Vue de face du balcon avant l'entière construction de la place
Medium
Albumen silver print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 9 3/8 × 12 13/16 in. (23.8 × 32.5 cm) Sheet: 13 3/8 × 18 1/8 in. (34 × 46 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.372.19
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the mid-19th century with *Vue de face du balcon avant l'entière construction de la place* (Front View of the Balcony before the Complete Construction of the Square), a captivating albumen silver print by French photographer Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut, created between 1854 and 1856. This image captures a poised architectural moment: the elegant facade of a balcony overlooking an urban scene, poised on the cusp of transformation as a nearby public square nears completion. Dubois de Nehaut, active in early photography, specialized in documenting buildings, streets, and cities, offering visitors a window into France's evolving urban landscape during the Second Empire era of rapid modernization. The medium—an albumen silver print from a paper negative—marks a pinnacle of 1850s photographic innovation. Coated with egg whites for exceptional clarity and tonal depth, these prints produced richly detailed images on a grand scale (here, nearly 10 by 13 inches). This calotype-derived process allowed for multiple positives from a single negative, making photography a practical tool for architectural record-keeping amid Haussmann-style renovations in Paris and beyond. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, this work highlights photography's role a historical witness, preserving fleeting stages of city-building before grand boulevards and plazas redefined daily life. Imagine the bustle just out of frame—carriages, workers, and dreamers—frozen in silver for eternity.
About the Artist
Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut · 1799–1872
Louis-Pierre-Théophile Dubois de Nehaut (1799–1872) was a French artist and early enthusiast of photography whose career bridged the worlds of traditional draughtsmanship and the new mechanical image-making technologies that transformed visual culture in the nineteenth century. Trained in the conventions of French academic art, he possessed the skills of a practiced draughtsman before turning his ...