Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard

Blanquart-Evrard worked as a cloth merchant in Lille, practiced miniature painting on ivory and porcelain, and studied chemistry. According to the Getty, he learned the calotype from a pharmacist who had studied with Talbot and began researching chemical control of images on paper. In 1847 he published a process in France for producing positives from paper negatives, after which he increasingly concentrated on printing and publishing negatives made by other photographers^*1. The Met likewise identifies Blanquart-Evrard’s introduction of developed printing, which reduced processing time and cost, as an important factor in the rapid expansion of paper photography in France during the 1850s^*2.

The albumen paper method Blanquart-Evrard published in 1850 used egg white on the paper surface to keep light-sensitive material from sinking as deeply into the fibers, making smoother detail easier to achieve than with earlier salted paper. The V&A describes this process as a starting point for albumen printing, which remained widely used through the second half of the nineteenth century^*3. His technical research increasingly focused on paper, chemistry, development, and surface treatment as means of producing positives faster, more consistently, and in greater numbers.

In September 1851 Blanquart-Evrard opened the Imprimerie photographique at Loos, near Lille. The Met records that over four years the workshop produced thousands of prints and issued more than twenty portfolios and albums^*2. There, photography became a product that could be separated from the photographer’s own darkroom: negatives were received, printed elsewhere, mounted, numbered, titled, and sold as organized publications.

Paper Negative-Positive Process

Paper negatives did not render contours as finely as silver-plate daguerreotypes, but a single negative could generate multiple positives. Nature morte au lièvre, printed at the Imprimerie photographique from a paper negative onto salted paper, is described by The Met as part of the workshop’s attempt to produce photographs on an industrial scale^*4. Reproducibility turned the photograph from a unique object into something that could belong to a series and reach multiple buyers. LACMA explains that Blanquart-Evrard’s 1847 improvements immersed paper in sensitizing solution rather than brushing it on, producing more even density and better sensitivity and tonal range; chemically developing the latent image also reduced a process that depended on sunlight to a matter of seconds^*23. Alongside the soft rendering characteristic of paper photography, he sought a printing process capable of repeating the same level of quality.

Albumen Paper

Albumen paper, which smoothed the paper surface and made detail and density easier to achieve, was important in establishing printing as a specialized procedure. The Getty’s Bas-relief in Marble on Garden Wall, an albumen silver print from around 1853 that includes Blanquart-Evrard’s attribution, organizes the relief of the sculpted surface and the detail of the stone wall on a single sheet^*15. The choice of process affected both the number of copies and the publishing quality of how precisely architecture and works of art could be reproduced.

Imprimerie Photographique

The Met’s Le Port de Boulogne is a salted-paper print from the workshop, and the museum notes that Blanquart-Evrard’s process improved chemical stability^*8. Homme allongé au pied d’un châtaignier was printed at the same workshop from a negative by Charles Marville; the record shows that the publisher incorporated more than one hundred Marville photographs into several portfolios^*5. The workshop managed the selection of negatives, print tone, mounts, and series structure, giving images by different photographers a consistent appearance as publications. According to LACMA, at its height the establishment produced about 5,000 prints a day and employed as many as forty workers divided among specialized stages of production^*23. At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, Blanquart-Evrard presented his new process with the claim that even in rainy weather it could produce 200 to 300 prints from a single negative in one day^*1. The emphasis on printing speed rather than on exposure itself became a precondition for turning photographs into publications.

Division Between Photographer and Printer

Joueurs de vielle, photographed by Blanquart-Evrard himself, also survives as a salted-paper print produced in his workshop^*7. By contrast, Album Photographique. Choix de Vingt Sujets Divers brought together work by several photographers, including Marville, Ernest Benecke, and Henri Victor Regnault, in a single publication^*6. Recording the photographer separately from the printer and publisher helped establish negative making and print production as distinct specialized activities.

Album photographique

Album photographique de l’artiste et de l’amateur was a serial publication that organized architecture, reproductions of paintings, figures, and landscapes on standardized mounts with numbered plates. The BnF’s Abside de l’église de Notre-Dame à Paris is plate 8 from 1851, with the printing establishment, series title, and number incorporated into the mount^*9. Charles Marville’s Palais de l’École des Beaux-Arts à Paris belongs to the same series in 1852, and its record distinguishes the photographer from Blanquart-Evrard’s roles in editing and printing^*10. In Paris photographique, Vue prise du quai de l’École turns an urban view into part of a series issued under the same printer and publisher^*11.

Du Camp’s Travel Photobook

Maxime Du Camp’s Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie published photographs made during his 1849–51 travels in Egypt and the Middle East, printed in Blanquart-Evrard’s workshop in 1852. The Met’s view of Abu Simbel is a salted-paper print identified with the workshop and issued as plate 106 in the publication^*17. The museum describes the publication, containing 125 photographs, as an early travel book illustrated throughout with actual photographic prints^*18. A view of the cemetery at Siout is based on a negative from the same journey, and the warm print tone and consistent page format help unify the series visually^*19. The BnF acquired the album in 1852, making it an early example of photographs entering a library collection as visual records of archaeology and architecture^*13.

Series of Architecture, Art, and Figures

The Imprimerie photographique was not limited to a single genre. The BnF preserves genre scenes such as Famille paysanne jouant aux cartes among works published by Blanquart-Evrard^*20. The outdoor Vieux paysan assis sur un tronc d’arbre survives within the same editorial system^*21. Reproductions of paintings and prints, such as Les Musiciens ambulants, were issued as photographic plates that identified the work title, publisher, and printing establishment on the mount^*22. By giving location photographs, figure studies, and reproductions of art a common printing and publishing format, the workshop brought different kinds of images into the same market.

Closure of the Workshop and Production Costs

Even after techniques for high-volume printing had been developed, photographic publication did not immediately become inexpensive. In its discussion of Nature morte au lièvre, The Met notes that the workshop published more than 550 images over five years, but photographs remained more expensive than competing lithographs, and the establishment closed in 1855^*4. The need for sensitized paper, chemicals, washing, hand mounting, and binding continued to limit how far publication costs could fall even when printing itself became faster.

Photographic Publishing and Art Reproduction

In the 1850s, photography was expected to provide a new means of circulating reproductions of works of art and architecture. The Musée d’Orsay identifies Blanquart-Evrard’s establishment as an early commercial example of selling photographic reproductions of architecture and art to artists and amateurs^*14. Whereas an engraving translated an original work into line, photography transferred tonal values and detail produced by light onto another sheet. A printing establishment capable of multiplying that precision helped separate the viewing and study of art from the physical location of the original object.

Standardizing the Print

A group of large photographs from 1853–54 in the BnF records seventy-two works edited and published by Blanquart-Evrard as a single ensemble^*12. Even when the authors and subjects of individual negatives differed, consistent paper, printing, mounting, numbering, and series titles unified them as a book or portfolio. The Imprimerie photographique standardized print quality, paper, mounts, numbering, and physical format so that different negatives could be integrated into the same publication.

Interest in Color Photography

Blanquart-Evrard’s technical interests did not end with the closure of the workshop in 1855. The Met’s copy of his 1871 Les couleurs en photographie: causerie shows that after the announcement of three-color photographic processes by figures including Ducos du Hauron, he continued to pursue the practical realization and printing of color photography^*16. The question that remained consistent late in his career was how an image could be reproduced in particular materials and multiplied, more than the making of a single exposure.

Printer and Publisher as Author

The Getty’s person record lists Blanquart-Evrard as Printer on hundreds of works, alongside his role as photographer^*1. A photograph’s final appearance depended on more than the maker of the negative; exposure time, sensitized paper, development, fixing, tone, mounting, and series editing all affected the result. At the Imprimerie photographique, printing operated as a specialized task separate from exposure, and collection records continue to distinguish photographers from printers and publishers. The making of photobooks, portfolios, and art reproductions incorporated printing and editing after the camera as part of the production process.