Eynard the Photographer (1840-1855)

In a word then, when photography suddenly entered his life, Eynard had already accomplished the better part of his career. He was a man who moved with the times and proved himself endowed with a great curiosity for the sciences and technology. He took an interest in both chemistry[4] and optics, and had both a telescope and a spyglass at his Beaulieu property.[5] He acquired his first daguerreotype camera when he was over sixty-four years old, probably in the late winter of 1839-1840. “Politics so bores me that I only tend to [my] daguerreotypes… Frankly I must admit I’m having fun like a child… When all is said and done, I am terrifically interested in this discovery and I am having fun and it is indeed something fashionable nowadays,” the newly minted daguerreotypist confessed in 1842.[6] His curiosity did not dry up and he was always on the lookout for the latest things. He was the first in Switzerland to produce stereoscopic proofs, starting in September 1852, and in 1855 at the age of eighty he registered a patent that aimed to make it easier to apply the new collodion techniques in photography.[7]

Jean-Gabriel Eynard belonged to that leisure class for which Daguerre intended his process from the outset.[8] Among the rare private photographers whose work has come down to us, we might mention Joseph Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892), who produced a considerable number of views of buildings and landscapes, 451 plates having been found to date;[9] or Baron Jean-Baptiste-Louis Gros (1793-1870), who left us very beautiful proofs of the Acropolis in Athens and the interior of his residence in Paris. Adolphe Humbert de Molard[10] (1800-1874) likewise practiced daguerreotype photography before devoting himself to another technique, the calotype. His images, like Eynard’s, feature his family circle in situations taken from daily life. As for Eugène Le Bœuf[11] (1792-1879), the scion of a wealthy family that was well acquainted with painting and music circles in Paris, it was the optician Charles Chevalier (1804-1859) who introduced him to the daguerreotype. These men of the world had in common a broad artistic background which they put in the service of photography. Their works stand apart from those of the professional studios, which were opening left and right during this period and whose output often proved more ordinary.

Sometime around 1855 Eynard ceased practicing photography,[12] leaving behind hundreds of daguerreotypes. To date, 438 works have been located, to which we must add some thirty pieces that have not yet been found although a reference in writing or a reproduction attests to their existence once. Their number, moreover, must have been far greater because we know that at certain periods Eynard would work the entire morning and that he spent a great deal of time doing photography.[13] Such a body of work has almost no equivalent other than the Girault de Prangey collection. This figure, however, is modest by comparison with the collections of the professional studios like Mayer et Pierson’s. The two men had already accumulated 11,350 negatives and photographs when they formed a partnership in January 1855.[14] On the other hand, this didn’t stop Eynard from ending up as the most prolific practitioner of the nascent medium of photography in Switzerland.

Critical reception of Jean-Gabriel Eynard’s body of work in photography

In 1839, when photography was being invented, Jean-Gabriel Eynard was a prominent figure. Financier, art patron and diplomat, he was an integral part of polite society, with its round of events and entertainments, in Geneva and Paris. This standing no doubt paved the way for the public recognition he was to enjoy very early on as a daguerreotypist, even in France, where practitioners were not lacking. Already in 1842 he found himself invited to Neuilly, to the King of France’s side, Louis Philippe I. In the daily notes he kept,[15] Eynard records that his “reputation as a fine daguerreotyper” had reached the ears of the monarch, pointing out that “the Queen, the King, and the princesses have endlessly spoken to [him] about [his] daguerreotypes.” On 18 June 1842, he took five portraits of the noble family. Louis Philippe I observed the operations that gradually revealed the images. He conjured up the mystery surrounding the new process in these terms, “Let’s go and see Mr. Eynard do his cooking.”[16]

Eynard had already been interested in photography for over two years. The earliest traces of his activity in the medium go back to late winter, 1839-1840. In a letter dated 7 March 1840 and sent from Rome to his brother Jacques, he writes, “I am spending much time on Daguerreotyp [sic], we’ve sent you a view & the portrait of the little ones; now I’m taking the monuments of Rome, it is a Lottery & often one does not suceed [sic], although I hope to bring you some 20 fine proofs; we shall have fun in Beaulieu taking views & since you are handier & more patient than I, youll [sic] do better.”[17] In succeeding letters addressed to his brother, Eynard mentions daguerreotypes of several Roman monuments that he sent to his friend Delessert. Geneva discovered his work very early on. He presented it to the Société pour l’avancement des Arts (Society for the Advancement of the Arts) in August of 1840, “[The] Industry and Commerce Class could not remain foreign to the brilliant discovery of M. Daguerre. It was shown a most complete apparatus, built by the inventor and belonging to M. De la Rive, as well as drawings made with the assistance of this apparatus. It likewise examined views taken in Rome by M. Eynard-Lullin; several had a particular tint.”[18]

The recognition of his peers

The recognition Eynard enjoyed among the pioneers of photography makes clear that he did not owe his reputation solely to the characteristics of his fame and public persona. Antoine Claudet, a forerunner in the art of taking daguerreotypes who opened a studio above the Adelaide Gallery in London in 1841, refers to Eynard by name several times in his publications, notably with respect to technical skill. He says he was impressed by his equipment and his mercury “boilers.”[19] He would later describe in the periodical La Lumière the method Eynard used starting in 1843 to obtain without fail “the most favorable temperature for fixing the mercurial vapors… it is that means of the boiler that I have successfully employed for several years and which I saw for the first time in 1843, utilized by M. Eynard of Geneva.”[20]

The Parisian optician and maker of daguerreotype equipment Noël-Marie-Paymal Lerebours was an early author of books on the new technique. He noted the quality of Eynard’s plates, which he praised in his 1843 treatise on photography, “Among the finest proofs that we have ever seen, we would mention those by a distinguished amateur, M. Eynard.”[21] The judgment is all the more remarkable in that it comes from a renowned professional, “We saw, a few days ago, in M. Eynard’s hands, the finest group on a large-scale plate that has ever been produced. Nature footed the bill of the background, it was shrubs and, mixed in among them, several fir trees; one of the figures was dressed entirely in black, and a lady had a white hat. Well, not only was nothing burned or solarized, but everything came out just right.”[22]

Eynard is named on the list of the “jewels in the crown of the Master [Daguerre]” that Jean-Pierre Thierry drew up in his treatise on daguerreotype photography published by Lerebours and Secrétan in 1847. This studio portraitist, active initially in Lyon before working in Paris at Mayer and Pierson’s studio in the 1850s, placed Eynard among the best specialists of the daguerreotype “for the perfection of his proofs.”[23] Eynard seems to have well and truly enjoyed a dual recognition by his peers for the aesthetic qualities of his plates and for his technical expertise, which allowed him to present his innovations to the Société française de photographie in 1856.[24]

Purgatory and the rediscovery of Eynard’s work

While Eynard’s reputation as a daguerreotypist was solidly established during his lifetime, notably in France and Geneva, his fame quickly waned after his death. Before the photographer-collector and historian of photography Michel Auer rediscovered Eynard’s daguerreotypes in 1962, his activity as a practitioner of the budding medium had been rarely mentioned. That his plates had remained in the hands of different branches of his family after his death did not help their standing and visibility. In Geneva, however, he had not been completely forgotten. Hélène Diodati-Le Fort showed at least fifty-six daguerreotypes by her great-grandfather Jean-Gabriel Eynard in the history section of the Exposition nationale suisse de photographie (the Swiss National Photography Exhibition) held at Geneva’s Palais Électoral in 1923.[25] A photograph by Frank-Henri Jullien captured the event, allowing us to see a good number of those plates, in part protected from the light by a triangle of heavy cloth hung horizontally at the corner formed by two exhibition walls.[26]

Michel Auer tells us how he discovered Eynard’s daguerreotypes for the first time in 1962 at the residence of Pastor Béroud, who at the time was the director of the Centre social protestant, located on the Budé estate in Petit-Saconnex, Geneva.[27] Because almost no one was interested in Eynard’s body of work and ancient local photography more generally, Auer managed to amass a significant collection by purchasing or exchanging pieces. In 1973, in the Revue du Vieux-Genève,[28] he published the first article on Jean-Gabriel Eynard since the national exhibition mounted fifty years earlier. In the 1970s, interest in the medium of photography grew in Geneva and elsewhere. The year 1971 witnessed the creation of the Fondation suisse pour la photographie (the Swiss Foundation of Photography) while in Geneva the photographer Gad Borel opened a gallery devoted to the now venerable art form. In 1984, a Centre de la photographie was inaugurated, with Michel Auer as its first president. In 1993, the City of Geneva founded a picture and rare document center, the Centre d’iconographie, one of its missions being to conserve ancient Genevan photography. Two departments were thus brought together under one roof, one already a part of the Bibliothèque de Genève and the other coming from the city’s art and history museum, the Musée d’art et d’histoire.

Increasingly, events and publications devoted to the history of photography were becoming a regular occurrence, not a rarity, in Switzerland. Eynard’s pioneering role was now recognized there. In 1974, the Fondation suisse pour la photographie mounted a major show, a reference for all that has followed; La photographie en Suisse de 1840 à nos jours was seen in Zurich, Geneva, and New York. Auer published, with the Geneva State Archivist Catherine Santschi, the first work ever written on Eynard’s photography (Jean-Gabriel Eynard. Au temps du daguerréotype, Neuchâtel and Paris, Ides & Calendes, 1996). Shortly after this, the Centre d’iconographie, headed by Livio Fornara, had its Eynard collections restored and exhibited them at the Maison Tavel (Livio Fornara, Isabelle Anex, and Michel Currat, Familles d'images : en visite chez Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Geneva, Musée d’art et d’histoire, 2001). It bears noting that Eynard has never sparked real interest in the academic world. In 2000, Philippe Kaenel published the only scholarly study ever devoted to the photographer to date.[29]

In the years 1970-1980, Michel Auer worked to get Eynard the photographer both better known and recognized internationally. Helmut Gernsheim, for example, was famous for The History of Photography, from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era (1685-1914), which he wrote with his wife, Alison Eames, and which became an instant classic and reference at its publication in 1955; at Auer’s instigation, Gernsheim published four reproductions of daguerreotypes by Eynard in a revised German edition of the history that he brought out in 1983.[30] There he speaks of Eynard as an “amateur Swiss daguerreotypist” known to Lerebours. In 1985, Michel and Michèle Auer published an encyclopedic dictionary of photographers[31] in which they included Jean-Gabriel Eynard, and did so again in the catalogue of their collection,[32] which accompanied a show at the Musée d’art et d’histoire of Geneva.

To heighten Eynard’s fame internationally, Auer was able to get renowned institutions, including the George Eastman House in Rochester[33] and the Fotomuseum Antwerp,[34] as well as Swiss and foreign collectors, to acquire daguerreotypes. Thanks to these efforts, Eynard’s works have made their way into the W.+T. Bosshard collection,[35] which was the subject of an exhibition at Winterthur’s Fotostiftung in 2006-2007, and that of the German photojournalist Robert Lebeck,[36] which Lausanne’s Musée de l’Elysée featured in a 1988 show. Eynard’s daguerreotypes, however, have drawn relatively little benefit from the art market’s recent craze for ancient photography. The number of daguerreotypes in circulation is relatively high and the most important transactions were carried out directly between owners and institutions. The latest one enabled the City of Geneva to acquire 135 pieces from the heirs of the photographer’s descendants in 2013. Earlier, in 1984, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu acquired eighty-six plates from the Auer Collection. The Californian institution showed them publicly in 1998 as the center piece of an exhibition devoted to the daguerreotype shortly after the inauguration of the Getty Center of Los Angeles,[37] thus consecrating Eynard’s fame as a photographer.

Jean-Gabriel Eynard-Lullin, a photographer patron of the arts

Art and culture permeated Jean-Gabriel Eynard’s world and formed his eye. His vast art culture influenced his practice of the daguerreotype. A major collector, he began acquiring paintings and sculptures in Italy.[38] The quality of his selections, like a portrait from the School of Raphael or the very beautiful portrait by an unknown painter of the 16^th century,[39] evinces a sure taste. Before him, his father and older brother had also invested in the art market. The collection they assembled and he later built on reflects patrician Geneva’s penchant for Dutch and Flemish painting.[40]

Eynard the collector

More eclectic and more curious, Jean-Gabriel was interested in what was being produced in his day. Jean-Jacques Rigaud recalled seeing at the Palais Eynard in Geneva some seventy works acquired by the Genevan patron while others could be seen in Rolle at his Beaulieu residence, and in Paris, where the works notably included the contemporary Genevan School. A member of Geneva’s Société des Arts, the city’s arts society, Eynard supported local artists in particular through regular acquisitions, and periodically enriched the Musée Rath, created in 1826, with donations. He commissioned work from many Genevan artists, including Charles Guigon, Amélie Munier-Romilly, Firmin Massot, Wolfgang Adam Töpffer, and Pierre-Louis De la Rive. He maintained close relations with several of them, like Massot and De la Rive. He discreetly intervened in the competition for the creation of a fine arts museum next to his mansion.[41] At the very end of his life, he financed the construction of the Palais de l’Athénée alongside his Genevan residence. This building would become the seat of the Société des Arts. The series of busts adorning the façades celebrates Genevan history, from Bishop Adhémar Fabri to Charles Pictet de Rochemont, the uncle of Eynard’s wife.[42]

Eynard also struck up friendships with artists outside of Geneva and commissioned works from them. Nicolas-Didier Boguet, whom Eynard met in Rome, painted two Italian landscapes for him. The Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, whom he first came into contact with in 1808 at the court of Elisa Baciocchi, one of Napoleon’s sisters, carved for him a statue of Anna Eynard in white marble, as well as an Arno nymph that was meant to decorate their Beaulieu home (see DE 001 ; 2013 001 dag 080 and 2013 001 dag 095).[43] It was also in Italy that Eynard commissioned Horace Vernet, the director of the French Academy in Rome at the time, to do a double portrait of him and his wife in 1831.[44] It is also known that he met François Gérard, one of Jacques-Louis David’s students, during a stay in Paris in 1824.[45] Eynard thus asserted his taste for Neo-classicism, as it was defined by the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), a penchant that showed through in the buildings he had constructed once he was back from Italy. Shortly before her death, Anna Eynard welcomed to her home, the Palais Eynard, the painter Grégoire Soutzo and his daughter, descended from a royal Greco-Romanian family involved in the struggle for Greek independence. Soutzo, who figures in two daguerreotypes taken by Jean-Gabriel Eynard in the 1850s (2013 001 dag 017 and 2013 001 dag 113), died shortly after his benefactor.[46]

Eynard was obviously a cultivated photographer with quite a background in art. In 1998, the catalogue of the Getty made clear the influence Dutch painting had on not only Eynard but other daguerreotypists as well.[47] The very title of the show, The Silver Canvas, an expression borrowed from Daguerre, alluded to old European painting while underscoring the mimetic link the new medium maintained with the much older one.

Architecture views and the mimetic role of the portrait

Among all the commissions that the Eynard-Lullins offered to artists, there is one genre that is very much akin to the output of daguerreotypes and that is the views that Jean-Gabriel and Anna Eynard had done of their properties in Geneva, Beaulieu, and Paris.[48] The practice possessed nothing original in itself but it does help us to better understand what Eynard hoped to realize with his own photographs. Two undated series, one by Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) around 1833-1836 and probably another by Alphée de Regny (1799-1881),[49] preceded his own practice of the medium. In 1855, another series that came after the birth of the daguerreotype is the work of an Italian lithographer who had come to Geneva as a refugee in 1850, Antonio Fontanesi (1818-1882).

When he was working for Eynard in Geneva and Beaulieu, Calame was still a very young and practically unknown artist. As René Loche points out, his watercolors are characterized by their technical skill. Although not without charm, of course, they reproduce “very faithfully, and with great thoroughness, the interior layout of these two residences [in Geneva and Beaulieu], and describe in detail the arrangement of the furniture, objets d’art, and paintings.”[50] The same iconographic value can be seen in the views done by Alphée de Regny, a close family friend and, by marriage, a distant cousin of Anna Eynard. Dictated by the customs and practices of the bourgeois elite, the function of these images, as with portraits but unlike pictures meant for a collection, was first and foremost social. Calame was thus tasked with redoing two views of Beaulieu that the Eynards intended to give to the Delessert family, who in turn lost no time in commissioning him to similarly document their estate in Bougy.[51] In the continuity of views, photography was no less a part of the old practice of exchanging images among close friends and family. Reproductions of daguerreotypes are not the exception in Eynard’s work and were surely meant to be given away. He also executed several plates on the same theme and to the same ends.

Even for portraits, which were to become the center piece of his photography, Eynard wanted a faithful reproduction of nature. His judgment of the portrait Horace Vernet painted of him in 1831 was categorical. While delighted by Vernet’s portrait of his wife, which he found charming, Eynard was not satisfied with his own. The painter wanted to redo it, trying to make his sitter look younger, but the result turned out worse still. He only managed to elicit his patron’s discontent (“That’s not me!”).[52] In Geneva, the “realist” portrait is part of a long tradition going back to the Reformation. In this Eynard proved conservative. Although he tolerated an idealization of his wife – the statue of her he commissioned Bartolini to carve attests to that – the same was not true for the male body or his own likeness.

Photography and lithography in Geneva

To choose the technique of lithography and the painter Antonio Fontanesi to execute the views of Beaulieu may come as a surprise. Lithography does not permit the same accuracy as intaglio printmaking, used by Lerebours, for example, in his Excursions daguerriennes. Moreover, the style of the painter from Emilia did not aim for mimicry as any engraver specialized in reproductions would. In the Romantic tradition, Fontanesi was not averse to lighting effects, never scrupling to bathe his subjects in an atmospheric chiaroscuro. Perhaps Eynard wanted to patronize an Italian artist, as when he had the decorator of La Scala, Alessandro Sanquirico (1777-1849) paint in Milan the canvas flats[53] for his private theater.[54]

It was probably the success of the album Intérieurs de Genève, which rolled off the presses of the printing house Pilet & Cougnard in May 1855, that encouraged Eynard to have something similar done for Beaulieu by turning to the same artists and craftsmen. And indeed the Beaulieu album stands as a milestone in the history of Genevan lithography. Invented at the very end of the 18^th century, lithography, unlike photography, was very slow to spread through society. The technique was only adopted in Geneva in 1817,[55] quite late for the medium, and local craftsmen were far from satisfactory in the eyes of artists, who preferred to have their proofs done in Paris. In 1855 Pilet & Cougnard gave hope that change was imminent, “Long have our artists regretted not being able to print off their works domestically, with the ability to oversee all the details of the operation themselves. To encourage an indigenous industry is a duty.”[56]

The title page of the Beaulieu album by Fontanesi states that it was “drawn from nature.” Analysis of Eynard’s photographic work allows us to contradict that statement because certain views borrow the daguerreotype compositions directly or combine parts of two different plates (2013 001 dag 101, DE 047, nc 04; DE 060), while several others are obviously inspired by them. In his correspondence with Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Fontanesi revealed his way of proceeding. He used both sketches that he would do on site and the plates supplied by his patron, which he employed as a way of verifying accuracy, “The sketches, which I have, and the daguerreotypes which Monsieur has are largely enough for my purposes – thus, for example, I have the sketch of the large house shown in foreshortening, well, a daguerreotype of the same house seen straight on suits me perfectly since it can teach me the exact proportions of the building and it can remind me of the slightest details that by chance I may have forgotten.”[57]

The model of Lerebours’s Excursions daguerriennes and the output of his imitators encouraged Eynard to set down in prints the subjects he had photographed. The experience was a chance to compare and contrast the two mediums, drawing reproduced by lithography, on the one hand, and photography, on the other, as in the Renaissance paragone (a debate between partisans of painting and those of sculpture over the primacy of their medium). From the moment it was announced to the world, Daguerre’s process drew scathing criticism. Photographic representation may well be perfectly faithful to reality but one could never compare it with painting, if only because it lacked color. In his treatise on the new medium, Traité de photographie, Lerebours laid into the “critics… [who], foreign to painting and drawing, and ignorant of the theory of shadows, that of chiaroscuro, and the laws of perspective, will never understand that one can obtain some effect without coloring… This class of adversaries is unfortunately more numerous than one thinks, but it is not up to us to educate them in art.”[58]

Nevertheless, in his introduction to Excursions daguerriennes, Lerebours is able to affirm that “thanks to the sudden accuracy of the Daguerreotype, places will no longer be reproduced after a drawing that is always more or less modified by the taste or imagination of the painter.” In fact, Eynard asked Fontanesi to touch up his lithographs and criticized him for the approximation of his rendering, which was too far from the reality captured by his daguerreotypes, “You must understand, sir,” his draftsman replied, “I do not intend quite simply to reproduce the daguerreotype – I believe that art is made for something more.”[59] As with his likeness painted by Vernet in 1831, Eynard would have wanted the portraits to be as faithful as possible, a request Fontanesi could not accede to because of the very technique chosen, “I continue to believe that it wasn’t possible in lithography,” he wrote to his patron when the stones were ready for printing and Eynard wanted more improvements.[60] The subtitle of Intérieurs de Genève evinces the Romantic understanding that Fontanesi had of his art. The album was a “picturesque stroll” in the city, which was quickly changing following the dismantling of its fortifications. Nostalgia for life before had greater importance than the objective reproduction of the ancient architecture.

As his collecting makes clear, Eynard certainly did not assign any mimetic vocation to art. That very mission, however, he did wish to see fulfilled by the artists he turned to, for private use above all. The importance photography assumed at the end of his life now becomes quite understandable. He was aware of course that just like commissioned painting, the new medium of photography demanded a special talent. Eynard occasionally fell into playing the old master, “When I make a fine proof and I see those groups so well drawn, I think I’m a Raphael and I am nearly tempted to say, ‘I did that?’ and I take myself for a great artist. Vanity of vanities!”[61] In his practice of photography, he would never be content with simply reproducing reality or freezing the memory of it. His painstakingly studied compositions, his frequent borrowings from painting’s codes, the care he lavished on lighting for technical as well as aesthetic reasons, as can be seen in his choice of clothes for the play of shadow and light they generate – all these elements evince a strong artistic urge.

Technique

Whenever he commissioned a portrait, Jean-Gabriel Eynard attached great importance to the clarity of the expression and accuracy of the depiction; he rejected over-idealizing the figure. Just as he remained dissatisfied with the rendering of Fontanesi’s lithographies, salt prints, whose hazy look appealed to the painters of his day,[62] never suited him. His Genevan mansion was nevertheless the subject of several views done with the latter paper-based technique, but none can be attributed to Eynard himself.[63] It is not surprising then that he was attracted to the precision offered by the daguerreotype.

Even so, the practitioner still had to master the technique and keep up with its rapid development. In the first years after the process was publicized, the medium steadily progressed. The cameras grew considerably lighter, the treatment of the plates heightened their sensitivity and reduced the time needed to pose. Eynard followed this movement, played a part in it, too, by occasionally making improvements for his own use. He observed the instructions laid out in the various treatises and made numerous trial photographs with respect to the selection and use of the materials, cameras, and plates,[64] as well as in terms of the plates’ preparation and treatment, and the camerawork techniques themselves.

Cameras and equipment

“I am embarrassed to say, but I have five machines with all their paraphernalia,”[65] Eynard wrote in 1842, speaking of his preparations for a trip that was to take him back to Beaulieu from Paris. We do not know how and by whom Eynard was trained in the technique of taking daguerreotypes, or the provenance of his equipment. It is easy to imagine, though, the budding daguerreotypist kitting himself out thanks to the best opticians, who were vying with each other in ingenuity to provide an endless series of innovations. In November 1839, barely three months after the process was made public, Pierre Armand Séguier presented a device for taking daguerreotypes that was more compact and lighter than the first daguerreotype model – all the required equipment weighed some fifty kilograms (about 110 pounds). Eynard’s contacts with Lerebours would imply that he had acquired a camera from his workshop. The full plate views of Rome likewise suggest that he had managed to purchase an original Daguerre-brand camera or a similar device from one of the Parisian opticians who had started offering them at a very early date. Presumably he also could have procured his equipment in Geneva, which boasted a number of makers of daguerreotypes, like the optician Artaria or the maker of scientific devices Louis Bonijol, with whom he was in contact.[66] However, only one full-size plate by Eynard has come down to us that apparently dates back to the years 1840-1841 (2013 001 dag 054); the Roman views have since been lost. The rarity of the full-scale plates in the surviving corpus can perhaps be explained by the fact that Eynard was an early adopter of the smaller, handier formats. It can be supposed, moreover, that he would have employed interchangeable lenses that he could adapt to his cameras in accordance with the formats he was using. The achromatic doublet lens invented by Charles Chevalier in 1840[67] was most certainly able to make the large-format photography that Eynard appreciated easier.

Finally, we know that Eynard complemented his range of equipment by purchasing several stereo cameras a few years later. He was the first in Switzerland to take stereoscopic views, starting in September 1852, the same year that the optician Louis Jules Duboscq (1817-1886) filed a patent for the process.[68] Duboscq’s studio took a stereoscope portrait of Anna and Jean-Gabriel Eynard (2013 001 dag 086), which proves that the two men did indeed meet.

Eynard likewise engineered improvements to his own equipment. Antoine Claudet, one of Daguerre’s students who enjoyed international fame, described for the periodical La Lumière the ingenuity of the mercury boilers that the Genevan photographer had developed. He had witnessed, during a visit he paid to Eynard, “a kind of slate cage; the lower horizontal piece has a groove running all the way around it so that the mercury goes to one of the corners and falls into a vessel placed at the opening.”[69] Eynard continued his quest to make improvements until 1856 when he presented his verse-collodion, a collodion dispenser, to the Société française de photographie (SFP),[70] an invention that reflects the experiments he had been carrying out with collodion-treated glass plates. That same year he filed in France a patent entitled “Perfectionnement dans les appareils servant à la photographie” (or Improvement in the apparatuses employed in photography,” patent number 28896. Finally, the following year SFP featured in its second annual exhibition[71] Eynard’s instruments, just as he was in fact bringing to a close his activities as a photographer.

Training and assistants

In 1962, when he discovered various daguerreotypes depicting Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Michel Auer wondered who the photographer was, “I came across an image that mentions on the back ‘Daguerreotype taken by Mr. Eynard.’ But what about the many views in which Jean-Gabriel Eynard himself is depicted on the plate? This mystery was solved the day I found a daguerreotype on the back of which was written ‘Jean Rion, domestic in Monsieur Eynard’s employ and serving as his assistant for his daguerreotypes.”[72] Fontanesi’s account informs us that Rion enjoyed a certain independence, “I precisely remember that Monsieur Eynard indeed wanted to tell me to come once again to Beaulieu to have Jean do daguerreotypes at the very place where I had taken my sketches…”[73]

Eynard’s interest in the technical processes, his connections with the milieu of nascent photography, beginning with Benjamin Delessert and Noël-Marie-Paymal Lerebours,[74] the artistic culture that shows through in his compositions, and the handful of sources that mention his active involvement in photography – all of these elements make it absolutely clear that he was indeed the creator of the daguerreotypes that are attributed to him. He taught himself by reading the treatises, whose advice he followed, and by forging ties with the medium’s best practitioners. It is likely that he then initiated Jean Rion, and possibly others among his servants, in the techniques for taking daguerreotypes; he is probably the source as well of certain amateur photographers’ own vocation, including Simon Bertrand, whom he took as a subject of his portrait photography (2013 001 dag 030) and whose own work seems to imitate Eynard’s.[75]

As Michel Auer points out, the fact that a photographer has an assistant does not exclude their being the creator of photographs. The Getty unambiguously recognizes Eynard as the author of his daguerreotypes and compares Jean Rion’s role to that of Fox Talbot’s assistant, Nicholaas Henneman.[76] Like the latter, Rion cannot be raised to the status of co-creator. While servants are frequently seen in Eynard’s work, Rion is the only one to have been granted an individual portrait, which was executed, moreover, on a half-plate, a format Eynard reserved almost exclusively for his self-portraits (84.XT.255.71).[77] In 1842 when Eynard visited Louis Philippe I to take a number of daguerreotypes, his servant seems to have already been quite familiar with the medium. He accompanied Eynard and assisted him in his work, “Jean stowed the devices in the carriage… I arranged the dark room with Jean, Anna placed herself where the king was to be… [After exposing the plate] I went with Jean into the room, I was given a light, I put the first plate in the mercury and I had the satisfaction of seeing that it had turned out quite well.”[78] For an occasion that was very important to Eynard, where he describes his meticulous preparations to prevent any problem from arising, Rion’s presence by his side shows the degree of trust he placed in his assistant and servant. We can therefore surmise that he was with his master from the start of his work as a photographer and that his talent served Eynard at every step of the way when taking a daguerreotype.

Choosing, preparing and mounting the plates

In his treatise Lerebours devotes a chapter to polishing daguerreotype plates; he notes that “among the finest proofs we have ever seen, we should mention those of a distinguished amateur, M. Eynard, who has excluded oil from his preparations.”[79] A large part of a daguerreotype’s success lies in mastering the technical processes. Preparing the plate was an essential step in the process and Eynard applied himself to it with great interest, to the point of neglecting all other activities, “I am entirely occupied by [my] daguerreotypes anymore… When I reread these notes in a few years, I shall laugh at myself as I recall all the time I am spending preparing the plates and endlessly making new trials.”[80] Empirically he was working hard to make the plates less reflective, and in the months following the public announcement of Daguerre’s invention, it became clear that this was a flaw affecting their legibility, “What I am looking for is to avoid mirroring and to a certain degree one succeeds by heavily iodizing the plate and rendering it violet rather than golden yellow.”[81] By increasing exposure time to the iodine vapor well beyond what was usually recommended for preparing the plates, Eynard managed to improve on a defect that Hippolyte Fizeau would later overcome with gilding (also known as gold toning) in the fixing process.[82]

In the Eynard corpus, quarter-plates and especially half-plates seem to be the predominant formats. This is an estimate made from the dimensions of the casings and the windows. A few views were done on one-sixth or one-nineth formats, a custom going back to the earliest days of Eynard’s practice, according to what can be deduced from the uneven quality of these proofs. Yet it was these smaller formats, notably the one-sixth, that Lerebours recommended, especially for taking portraits because of the reduced exposure time they made possible. Far from wanting to discourage his readers from using larger formats, he warned them of the difficulties these formats presented and the perseverance they demanded. While the large plates required a greater investment in time and money, the result was equal to the effort made.[83]

The financial argument, we can assume, never really posed an obstacle for Eynard. Two whole plates have come down to us (BGE 2013 001 dag 054 and Getty 84.XT.255.82), but it seems that the first daguerreotypes taken in Rome were indeed whole plates, based on the sole image we have of them (84.XT.255.38). For the stereoscopic views, Eynard simply adopted the specific third-plate format. Of the 106 stereoscopic views the Eynard corpus comprises, twenty-two stand out because they are in the imposing double half-plate format, used for majestic landscapes and group portraits. No other example of stereoscopic plates in that dimension is known.[84]

Several hallmarks were brought to light during a restauration of the Bibliothèque de Genève’s plates between 1995 and 1998. The stereoscopic plate 2013 001 dag 076 bears the hallmark of the silversmith Christofle, clearly visible on the left of the righthand view. Daguerreotype plates sold by Charles Christofle & Cie were employed in France and the United States, a very important export market, between 1847 and 1862. The plate DE 013 bears a hallmark by the manufacturer A. Gaudin (Alexis Gaudin), stating a 40^e part of silver (for these French standard marks, that means a “40^th” part, in other words, one part silver for thirty-nine parts copper). The hallmarks brought to light during restauration more often indicate 30^e (DE 011, DE 029, DE 035), or thirtieth part (one part of silver for twenty-nine parts copper). These standard marks correspond to the silver content recommended for photography.[85] The quality of a daguerreotype, however, depended as well on the uniformity of the plating (the depositing of silver on the copper plate) and hence on the reliability of the manufacturer. The hallmark, or stamp, identifying the manufacturer was a guarantee of quality when unstamped imitations were in circulation in violation of the law.[86]

Besides preparing the plates and treating them to develop and fix the image, Eynard, it seems, did his own mounting and framing as well. This is what his Notes journalières indicate concerning the views he took in Neuilly for Louis Philippe I, “Anna… came to help me frame the proofs… And then with the glue sticking on my mouth and hands, I made haste as much as possible… I wanted to finish, I remained a few minutes longer and finally I was able to take away four framed proofs.”[87] Here we see the force of habit without which he could not have offered the King of France the daguerreotypes done that very day.

Initially Eynard used light-colored mats,[88] which he would slide between the plate and a piece of protective glass, the whole held together by a sealing strip. Starting in 1843, the catalogues featuring photographic supplies offered, along with “ordinary mats,” protective glass plates painted in black and decorated with a gilded contour border matching the bevel, which was also gold; they cost considerably more but their aesthetic effect was superior.[89]

Doubtless Eynard quickly adopted the new genre of display. Certain plates taken the same day show the two types of casing, probably done to experience the effect of the two aesthetically different renderings (see 2013 001 dag 073 / rm 017; 2013 001 dag 058 / IG 2003-293; 84.XT.181.3 / 84.XT.255.46; 84.XT.255.22 / 84.XT.255.14; and DE 016 / 84.XT.25.60). It is not easy to determine the first instances of his using the black casing in his body of work because it is conceivable that he later reframed certain pieces dating from before 1843 with the new process (see dl 03; 84.XT.255.11; 84.XT.255.40; etc.). Until 1845, the number of daguerreotypes framed in the black protective glass is nevertheless limited to a few units, except in 1843, during which this innovation was possibly tried out. Starting in 1846, Eynard’s use of protective glass casings increased noticeably and became almost systematic in 1849 and after, with a few exceptions (see elysee 005948, dated 28 September 1850; DE 045). On the other hand, no stereoscopic view is known to exist that is framed with a light-colored mat; all of them date from after 1852. Finally, we should mention that the displays mounted in tooled frames remain rare; the current state of such pieces is not necessarily their original form (see DESN 01; fao 38838; gum 078; koll lot 1602 a187; and rm 021).

Taking a daguerreotype

On the reverse of certain daguerreotypes, Eynard recorded technical information on the exposure time, the time the shot was taken, the season, even the weather at that moment, “in Beaulieu, 10 September 1855 at 4 pm, in 22 seconds, weather not too clear”;[90] “16 November 1851, 24 seconds, at 1:30 pm, weather clear but very cold.”[91] These written indications attest the experimental character of Eynard’s approach. He was aware of the need to note down the reasons for a failed or successful attempt, and he was always looking out for the right conditions for taking a photograph and the ideal combination of the many parameters influencing the result. The photography treatises provided numerous practical tips for taking these factors into consideration. To photograph vegetation, for example, Marc-Antoine Gaudin realized that “autumn is the most favorable season because the foliage has become lighter in color.”[92]

Taking a daguerreotype could not be done on the spur of the moment. In 1842, to shoot the portraits of the royal family, Eynard tried out different settings and lighting with his wife Anna, “I enlisted Anna to come with me to look for the best place in the garden… Anna put herself where the King would be… I told the King that everything was ready. He put himself between the Queen and Mme Adélaïde. I said ‘hold,’ and after 42 seconds I said, ‘it’s done.’”[93] Eynard explained as well the consequences of the change of place he had to make to accommodate a larger group. “The light being less bright,” because it took too long for the subjects to take their places, he had to extend the exposure time to forty-seven seconds, a note indicating the rigor the operations required.

To conclude these technical aspects, which clearly fostered Eynard’s passion for the daguerreotype, it is worth mentioning his use of mirrors and prisms to correct the views. While certainly useful when trying to faithfully depict architecture, they were less so for portraits. This circumstance explains then why there are only thirty or so views that drew on these aids.[94]

A special case: the reproductions

The spread of images was of major importance socially and commercially in the 19^th century. The engraved reproduction had developed considerably in the 18^th century, and the invention of lithography in 1798 offered unheard-of possibilities. Nicéphore Niépce’s initial research, which would eventually lead to the invention of photography, sought to reproduce drawings through a process akin to what would become photoengraving. While the daguerreotype did enable the reproduction of existing images, it was only with great difficulty and it did not offer the chance to get them out to the public in great numbers.

This particular problem was solved thanks to the technique invented by the Englishman Henry Fox Talbot, one based on a paper negative (the calotype) that made it possible to print off several positive proofs. This spelled the end of the attempts by Chevalier and Fizeau to duplicate daguerreotype plates.[95] Like painters, the daguerreotypists had to rely on copies engraved by artists from their original plates if they wanted a reproducible matrix. Lerebours and his followers published their albums in this way. When Eynard commissioned Fontanesi to produce lithographies of Beaulieu, which he wanted as close to his daguerreotypes as possible, he was counting on the same process.

It is quite remarkable then to discover in the Eynard corpus several photographic reproductions of daguerreotypes. Some are identical to the originals, save for a slight reframing or the inversion of the image. The plate dep 3829, for example, reproduces 84.XT.255.18, while DE 076 is a reversed copy of DE 073. The view DE 032 is a righted copy of 84.XT.255.12, with a narrower framing on the double portrait of Anna and Jean-Gabriel Eynard. Other reproductions borrow only certain details from the original plate. From the group portrait 2013 001 dag 049, Eynard produced enlarged reproductions of the portraits of Victor de Broglie (DE 082) and the Master of Requests (counsel of the Conseil d’État) Raulin (2013 001 dag 038). Devices making it possible to enlarge details of a plate were also available on the market, as Charles Chevalier’s treatise makes clear.[96]

The daguerreotype reproduction of artworks will surprise not a few given the quality of the result strikes us today as mediocre, or at the least inferior to a copy done by means of a print. What interest did Eynard find in reproducing engravings when we can easily imagine that acquiring an additional proof would not have been terribly difficult? Perhaps he was keen on the technical achievement that such reproductions represented, or he was thinking of offering these views to his close friends and family.

Painted backdrops, stage sets

For his portraits, Eynard often used different types of backgrounds that answered to aesthetic as well as technical demands. Gaudin devotes a chapter to them in his Traité pratique de photographie, “Each background has its advantage and drawback. Light backgrounds make flesh look dark; but they speed up the operation and lend much greater fullness to the outlines. Dark backgrounds make flesh look light; but it is rare that hair appears sufficiently distinct from them.”[97] Eynard hung monochrome backgrounds on the façade of Beaulieu so that the figures would indeed stand out but without the image being blurred or muddled by architectural elements like the French windows or the niches holding statues. The plates 2013 001 dag 003 and DE 033, which were done around 1846, offer two fine examples of this expedient. A sculpture adorning Beaulieu’s main façade is concealed by a white sheet, which adds luminosity to the scene. The views 84.XT.255.18 and fao 38107 use a dark wall covering. By taking up part of the background, it enables a play of contrasts between the light-colored clothing, which stands out against the hanging cloth, and the darker garb, which is easily seen against the façade. Eynard would sometimes hang his cloth so as to create folds, which lend movement to the background (as in plate ng 314), but without turning our attention away from the main subjects.

Eynard also used a painted cloth backdrop. It allowed him to do portraits in fake landscapes whereas the properties of the lenses still limited the possibilities of doing them in real ones. The reduced depth of field they enabled compromised the sharpness of both the portraits and the series of pictorial planes forming the landscape. On the portrait 2013 001 dag 025, Anna and Jean-Gabriel Eynard posed along with Gabriel Charles Bouthillier de Beaumont before a painted backdrop. The latter, who was Anna’s nephew, was also a painter and certain works by him, like the drawing of the Château du Crest in Jussy conserved in Geneva’s Cabinet d’Arts graphiques, recall somewhat the style of the backdrop used by Eynard. Did the photographer perhaps want to portray the painter in front of a canvas that he himself had executed for him? The backdrop depicts a Romantic landscape, a view of Lake Geneva with a boat and the Alps, where the Grammont massif can be seen. It was customary to reproduce a local landscape, one that corresponded to a place in which the view could well have been shot. Eynard used this painted backdrop twenty-two times at least, either in an overall background (see 84.XT.255.69), or narrowly framed, leaving just one detail showing (DE 060). For some views, the backdrop was hung between the columns of the façade, which remain visible (84.XT.255.41). In keeping with the recommendations of the treatises, Eynard had the backdrop designed “so that the head is projected against a pure, almost uniform sky and [to] avoid the foliage of the trees from coming too near.”[98] The use of muted hues allows the daguerreotypist to soften the outline of the figures, who almost melt naturally into the painted landscape, reinforcing the effect of an illusion (84.XT.255.64).

Colorization

The absence of color represented the major drawback of the new medium, which was otherwise capable of generating so faithful a depiction of reality. In this regard, photography suffered in comparison with chromolithography, a process that Godefroy Engelmann had developed shortly before the daguerreotype was invented. To pigment the plate by hand was very tempting indeed. Gaudin describes the colorization technique,[99] the principle of which is akin to inking engraved matrices à la poupée (all the colors to appear in the final print are applied at the same time to the matrix and run off together), which indeed allowed printmakers to turn out color prints. For daguerreotypes, a paintbrush was employed to apply pigments by delicately dabbing the zones to be colored using multiple light touches. The process demanded great dexterity. Often the color was used only partially to create the effect of white European flesh tones on cheeks and hands, or on lips. Daguerreotypes were sometimes entirely colorized to bring out the clothing as well. The Eynard corpus includes less than ten plates that were touched up in color. On some of them, like the portraits of children DE 041 or DE 060, only the flesh is colorized. Elsewhere the dresses and other clothing are delicately tinted in rose and blue (DE 050), or a dress uniform is embellished with gold to highlight the buttons and epaulettes (DE 074). The uneven quality of the results obtained suggests that the finest colorized proofs were not done by Eynard himself but in fact were entrusted to specialized studios; still others might have been the outcome of Eynard’s own attempts in the technique, or work done by less skilled colorists. The probable use of a specialized studio also raises the question of attribution for these plates, since we cannot dismiss the idea that these studios did not only the colorization but also the photography. Such is the case, for example of the plate lf 01, attributed to the Mayer brothers’ Parisian studio, which was renowned for the delicacy of its colorizations. In Geneva, Louis Bonijol’s studio seems to have developed an original technique for adding color to daguerreotypes.[100]

Themes and composing the image

Jean-Gabriel Eynard above all depicted his familiar world, the world of his family and close friends. With few exceptions, the places of his daguerreotypes were systematically located on his properties in Paris, Geneva, or Beaulieu, near Rolle. If he photographed a figure outside his circle, he had invited them to one of his residences. Besides his trip to Rome, where he tried his hand at taking daguerreotypes by photographing the ancient ruins in the spring of 1840, he paid little attention to subjects of general interest, like spectacular landscapes, historical monuments, works of art, or city views. Unlike other photographers who made these their favorite subjects, he did not document the work that was transforming Geneva at the time into an immense construction site, which could be easily seen from the Palais Eynard, starting in the mid-19^th century. History seems to have had no hold on him. His output, as one writer has put it, is a “narcissistic mirror.”[101]

We won’t go back here in detail over the subjects featured in his daguerreotypes; they are presented in the introductory texts of the catalogue’s different chapters. It is worthwhile recalling, however, certain themes that run throughout Eynard’s work, themes that went through major changes when in 1852 he began to practice stereoscopic photography.

Alone or as a couple

Eynard’s presence everywhere in his photographs is striking, so much so that some doubted he could have taken them. In his self-portraits, Eynard depicts himself sporting a dressing gown and in a way brings us into his private world (DE 025 and DE 026), but he figures almost always in the group portraits, too. This nearly permanent presence of Eynard in his body of work is a feature that likens him to our contemporaries and their photographic output. Of course while he showed himself, he did not reveal himself the way 21^st-century artists do. But like them, he loved to tell his story by staging fictions.

The narrative dimension of Eynard’s photographs appears most clearly in his self-portraits, which occasionally morph into tableaux. A plate in the Getty (84.XT.255.42) pictures him seated, his head leaning on his right fist, his elbow firmly planted on the table beside him. While this daguerreotype is quite probably the work of the Mayer studio, Eynard must have arranged the composition. The motif of the head leaning on a hand unquestionably points to the melancholic, a figure who is amply depicted in art, with Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I (1514) being the most famous example. This tradition interprets the gesture as a mark of wisdom and the sign of a temperament predisposed to the sciences and the arts. With his Melencolia I, Dürer lastingly associated artists with the classic attitude of the thinker, whose chin or cheek is propped up by a fisted hand.[102]

In the same vein, another of the Getty’s daguerreotypes (84.XT.255.62) shows Eynard in profile, absorbed by a large folio he is reading, in a pose that unquestionably references the world of Renaissance painting. Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam immediately comes to mind, or the portrait of St. Jerome in his study. The use of light, whose reflection off the light-colored pages of the open book illuminates Eynard’s face, reveals details in the darker parts of the image, for example, the combed hair or the fur of the collar.[103] This mastery of light guarantees that this plate by Jean-Gabriel Eynard has a place among the finest daguerreotypes in the Getty, which compares it to the drawings of Rembrandt. Eynard clearly sought to depict himself in the characteristic guise of the thinker and man of letters. In the tradition of the self-portrait, he presents himself as artists are wont to do, “imag[ing] themselves in studied poses – as a martyr, thinker, or melancholic.”[104]

In a group

The singularity displayed by Eynard and the Eynards husband and wife is clearly seen in the large group portraits. Comparing these dozen variations on the same subject – the depiction of five to twenty people before the façade of the house – proves the lengths to which Eynard would go in arranging the individuals standing or sitting in front of his lens. In the most accomplished pieces, Eynard organizes the image geometrically, drawing notably on the very orderly structure of the architecture seen in the background. A daguerreotype taken about 1848 perfectly illustrates this process (2013 001 dag 052). The image is built around the contrast between the Eynard-Lullin couple and their daughter Sophie’s family, two subgroups that are separated by a table. The façade in the background is used like a grid that assigns each to their place in the composition, from a formal as well as social point of view. The arrangement of the figures is hierarchic, that is, the two adult males, who are seated, are clearly designated as the most important individuals because of the place they occupy in the foreground and the fact that all the female eyes are on Charles Eynard while Jean-Gabriel affects an aloof indifference.

In many of the images, Eynard and, to a lesser extent, Anna occupy a specific spot. This singularity is worked out in many ways. For example, the sole man among several women (IG 2003-289) or the sole man between groups of women and children (DE 077), he makes affectionate gestures (2013 001 dag 044), or is seen detached from his entourage and engaged in an activity like reading (odb jge 03). The Eynard-Lullin couple are often depicted in profile at one or the other of the image’s lateral edges, or sometimes face to face away from the other figures (IG 2003-293; 2013 001 dag 015), a position that guarantees the couple strong visibility in the daguerreotypes that are very crowded. The joyous, even facetious expressiveness of Jean-Gabriel sets him off from not only his wife, who is always serious, but also the other guests (2013 001 dag 025; 2013 001 dag 026).

Formal experiments and technical mastery

The oldest group portrait done by Eynard already displays a keen desire for formal innovation (2013 001 dag 040). The composition of the image rests entirely on an alternating arrangement of standing and seated figures, as well as on the contrast between those with their backs turned to us and those who are looking at us. The originality of a group portrait in which the faces of those depicted cannot be seen was to have no further impact, save for a few very rare exceptions, as in the daguerreotype 2013 001 dag 133, in which two employees are shown from behind. On the other hand, the grouping of the subjects of the photograph, their balanced arrangement, and the use of geometry as a compositional principle are a permanent feature of his output (2013 001 dag 034; 84.XT.255.63). Even if the technical quality of the result leaves something to be desired, the balance of the image is all the more remarkable here in that it doesn’t depend, as elsewhere, on the structuring effect of the architectural setting.

Another piece (2013 001 dag 010), which is also among the oldest to have come down to us, testifies to another type of research that proved decisive for what was to follow in Eynard’s work. The subjects to be photographed aren’t simply lined up in tightly packed rows facing the photographer, but rather placed in the frame to suggest a scene from daily life. The distant model of these staged scenes is to be found in the conversation pieces[105] of 18^th-century England, which are rooted in turn much further back in the Flemish painting of the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the modern era.

In particular, the analogies between some of Eynard’s daguerreotypes and the paintings done by his brother-in-law Adolphe Lullin are striking indeed. Eynard had most certainly never met the painter, who died quite young. But he did know two of his pictures, one kept by the family and now conserved in the Musée d’art et d’histoire (see MAH 1905-3); and another that he reproduced (see DE 091). The family portraits done by Eynard and by Lullin reveal a similar structure, namely the isolated pater familias, who is seen at work (see odb jge 03), the grouping of figures in white, generally women (2013 001 dag 002), and finally the importance of the background in structuring the image.

In the compositions, the architecture, notably the neoclassical style of Beaulieu, plays an essential role. On a dozen or so plates, the same framing of the image catches the façade in a raking side view, revealing in the background a dark space that swallows the vegetation and contrasts with the light-colored surface of the building.[106] The groups are placed perpendicularly to the façade at a more or less equal distance. Variety is achieved thanks to the poses and arrangement of the models. They may be in conversation with a neighboring figure (rm 004), or two face-to-face individuals may be isolated from the group (DE 044), which may be formed in turn by the aggregation of smaller subgroups, with certain members looking off into the distance (2013 001 dag 057), or, on the contrary, with their eyes turned towards the camera (vevey 73249). One plate (fao 38275) captures afternoon tea, a “natural” scene that was evidently staged. In 1841, Eynard began experimenting with other situations, for example, with shots more tightly framed on the figures (84.xt.255.40).

Thanks to the technical improvements made to the photographic equipment and the mastery of the daguerreotype processes which he acquired over time, Eynard reached a sort of maturity in the years 1848-1850. Whereas the daguerreotypes of the early years can present a cold and dull aspect, from this point on he had the ability to reproduce all the nuances of the visible. This mastery is readily seen in two formally quite accomplished self-portraits (DE 025 and DE 026), which boast diametrically opposite tonalities. A shift into gold lends the plate DE 025 a warm shimmering tone that is sustained by the gilded band going around the mat and its thin gold contour border that forms a series of four ogees. On the other hand, a rigorous geometry in the tradition of the neoclassical portrait structures the composition of the daguerreotype DE 026. The figure is perfectly centered and framed by the vertical and horizontal lines of the furniture, and set within an octagonal mat. The light-colored cardboard, whose canted edges recall an emerald-cut gemstone, heightens the graphic effect that is obtained thanks to the cool tonality and the forceful grays. Eynard now possessed the ability to capture the slightest shades, like the marbling animating the background, or the vibrations that the patterns on the clothing or the textures of the furniture seem to give off.

A new field for exploration: stereoscopy

In the early 1850s, when stereoscopic photography made its first appearance, Eynard was an acknowledged photographer, recognized as such in the growing literature on the subject. He would in no time become keenly interested in this new technique, which would force him to reconsider his habits. Over the course of three years, between 1852 and 1855 approximately, he would produce over a hundred stereoscopic views. One hundred and six plates have come down to us, a substantial number.

The appearance of stereoscopy posed new problems for the photographer, with the format shifting toward a square or becoming vertical. The narrow dimension of the image no longer allowed the enthusiast to align seated or standing figures in two uniform rows widthwise, as Eynard had been accustomed to doing (DE 088). One view taken in Beaulieu on which the figures placed at the edges are cut off (2013 001 dag 106), and another at the Palais Eynard in Geneva, where the upper section of the image was left empty (2013 001 dag 124), clearly illustrate the compositional problems the new format occasioned.

But for all that, Eynard did not give up on the effect of physical reality that the image in relief could conjure up. To meet the challenge, the Genevan photographer displayed remarkable ingenuity in arranging his compositions. He increased the depth of field in his images with side views in one-point perspective (DE 062, 2013 001 dag 107, 2013 001 dag 111 and 2013 001 dag 112), when he wasn’t taking advantage of the possibilities that the architecture itself offered. It might fill the image’s empty space (2013 001 dag 061, 2013 001 dag 068 and 2013 001 dag 085), or offer platforms where the daguerreotypist can pose groups of the subjects to be photographed (2013 001 dag 063, 2013 001 dag 64 and DE 047).

Eynard’s interest in stereoscopic photography is demonstrated not only by the number of plates he left behind. In Beaulieu, he adopted (and he was apparently the only one to have done so) half-plates to take altogether exceptional images of his estate. In these views, he is very often alone, at the center of his world and drawing our attention to his relationship with his surroundings. These portraits are part of the tradition of Romantic painting, whose influence seems to have been especially strong late in his life. Philippe Kaenel’s commentary on Fontanesi’s Beaulieu lithographies applies just as much to these daguerreotypes, “It is an implicit rule of the picturesque landscape that man be its measure.”[107]

[1] Michelle Bouvier-Bron, Une jeunesse en Italie : les années de formation de Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Geneva, 2019.

[2] Jean de Montenach and Anna Eynard-Lullin, Vienne 1814-1815 : journaux du Congrès : “J'ai choisi la fête...” edited with an introduction by Benoît Challand, Alexandre Dafflon, and Jim Walker, Fribourg, Archives de la Société d’histoire du canton de Fribourg, 2015, n. s. 18.

[3] Edouard Chapuisat, Jean-Gabriel Eynard et son temps (1775-1863), Geneva, A. Jullien, 1952; Gérard Duc, Jean-Gabriel Eynard (1775-1863) : un diplomate et financier genevois au temps des révolutions, Geneva, 2020.

[4] Chapuisat, Eynard et son temps, 38. Eynard studied chemistry with Professor Thénard in order to manage his alum mines.

[5] This telescope can be seen in a watercolor of the Beaulieu drawing room done by Alexandre Calame, MAH, CAG, inv. 1963-0036. The spyglass appears in the daguerreotype 84.XT.255.84.

[6] Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Notes journalières (1831-1848), f. 622-627 (BGE, Ms suppl. 1874, entry for 7 June 1842), published in Familles d’images : en visite chez Jean-Gabriel Eynard, [exhibition, Geneva, Centre d’iconographie genevois at La Maison Tavel, 22 March – 26 August 2001], ed. Livio Fornara, Isabelle Anex, and Michel Currat, Geneva, Musée d’art et d’histoire, 2001, 28. Enjoyment, which sets him off from the professional photographers, is an idea frequently mentioned by Eynard in characterizing his activity in photography. For other instances, see Fornara et al., Familles, 32, and Philippe Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l'art est fait pour quelque chose de plus’: Jean-Gabriel Eynard, Antonio Fontanesi, la photographie et les arts graphiques dans les années 1850,” Art + Architecture en Suisse, 4, 2000, 12, n. 7, and 13, n. 18.

[7] This fact is all the more remarkable in that Eynard would leave off doing photography altogether shortly afterwards (see below).

[8] Daguerre’s advertisement for his process, 1838, Le Daguerréotype français : un objet photographique, exhib. cat., ed. Quentin Bajac and Dominique Planchon-de Font-Réaulx, Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003, 384.

[9] See Christophe Dutoit, “Une collection miraculeusement sauvée de l’oubli,” Miroirs d’argent : daguerréotypes de Girault de Prangey, exhib. cat., Musée gruérien, Geneva, 2008, 91. An old inventory indicates the existence of nearly a thousand views taken by Girault de Prangey.

[10] See Dominique Planchon-de Font-Réault, “Grands amateurs,” Bajac and Planchon-de Font-Réault, Daguerréotype français, 322-329.

[11] Bajac and Planchon-de Font-Réault, Daguerréotype français, 330-335.

[12] There is no text that allows us to precisely date the end of Eynard’s work in photography. The year put forward is based on approximate dating of the most recent plates.

[13] Eynard, Notes, 622-627 (entry for 9 June 1842), Fornara et al., Familles, 28.

[14] Le Droit, 31 January1855, 4.

[15] Eynard, Notes, f. 622-627 (BGE, entry for 7 June 1842), Fornara et al., Familles, 27.

[16] “Allons voir faire la cuisine à Mr Eynard.” Eynard, Notes, f. 622-627 (BGE, entry for 18 June 1842), Fornara et al., Familles.

[17] Jean-Gabriel Eynard, letter to his brother Jacques, 7 March 1840, Geneva, BGE, Ms suppl. 1848, f. 91.

[18] Proceedings no XXII of the Société pour l’Avancement des Arts, Rapport du comité d’Industrie et de Commerce, Geneva, 13 August 1840, 32.

[19] Michel and Michèle Auer, Collection M.+M. Auer, Une histoire de la photographie, Hermance, Geneva, Fondation Auer Ory, 2003, 24.

[20] A. Claudet, “Sur les dangers résultant de l’emploi du mercure,” La Lumière, 1, 9 February 1851, 59.

[21] Noël-Marie-Paymal Lerebours, Traité de photographie, derniers perfectionnements apportés au daguerréotype (4^th edition), Paris, Lerebours, 1843, 33.

[22] Lerebours, Traité, 76. It should be noted that Lerebours’s description has not been connected with any of Eynard’s known plates to date.

[23] J. Thierry, Daguerréotypie. Franches explications, Paris, Lerebours et Secrétan, 1847, 84-86.

[24] See below.

[25] The Historical Section comprised a retrospective to commemorate the centennial of the initial research related to photography. The commission was made up of the photographers Fred Boissonnas, Georges Charnaux, Frank-Henri Jullien, Charles Lacroix, and Louis-L. Pricam; the museum curators Eugène Demole and Antoine Dufaux; and the amateur photographer and president of the Société genevoise de photographie Antoine Mazel. On this exhibition, which featured, it seems, 8000 documents, see Louis-Philippe Clerc, Exposition nationale suisse de photographie, Geneva, 1923; Journal de Genève, 17 April and 9 May 1923.

[26] BGE VG N18x24 09409.

[27] Michel Auer, “Comment j’ai découvert le photographe Jean-Gabriel Eynard-Lullin,” Pionniers de la photographie en Suisse Romande : à travers les collections de la Fondation Auer Ory, exhib. cat., ed. Michèle and Michel Auer, Hermance, Geneva, Fondation Auer Ory, 2019, 62-74.

[28] Michel Auer, “Jean-Gabriel Eynard-Lullin, photographe,” Revue du Vieux-Genève, 1973, 3^rd year, 3, 65-69.

[29] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art.’”

[30] Helmut Gernsheim, Geschichte der Photographie, die ersten hundert Jahre, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin, Propyläen Verlag, 1983, 159.

[31] Michel and Michèle Auer, Encyclopédie internationale des photographes de 1839 à nos jours, Hermance, 1985.

[32] Auer and Auer, Collection, 36-39.

[33] Rochester 1973 9 2.

[34] P 1973 257, p 1973 224.

[35] R. Perret, Kunst und Magie der Daguerreotypie, Collection W.+T. Bosshard, Brugg, 2006, 33-35.

[36] Conserved today in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, cf. inv. wrm ph sl 34.

[37] Bates Lowry and Isabel Barrett Lowry, The Silver Canvas. Daguerreotype Masterpieces from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998; Luc Debraine, “Oubliés à Genève, les daguerréotypes de Jean-Gabriel Eynard brillent à Los Angeles,” Le Temps, 3 July 1998: “In the exhibition catalogue, the Getty’s experts are falling over themselves to express their admiration before the talent of the pioneer, even if it means comparing him to the old masters of Dutch painting. Exaggerated, yes, but it sets the tone. At the north end of Sunset Boulevard, Jean-Gabriel Eynard is now a star.” See also the list of exhibitions in the present catalogue.

[38] On the Eynards’ collections of paintings and for all that follows, see Renée Loche, “Un cabinet de peintures à Genève au 19^e siècle : la collection Eynard. Essai de reconstitution,” Genava, 27, 1979, 177-221.

[39] This picture figures in a watercolor by Alexandre Calame depicting a drawing room at Beaulieu, see MAH, CdAG, inv. 1963-0034.

[40] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 180.

[41] Leïla el-Wakil, Genève, 1819-1824, trois concours pour un musée. Dossier accompagnant l’exposition organisée à la maison Tavel du 27 mai au 3 octobre 1999, ed. Livio Fornara, Geneva, 1999, 21.

[42] Works by Louis Dorcière, Frédéric Dufaux, and Charles Menn. See [Albert Rilliet], Les bustes de l’Athénée, [Geneva], [1863]; Grégoire Extermann, “D’Adhémar Fabri à Pictet de Rochemont : les gloires genevoises du palais de l’Athénée,” Regards croisés sur les arts à Genève (1846-1896), ed. Frédéric Hueber and Sylvain Wenger, Geneva, Georg, 2019, 151-182.

[43] Grégoire Extermann, “Opere di Lorenzo Bartolini in Svizzera,” Neoclassico. Semestrale di arti e storia, Trieste, 27-28, 2005, 44-89; id., “Un talent digne de Périclès : Lorenzo Bartolini et la Grèce,” Lorenzo Bartolini: Beauty and Truth in Marble, ed. Franca Falletti, Silvestra Bietoletti and Anna Rita Caputo, study accompanying the Florence show (Galleria dell’Accademia), 31 May-6 November 2011, Florence, Giunti, 2011, 73-85, in particular pages 79-80; L’Arnina di Lorenzo Bartolini : il marmo ritrovato per Giovanni degli Alessandri, [Exposition Firenze, Galleria dell’Accademia, 2014], ed. Brunori Lia, Livorno, Sillabe, 2014, Quaderni di studio, no. 1.

[44] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 217-217, ns. 146 and 147.

[45] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 185.

[46] A work by Soutzo is conserved in the Musée d’Orsay (https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collection). On Grégoire Soutzo (c. 1818-1869), see the obituary that was published in the Journal de Genève (4 March 1869, 2).

[47] Lowry and Barrett Lowry, Silver Canvas, 56, ns. 144 and 154.

[48] For further information on this subject, see in the present catalogue Isabelle Roland’s chapter on the role architecture played in Eynard’s body of work.

[49] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 177 and 182-183. Certain views were copied by Hilda Diodati-Eynard in the late 19^th century. See the online collections of the Musée d’art et d’histoire.

[50] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 177.

[51] Loche, “Un cabinet,” 177.

[52] Extermann, “Opere,” 54-55, no. 30, “We are bringing along with us our portraits done by Vernet. The one of my wife is charming, mine, which had been excellent, even perfect according to what everyone was saying, was completely spoilt and so much so that Vernet wanted to redo it as another, but as I didn’t pose, it happens to be even worse than the other. He wanted to make me younger and whatever the features, it’s not me, nor the expression of my face, according to what’s being said,” (Jean-Gabriel Eynard, letter, 4 June 1831).

[53] DE 002, DE 003, DE 014.

[54] See Leïla El-Wakil, Bâtir la campagne : Genève 1800-1860, vol. 1, Geneva, 1988, 199.

[55] Gabriel Charton (1775-1853) is considered, and considered himself, the father of lithography in Geneva, which he began practicing in 1817; he gave up his business in 1840 (Journal de Genève, 21.03.1840). On lithography in Genève, see Alfred Schreiber-Favre, “Renseignements sur l’histoire de la lithographie à Genève,” Pro Arte, November 1944, 447-450.

[56] Journal de Genève, 28.11.1856, 4. We should note that Fontanesi would not judge the quality of this lithographic print studio very favorably, on the contrary (Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 14, n. 35).

[57] Fontanesi, letter to Eynard dated 27 November 1854, quoted by Philippe Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 13, n. 27.

[58] Lerebours, Traité, 69-70.

[59] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 14, n. 27.

[60] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 14, n. 32.

[61] Eynard, Notes, entry for 9 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 28.

[62]In Geneva, the two painter-photographers most emblematic of this aesthetic are Jean-Louis Populus (1807-1859) and Alexandre-Louis-François d’Albert-Durade (1804-1886).

[63] See, for example, BGE phot30p eyn 01.

[64] Eynard, Notes, entry for 9 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 28.

[65] Eynard, Notes, entry for 21 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 32.

[66] Louis Bonijol was a close friend of Auguste de la Rive, who owned a Daguerre camera by 1840 at the latest; he was invited by Eynard to Beaulieu around 1840-1841 (see dl 03 and the biography associated with this notice). A “Genevan” camera for full plates equipped with a Lerebours lens is conserved at the Fondation M+M Auer. It is the work of the optician Choitel, the successor to Wallner; the latter took over, around 1890, the business founded by the Guédin family on Rue de la Corraterie in 1800 (Auer and Auer, Pionniers, 36).

[67] See Louis Figuier, Histoire des principales découvertes scientifiques modernes, Brussels, 1854, vol. 4, 28, “M. Ch. Chevalier conceived a particular modification of the lens, which doubled, so to speak, the power of the instrument. The use of an achromatic doublet lens made it possible both to shorten the focal lengths in order to concentrate on the plate a large amount of the light, and to enlarge the field of vision and vary at will the focal distances.”

[68] Nicolas Crispini and Clément Lambelet, Genève en relief et autres faits divers, Geneva, 2015, 11-12.

[69] Antoine Claudet (1851), quoted in Auer and Auer, Collection, 37.

[70] Bulletin de la Société française de photographie, Paris, tome 2, 1856, p. 320-321.

[71] Catalogue de la deuxième exposition annuelle des œuvres, appareils et produits, Paris, Société française de photographie, 1857, 29.

[72] Michel Auer, “Jean-Gabriel Eynard,” Auer and Auer, Pionniers, 63. The exact indication, “manservant in Mr. Eynard’s employ for some thirty years, who served as an assistant for his daguerreotypes,” figures on the back of the Jean Rion portrait (84.XT.255.71).

[73] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 12, n. 8, and 13, n. 27. Must we deduce from this then that “towards the end of his life, Eynard might have been content to supervise the work, choose the subjects, and arrange them but without really lending a hand with the plate”?

[74] See the chapter devoted to the context.

[75] See the work by this photographer in the online collections of the Centre d’iconographie of the Bibliothèque de Genève.

[76] Lowry and Barrett Lowry, Silver Canvas, 218, n. 45, concerning plate 21.

[77] Other than the Rion daguerreotype, there is but one half-plate known that was used for an individual portrait, viz., of Lullin de Châteauvieux (DE 085).

[78] Eynard, Notes, entry for 18 June 1842, Fornara, et al., Familles, 30.

[79] Lerebours, Traité, 33.

[80] Eynard, Notes, entry for 9 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 28.

[81] Jean-Gabriel Eynard, letter to his brother Jacques, 2 April 1840.

[82] See Figuier, Principales, 31-32.

[83] See Lerebours, Traité, 71: “People who do not shrink from a fairly considerable expenditure and who feel perseverance enough not to be discouraged by the greater difficulties that half and normal plates entail will be amply compensated for the trouble they will have gone to by the beautiful standing portraits and magnificent groups one can obtain on these large dimensions.”

[84] Crispini and Lambelet, Genève, 12.

[85] See Charles Chevalier, Nouvelles instructions pour l’usage du daguerréotype, Paris, 1841, 29.

[86] See Quentin Bajac, “‘Une branche d’industrie assez importante’. L’économie du daguerréotype à Paris, 1839-1850,” Bajac and Planchon-de Font-Réault, Daguerréotype français, 51.

[87]Eynard, Notes, entry for 18 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 31.

[88] Labels on the back of the daguerreotypes indicate that Eynard purchased his materials at La Maison Madelain, rue Chaussée-d’Antin in Paris (see inv. 2013 067 dag), or at the stationer Wessel’s shop, Grand-Rue in Geneva (see inv. Auer fao 38838).

[89] Painted mats are not, for example, offered in the “Supply of everything related to the daguerreotype” published in the Derniers perfectionnements apportés au daguerréotype, by Gaudin and Lerebours (3^rd edition, Paris, May 1842, 2), but starting the following year, the same column published in the Traité de photographie, derniers perfectionnement apportés au Daguerréotype, by Lerebours (4^th edition, Paris, June 1843) offers “ordinary mats,” “mats painted on glass, black borders,” and “mats painted on glass, gold borders.” See also Charles Chevalier, Mélanges photographiques : compléments des nouvelles instructions sur l’usage du daguerréotype, Paris, 1844, and the Nouveaux renseignements sur l’usage du daguerréotype, Paris 1846, 50. Amédée Queslin was not yet selling painted protective glass in 1843 (Le Daguerréotype rendu facile. Précis des procédés les plus simples et les plus prompts pour la reproduction des images photographiques, Paris, June 1843).

[90] See inv. 2013 001 dag 016.

[91] See inv. 2013 001 dag 036.

[92] Marc Antoine Gaudin, Traité pratique de photographie, Paris, 1844, 150.

[93] Eynard, Notes, entry for 18 June 1842, Fornara et al., Familles, 29.

[94] See 84.XT.255.21, 84.XT.255.24 or BGE DE 015.

[95] See Figuier, Principales, 35-39. Figuier connects the experiments conducted by Chevalier, who managed to reproduce a plate thanks to the then new technique of electrotyping (galvanoplasty), and those carried out by Fizeau, who sought, through a chemical process, to “transform photographic plates into plates for use by engravers.”

[96] See Chevalier, Mélanges, Paris, 1844, 32-33, “By lengthening the focuses and therefore the depth of the camera obscura, one obtains life-size images and even, if need be, larger than the original.”

[97] Gaudin, Traité pratique, 137.

[98] Gaudin, Traité pratique, 140.

[99] Gaudin Traité pratique, 174-177.

[100] Journal de Genève, 6 February 1890.

[101] See Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 8, his “practice is in agreement with the ethos of the banker and collector. The mirror of the daguerreotype functions like a fiduciary narcissistic mirror.”

[102] See James Hall, “Pourquoi fait-on des autoportraits,” Autoportraits de Rembrandt au selfie, exhib. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, 2016, 15.

[103] Lowry and Barrett Lowry, Silver Canvas, 144.

[104] Sylvie Ramond et al., Autoportraits, 8.

[105] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 9.

[106] See E.T. and E. Montmirel, Le daguerréotype mis à la portée de tout le monde, Paris, 1842, 54-55. The Montmirels’ treatise explains that “having a chemical radiation that is almost nil, [the] greenery always comes out black on the proof… The dark shades impressing the sensitive layer less quickly than the light ones, it often happens that the proof is exceeded in certain parts when it has not yet come in others.”

[107] Kaenel, “‘Je crois que l’art,’” 9.