HENRI LE SECQ (1818-82)

A COLLECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY HENRI LE SECQ

Details

HENRI LE SECQ (1818-82)

Amiens, Notre-Dame cathedral: west front, central, right and left portals, 1851-52

Fifteen salt prints from waxed paper negatives, three approx. 8¾ x 7 in., the others approx. 13½ x 10 in. or the reverse, each signed h. Le Secq Amiens, one dated 1851 and twelve dated 1852 in the negatives, one of each size unmounted, the others mounted on thin card, the two smaller mounted prints with more detailed titles in pencil on mounts, probably written by the photographer, numbered in pencil in a later hand on mounts. (15)

Provenance

The photographs in this and the following nine lots are being sold by the descendents of a friend and colleague of the French politician, historian and writer Prosper Merimée, the President of the Mission Héliographique.

Literature

Janis and Sartre, Henri Le Secq Photographe de 1850 à 1860, nos. 202, 203, 205, 206, 208-216, 218 and 219. The catalogue raisonné indicates that the collection of the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs holds only negatives for nos. 208, 209, 210, 213 and 214

Lot Essay

Henri Le Secq was a founder member of the Société Héliographique, which was later to become the Société Française de la Photographie. He was one of the five photographers to be appointed to the government-funded Mission Héliographique formed under the auspices of the Commission des Monuments Historiques to document the country's architectural heritage from 1851. These photographs were probably all taken during Le Secq's first expedition for the Mission which included visits to northeast France as well as the cathedrals of Strasbourg, Amiens, Rheims and Chartres.

Le Secq was an antiquarian and had already started to photograph the medieval cathedral at Amiens in 1850 for his own interest. Later in his life he formed an important collection of medieval and other ironwork, now in a museum specially established in Rouen.

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