La photographie au Salon de 1859

8vo (186x120 mm.). [4], III, [1 blank], 88, 7, [1 blank] pp. Ornamental tail-pieces. With a catalogue of the editor's printed book at the end of the pamphlet. Editor's printed wrappers (spine slightly worn, tear on the inferior margin of the back cover restored). Occasionally foxed, but a good, uncut copy.

Rare first and only edition of this work which provides the most accurate picture of the state of photography in 1859, a date on which, as Louis Figuier notes in the introduction, it “was accepted for the first time as being on a par with the Fine Arts Exhibition, if not as part of it”. This is a highly valuable, and well known, narrative account of photography (a few of the photographers discussed include Roger Fenton, Davanne, Camille Silvy, Le Gray, Paul Périer, Paul Gaillard, Count Aguado, Paul Delondre, Ad. Braun, Bisson, etc). The contents on the essay are as follows: Introduction; Portraits et monuments; Reproduction d'oeuvres d'art et objets d'histoire naturelle and Les innovations photographiques (gravure photographique; tirage des positifs; épreuves au charbon; photochromie; émaux photographiques, damasquinure; photographies microscopiques; photographies nocturnes; amplification ou réduction par le photographie des cartes geographiques and épreuves stéréoscopiques).
Louis Figuier was a French scientist and writer. Figuier became Doctor of Medicine (1841), agrégé of pharmacology, chemistry (1844–1853) and physics and gained his PhD in 1850. Figuier was appointed professor at the École de Pharmacie of Paris after leaving Montpellier. He edited and published a yearbook - L'Année scientifique et industrielle (or Exposé annuel des travaux) - from 1857 to 1894 in which he compiled an inventory of the scientific discoveries of the year (it was continued after his death until 1914). He was the author of numerous other successful works: Les Grandes inventions anciennes et modernes (1861), Le Savant du foyer (1862), La Terre avant le déluge (1863) illustrated by Édouard Riou, La Terre et les mers (1864), Les Merveilles de la science (1867–1891). Also, he wrote extensively on the subject of photography, including it in his study on the marvels of nineteenth-century science.

Italian Union Catalogue, ART\0002206; Roosens/Salu, 4046; Epstean Collection, 158.

[15844]