Eugène Cuvelier 1837-1900

William L. Schaeffer/Photographs, Connecticut

Acquired by Margaret W. Weston from the above, 1989

Another print of this image:

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 284, and p. 86

When Cuvelier photographed in Fontainebleau in the 1860s, the forest was already crisscrossed with carriage paths, trails, and roads, most with names that bore local significance.  The Route du Bodmer was named for the Swiss-French artist Karl Bodmer (1809 - 1893), who, in the early 1830s, had accompanied Prince Maximilien zu Wied-neuwied on his expedition through the North American frontier.  Bodmer's aquatints of Native Americans made on the expedition were published in Travels in the Interior of North America in 1839.  Bodmer settled in the village of Barbizon, on the western edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, in 1849.  The celebrated Bodmer Oak, in the Bas-Bréau section of the forest, was also named for him.

Ulrike Gauss, in her catalogue raisonné of Eugène Cuvelier's work, accounts for two salt prints of this image, but not the albumen print offered here.