Charles Nègre (; 9 May 1820 – 16 January 1880) was a pioneering photographer, born in

Grasse Grasse (; Provençal dialect, Provençal in classical norm or in Mistralian norm ; traditional ) is the only Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur Re ...

, France. He studied under the painters

Paul Delaroche Hippolyte-Paul Delaroche (; Paris, 17 July 1797 – Paris, 4 November 1856) was a French painter who achieved his greater successes painting historical scenes. He became famous in Europe for his melodramatic depictions that often portrayed subje ...

Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( ; ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

and Drolling before establishing his own studio at 21 Quai Bourbon on the

Île Saint-Louis Île Saint-Louis (), in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the rest of Paris by fo ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. Delaroche encouraged the use of photography as research for painting; Nègre started with the

daguerreotype Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photography, photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process. Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwid ...

process before moving on to

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 ...

s. His "Chimney-Sweeps Walking", an

albumen print Egg white is the clear liquid (also called the albumen or the glair/glaire) contained within an egg. In chickens, it is formed from the layers of secretions of the anterior section of the hen's oviduct during the passage of the egg. It forms aro ...

taken on the Quai Bourbon in 1851, may have been a staged study for a painting, but is nevertheless considered important to photographic history for its being an early instance of an interest in capturing movement and freezing it forever in one moment.Ian Jeffrey. ''The Photography Book'', 2nd ed., London: Phaidon, 2000. (p. 343) Having been passed over for the

Missions Héliographiques Missions Héliographiques was a 19th-century project to photograph landmarks and monuments around France so that they could be restored. The project was established by Prosper Mérimée, France's Inspector General of Historical Monuments and auth ...

which commissioned many of his peers, Nègre independently embarked on his own remarkably extensive study of the Midi region. The interesting shapes in his 1852 photograph of buildings in Grasse have caused it to be seen as a precursor to art photography. In 1859, he was commissioned by Empress Eugénie to photograph the newly established Imperial Asylum in the Bois de Vincennes, a hospital for disabled workingmen."The Kitchens of the Imperial Asylum"
Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 31, 2011. He used both albumen and

salt print The salt print was the dominant paper-based photographic process for producing positive prints (from negatives) from 1839 until approximately 1860. The salted paper technique was created in the mid-1830s by English scientist and inventor He ...

, and was known also as a skilled printer of photographs, using a

gravure Rotogravure (or gravure for short) is a type of intaglio printing process, which involves engraving the image onto an image carrier. In gravure printing, the image is engraved onto a cylinder because, like offset printing and flexography, it u ...

method of his own development. A plan commissioned by

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...

to print photographs of sculpture never came to fruition, and in 1861 Nègre retired to

Nice Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionGustave Le Gray * Henri Le Secq

References

Sources

"The Barrel Organ Player With Two Children Listening"

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

website, unsigned.

External links

* __notoc__ {{DEFAULTSORT:Negre, Charles 19th-century French photographers 1820 births 1880 deaths People from Grasse