[Peasant family resting in front of a thatched roof shed]
Photograph
Unidentified
Maker
Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard
French, 1802–1872
[Peasant family resting in front of a thatched roof shed]
From the album Études Photographiques
1853
Salted paper print
Image: 7 3/16 × 9 1/8 in. (18.2 × 23.2 cm)
Mount: 13 9/16 × 20 3/4 in. (34.4 × 52.7 cm)
Gift of Alden Scott Boyer
1981.1100.0003
Inscriptions Printed in ink on mount recto, BC: ÉTUDES PHOTOGRAPHIQUES. \ 2 SÉRIE. No. 204 \ BLANQUART ÉVRARD, ÉDITEUR. \ IMPRIMERIE PHOTOGRAPHIQUE, Blanquart-Evrard, à Lille.
Inscribed in pencil on mount recto, BC: From Life –
Inscribed in pencil on mount recto, LC: #17 - As Bound - 1851-1855
Inscribed in pencil on mount recto, BC: From Life –
Inscribed in pencil on mount recto, LC: #17 - As Bound - 1851-1855
TextAfter learning the calotype process from William Henry Fox Talbot, Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Évrard and a business partner industrialized Talbot’s patented negative-positive photographic process. They opened the first photographic printing establishment in Lille, France, in 1851 and mass-produced photographs and photographic albums. Blanquart-Évrard published this salted paper print in an album that featured works by various photographers such as Charles Marville and Victor Regnault. To produce a large quantity of prints, the company employed “thirty or forty girls in [the] establishment at Lille, under the superintendence of a lady.” Blanquart-Évrard became famous for capitalizing on the reproducible nature of photographs, and his contemporaries praised the fine prints made by his staff.
