvelier photograph of the road to Chailly is present in this collection as Lot 42. 

As with the better-known Barbizon, Chailly served as a temporary home for artists working in the area.  Théodore Rousseau stayed there in the 1830s, before settling upon the Auberge Ganne (owned by Cuvelier's father-in-law) at Barbizon as his regular lodging in the area.  The young Claude Monet stayed in Chailly in the early 1860s, where he completed a number of important early works, including one that treats the same subject as the Cuvelier photograph offered here, Les pavés de Chailly, forêt de Fontainebleau, painted in 1865, and now in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.  In the late 1840s or early 1850s, Gustave Le Gray also photographed on the road, and his view (illustrated in Janis, The Photography of Gustave Le Gray, pl. 9) shows alternating piles of cobblestones and sand on the left side of the composition, suggesting that the paving of the road was still in progress at that time.

Gauss does not account for the present print in her census, and lists one other salt print and an albumen print of the image.