EDOUARD-DENIS BALDUS | VUE DE L'ISLE ADAM

Collection of Marie-Thérèse and André Jammes, Paris

Sotheby's Paris, Collection Marie-Thérèse et André Jammes, 21 March 2002, Sale 2003, Lot 102

cf. Malcolm Daniel, The Photographs of Êdouard Baldus (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994), pp. 147-64

In August 1855, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made a state visit to France, traveling between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Paris by way of the Chemin de Fer du Nord railway. Baron James de Rothschild, president of the railroad company, marked the occasion by commissioning Edouard Baldus to photograph landmarks and landscapes along this route. The present image was one of 50 photographs presented to the Queen in a lavish album, which now resides in the Royal Library at Windsor. At least one additional 'prestige' album likely was made for Napoleon III. Rothschild commissioned twenty-five copies of Chemins de Fer du Nord, Ligne de Paris a Boulogne, Album de Vues Photographiques, which were similar in composition and ordering but not identical to the Queen's album. A copy is now in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The present photograph – on a large paper mount – undoubtedly came from one of the rare ‘prestige’ albums or one of the Chemins de Fer du Nord albums. 

In addition to the above mentioned albums, prints of this image are held by the George Eastman House, Rochester; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Quebec; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. 

When this photograph was originally sold at auction in 2002, it was attributed to Auguste Mestral, a fellow member of the Société Héliographique, the first photographic society in France. Both Mestral and Baldus contributed to the 1851 Mission Héliographique, but Mestral’s subsequent photographic exploits are little known.