No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VA… 顯示更多

LANDSCAPE "...ensuite à Paris et n'écoutant que son inclination pour les Beaux-Arts, il prit dans divers ateliers, les leçons des Grands Maîtres Paysagistes de l'époque". Bulletin de la Société Historique et Archéologique de Langres, Volume IV, 1893, pp. 15-21. We know that by 1841 Girault de Prangey had acquired at least one large cumbersome wooden camera capable of holding daguerreotype plates up to 240 x 190 mm. To use this he would need a large, awkward wooden tripod, at least one heavy brass lens, noxious chemicals and various tools and accessories for supporting the plates during the ever-precarious steps of the process. By 1842 when he started travelling away from home in France he seems to have acquired at least one other smaller camera, more lenses and a collection of solid wood boxes carefully designed to store hundreds of shiny daguerreotype plates. We know that for two years he toured historical sites and cities of the Mediterranean and near East, presumably with several large trunks loaded with the personal and professional paraphernalia of an itinerant daguerreotype artist. Girault de Prangey's ambition was to compile a comparative history of architectural styles. It was not to record the topography or photograph the landscape of these distant and exotic countries. There are few real landscapes in this archive, in which architecture dominates above all else, but where they exist, as in these ten examples offered, they punctuate the collection with glowing expanses of water and brilliant blue-tinged skies or startling trees silhouetted against the skyline.

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY

151. Constantinople. Bosphore S.[ud], Skengel Kêni.

細節

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY
151. Constantinople. Bosphore S.[ud], Skengel Kêni.
Daguerreotype. n.d.[1843] Titled and numbered in ink on label on verso.
3¼ x 3¾in. (8.2 x 9.5cm.)

注意事項

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

拍品專文

As with some others in this selection, the landscape here is tied firmly by its maker's title to a major city, a pivotal location between west and east. The image itself escapes these urban boundaries. Possible evidence of the city creeps in here and there, but it is the Bosphorus which literally shines from the centre of the plate, glistening in the distance. The trees create dark symmetrical blocks framing this patch of water, narrowing towards the central tree in the foreground. Its elongated shadow joins others cutting across the grassy slope, suggesting early morning or late evening sun and the quiet stillness associated with the beginning and end of the day's light.