id: 156284 accession number: 1992.120 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.120 updated: 2023-03-14 12:01:46.292000 Church at Auvers, 1855. Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889). Salted paper print from waxed paper negative; image: 33.4 x 43.7 cm (13 1/8 x 17 3/16 in.); matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1992.120 title: Church at Auvers title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1855 creation date earliest: 1855 creation date latest: 1855 current location: creditline: Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund copyright: --- culture: France, 19th century technique: salted paper print from waxed paper negative department: Photography collection: PH - French 19th Century type: Photograph find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889) - artist Édouard Baldus French, b. Prussia, 1813 - 1889 The large and regal prints made by Édouard-Denis Baldus are widely agreed to be among the finest photographic images ever produced. After serving as an artillery officer in the Prussian army, Baldus left his native country for France during the 1830s to become a painter. He exhibited his paintings of religious subjects, portraits, and genre scenes in the Paris Salons from 1841 - 51 and was naturalized as a French citizen in 1849, the same year his interests turned to photography. Combining his training in painting with an inquisitive, inventive technical expertise, Baldus produced a body of work of exceptional quality and interest. His subjects included architecture, landscape, and engineering feats. In 1851 the Commission des monuments historiques selected him for the Missions héliographique—a government project that sponsored the photographing of endangered classical and medieval architecture in France. For this important series Baldus produced views of Burgundy, Provence, and the Dauphiné, and the following year he completed a commission for the Ministry of the Interior. In 1855 he began his photography of railroads, some of his most distinctive work. A copy of his album recording the line between Paris and Boulogne was presented to Queen Victoria. He also documented the flooding of the Rhone, as well as construction of the new Louvre and other Paris views. A founding member of the Société héliographique and a member of the Société française de photographie (1857), Baldus exhibited his photographs widely in London, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Brussels, and Paris and won numerous medals of award. A master printer, he produced combination prints in the early 1850s, frequently retouching his images with pencil and ink. His best work appears most often in specially assembled albums -- such as Les principaux Monuments de la France reproduits en héliogravure par E. Baldus, published in 1875 from plates drawn from earlier negatives. Today, his work continues to be much sought after and to set a standard by which other photographers are judged. T.W.F. --- measurements: Image: 33.4 x 43.7 cm (13 1/8 x 17 3/16 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: inscription: Written in in black ink on recto: "Eglise d'Auvers"; in pencil: "X" translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Selected Acquisitions opening date: 1993-02-09T05:00:00 Selected Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-April 11, 1993). title: Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 1996-11-24T05:00:00 Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997). title: Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art opening date: 2005-02-26T00:00:00 Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (February 26-June 16, 2005). title: France at the Dawn of Photography opening date: 2009-10-04T00:00:00 France at the Dawn of Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (October 4, 2009-January 24, 2010). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * CMA, January 28 - March 15, 1992: "Selected Acquisitions," CMA Bulletin, 80 (February 1993), p. 67 no. 72, repr. p. 46.
CMA, November 20,1996 - February 2, 1997: "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art," see Catalogue of Photography, pp. 16-17.
Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 26 - June 16, 2005 . "Drawn with Light: Pioneering French Photography from the Cleveland Museum of Art". * The Cleveland Museum of Art (10/04/2009 - 01/24/2010); "France at the Dawn of Photography" --- PROVENANCE Serge Klin, France date: footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: Baldus’s prodigious and compelling documentation of French historic buildings earned him recognition as one of the first great French architectural photographers. This image of Notre-Dame at Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, is from a sequence of 50 views of the railroad stations and principal sites along the route between Boulogne-sur-Mer and Paris. This Gothic-style village church was once a chapel for a manor house that has since disappeared. Almost 35 years after Baldus’s composition, and only a short time before his own suicide, Vincent van Gogh painted a large, bold canvas of the church’s apse and bell tower. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79. page number: Reproduced: p. 46; Mentioned: p. 46, 67 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388 Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996. page number: Mentioned and reproduced: P. 16-17, 91 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.120/1992.120_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.120/1992.120_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.120/1992.120_full.tif