Édouard Delessert (15 December 1828 – 27 March 1898) was a French painter, archaeologist and photographer.

Biography

Delessert's parents were

Valentine de Laborde Charlotte Marie Valentine Joséphine de Laborde, also known as Valentine Delessert (1 January 1806 – 13 May 1894) was a French socialite and a Passy-Paris salon holder. She is also known as a mistress of French writer Prosper Mérimée, Fren ...

, the

socialite A socialite is a person from a wealthy and (possibly) aristocratic background, who is prominent in high society. A socialite generally spends a significant amount of time attending various fashionable social gatherings, instead of having traditio ...

granddaughter of French businessman and slave trader

Jean-Joseph de Laborde Jean-Joseph, marquis de Laborde (29 January 1724 – 18 April 1794) was a French businessman, '' fermier général'' and banker to the king, who turned politician. A liberal, he was guillotined in the French Revolution. Biography Laborde was b ...

, and banker

Gabriel Delessert In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek language, Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin language, Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic language, Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, transli ...

. His mother would go on to be a mistress with several men. Édouard Delessert was at the same time a painter, archaeologist and especially a pioneer of photography using the

calotype Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low co ...

. He began by studying law before accompanying, in 1850, Félicien de Saulcy on his trip to the

Dead Sea The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...

and

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

, then visiting Turkey, Greece, Sardinia and Italy. Contributor to the '' Revue de Paris'' from 1851 to 1858, founder of the critical magazine ''L'Athenaeum'', he embarked on business where he swallowed up a large part of his fortune, before wasting the rest. Prosper Mérimée, who had been his mother's lover, was his mentor in literature and developed, in the letters he addressed to her, some of his aesthetic principles. With the founding of the National Bank of Haiti, Delessert served on the board of directors, receiving funds related to the Haiti indemnity. He died on March 27, 1898, without descendants and was buried in Paris in the

Passy cemetery Passy Cemetery (french: Cimetière de Passy) is a small cemetery in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. History The current cemetery replaced the old cemetery (''l'ancien cimetière communal de Passy'', located on Rue Lekain), ...

, in the tomb of the Delessert family.

References

External links

* 1828 births 1898 deaths 19th-century French photographers 19th-century French painters French male painters French archaeologists Scientists from Paris Pioneers of photography 19th-century French male artists {{France-photographer-stub