[Gardens of the Chàteau de Saint-Cloud]

Louis-Rémy Robert

ca. 1853 · Salted paper print from paper negative · Photographs

During the hiatus in royal commissions following the Revolution of 1848, Robert, head of the painting and gilding atelier of the Sèvres porcelain works, began making photographs using a newly available medium: the salted paper print from a paper negative. His subjects were colleagues and family members, still lifes, and views of Sèvres and neighboring Saint-Cloud. Because Robert pursued photography as a personal artistic endeavor, not as a profession, his prints are extremely rare. This sunlit view of the château gardens, softly rendered by the paper negative, takes on an especially intimate and handcrafted character by virtue of its unusual support, a photosensitized sheet of untrimmed stationery from the idle and no-longer-royal porcelain works.

Artist

Louis-Rémy Robert

Date

ca. 1853

Medium

Salted paper print from paper negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1995