Collection Online as of October 31, 2020
Notre-Dame, Paris
Édouard Baldus
(French, 1813-1889)
Salted paper print from wet collodion negative
Image: 29.5 x 44.7 cm (11 5/8 x 17 5/8 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund 1991.35
Location
not on view
Description
This extraordinary photograph clearly demonstrates Baldus’s genius both as an architectural photographer and as a printer. Centrally placed and filling the entire composition, this great architectural monument is clearly depicted, seemingly removed from time, as there are no interfering elements such as figures or clouds to distract from the building’s majesty. This large, ambitious view captures, almost without rival, the physical and symbolic essence of Notre-Dame. Instead of the traditional frontal view, Baldus photographed the building at an oblique angle in order to articulate the volume of the structure, and he was most conscious of the negative space created by the cathedral’s contour against the unmodulated sky. His salt prints of architectural views, with their breathtaking warm gray tones, are among the most striking achievements of 19th-century photography.
Édouard Baldus
Édouard Baldus French, b. Prussia, 1813 - 1889
The large and regal prints made by Édouard-Denis Baldus are widely agreed to be among the finest photographic images ever produced. After serving as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, Baldus left his native country for France during the 1830s to become a painter. He exhibited his paintings of religious subjects, portraits, and genre scenes in the Paris Salons from 1841 - 51 and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1849, the same year his interests turned to photography.
Combining his training in painting with an inquisitive, inventive technical expertise, Baldus produced a body of work of exceptional quality and interest. His subjects included architecture, landscape, and engineering feats. In 1851 the Commission des monuments historiques selected him for the Missions héliographique—a government project that sponsored the photographing of endangered classical and medieval architecture in France. For this important series Baldus produced views of Burgundy, Provence, and the Dauphiné, and the following year he completed a commission for the Ministry of the Interior. In 1855 he began his photography of railroads, some of his most distinctive work. A copy of his album recording the line between Paris and Boulogne was presented to Queen Victoria. He also documented the flooding of the Rhone, as well as construction of the new Louvre and other Paris views.
A founding member of the Société héliographique and a member of the Société française de photographie (1857), Baldus exhibited his photographs widely in London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Paris and won numerous medals of award. A master printer, he produced combination prints in the early 1850s, frequently retouching his images with pencil and ink. His best work appears most often in specially assembled albums -- such as Les principaux Monuments de la France reproduits en héliogravure par E. Baldus, published in 1875 from plates drawn from earlier negatives. Today, his work continues to be much sought after and to set a standard by which other photographers are judged. T.W.F.