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Lot Essay
The Asile impériale de Vincennes was a sanatorium for injured or convalescent French soldiers, established by Napoleon III. The foundation stone was laid in August 1855 and the first soldiers arrived on 1 September 1857.
Nègre was apparently commissioned to produce a series of photographs, and delivered an album comprising fourteen photographs on eleven mounts to the Duc de Padoue on 20 November 1860. He also exhibited twelve of the images, excluding copies of a drawing and a plan, at the Salon of the Société franaise de photographie in 1861. Prints from each of these negatives are included in this group. Of the other documented photographs from the series it would seem that only one, a portrait of the Mother Superior, is not included in the group offered here. Some of the same images exist in other collections in different formats, untrimmed and larger, suggesting they were possibly enlarged.
The photographs document the buildings of the complex and include the activities of the staff and inmates of the asylum as well as the architecture. It is this rare inclusion of people working and relaxing in these interiors that extends the series well beyond the norm for the period. The technical limitations imposed by a relatively slow lens, and the use of available light only, meant these subjects still had to be carefully posed. The resulting photographs combine an unusually modern documentary approach with the stillness and calm more normally associated with portraits of the 1850s.
Nègre was apparently commissioned to produce a series of photographs, and delivered an album comprising fourteen photographs on eleven mounts to the Duc de Padoue on 20 November 1860. He also exhibited twelve of the images, excluding copies of a drawing and a plan, at the Salon of the Société franaise de photographie in 1861. Prints from each of these negatives are included in this group. Of the other documented photographs from the series it would seem that only one, a portrait of the Mother Superior, is not included in the group offered here. Some of the same images exist in other collections in different formats, untrimmed and larger, suggesting they were possibly enlarged.
The photographs document the buildings of the complex and include the activities of the staff and inmates of the asylum as well as the architecture. It is this rare inclusion of people working and relaxing in these interiors that extends the series well beyond the norm for the period. The technical limitations imposed by a relatively slow lens, and the use of available light only, meant these subjects still had to be carefully posed. The resulting photographs combine an unusually modern documentary approach with the stillness and calm more normally associated with portraits of the 1850s.