Lot Essay
Auguste Belloc was a watercolour painter before taking up photography. He made portrait photographs working with both the daguerreotype and calotype processes. By July 1851 he is recorded as a member of the recently formed Société Héliographique and in 1854 was a founder member of the Société Française de Photographie. An active contributor to La Lumière and The Photographic Journal, he also published several treatises on photographic technique including Traité Théorique et Pratique de la Photographie sur Collodion (1854), Les Quatres Branches de la Photographie...des procédés de Daguerre, Talbot, Niepce de Saint -Victor et Archer (1855) and Photographie Rationelle (1862). He exhibited widely and examples of his work were included in The International Exhibition London 1851, Exposition Universelle Paris 1855 (second class medal for portraits), at Amsterdam 1855 (bronze medal), Brussels 1856 (honourable mention) and in the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition of 1857 (portraits).
In 1854 Belloc moved from Boulevard Montmartre to rue de Lancry where he continued to teach while also starting to produce nude studies for painters. At this time he used the salt print process and in 1858 he developed a wax polish for these prints which he claimed was both easy to apply and protected them. Examples of salt print nudes were included in an album dedicated to his friend Humbert de Molard and in an album belonging to his successor, G. Marconi, now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Throughout the 1860s he continued to teach, to publish technical formulae and to manufacture and sell photographic chemicals and equipment. By 1869 Marconi had registered his own name as copyright holder of negatives by Belloc, presumably after the latter's death.
This album offers a rare opportunity to view the comparatively wide range of styles employed by Belloc in his study of the female nude. While some photographs approach an academic simplicity with only minimal drapery, more use the folds and creases of rich fabrics to enhance a sensual eroticism. In several, Belloc uses elaborate props to give either a classical feeling or more often to create a romantic pictorial image of a bather in a leafy glade. Occasionally, the direct gaze of the model produces an image which is more deliberately provocative. Unusually, this album includes one double nude and one group study with three models.
In 1854 Belloc moved from Boulevard Montmartre to rue de Lancry where he continued to teach while also starting to produce nude studies for painters. At this time he used the salt print process and in 1858 he developed a wax polish for these prints which he claimed was both easy to apply and protected them. Examples of salt print nudes were included in an album dedicated to his friend Humbert de Molard and in an album belonging to his successor, G. Marconi, now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale. Throughout the 1860s he continued to teach, to publish technical formulae and to manufacture and sell photographic chemicals and equipment. By 1869 Marconi had registered his own name as copyright holder of negatives by Belloc, presumably after the latter's death.
This album offers a rare opportunity to view the comparatively wide range of styles employed by Belloc in his study of the female nude. While some photographs approach an academic simplicity with only minimal drapery, more use the folds and creases of rich fabrics to enhance a sensual eroticism. In several, Belloc uses elaborate props to give either a classical feeling or more often to create a romantic pictorial image of a bather in a leafy glade. Occasionally, the direct gaze of the model produces an image which is more deliberately provocative. Unusually, this album includes one double nude and one group study with three models.