SOTHEBY’S SALE OF 'PHOTOGRAPHS BY EUGÈNE & ADALBERT CUVELIER' TOTALS $2,892,000

Friday, 20 April 2007 00:13

New YorkCity - At Sotheby’s, a single-owner sale of An Important Collection of Photographs by Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier, on April 13th, which featured 41 stunning photographs by Eugène, and two by his father, Adalbert, including many of the mythic forest of Fontainebleau, commanded $2,892,000 (est. $1.4/2.1 million*).  Every lot in the auction sold – a “white glove” sale – with many lots fetching multiple times their high estimates.  While a number of these rare photographs have been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the Musée d’Orsay, many were seen by the public for the first time at Sotheby’s.

Two further sales will be held by the department later this month: Photographs from the Collection of Margaret W. Weston on April 25-26 and a various-owners sale of Photographs on April 26.

Christopher Mahoney, Senior Vice President and senior specialist in Sotheby’s Photographs department, said: “The results we saw today for photographs by Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier were nothing short of spectacular, and were a direct result of the richness of the prints, their superb condition, and their freshness to the market.  There was the very real sense in the photographs community that this sale was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attain works of such high quality.  We were pleased to have American as well as international museums among our bidders today, and are gratified that a number of these were successful buyers.”

Highlighting the sale was Eugène Cuvelier’s Village de Rivière, which achieved $288,000, setting a record for the photographer at auction (lot 15, est. $60/90,000); Hêtre pres du Bodmer, which brought $276,000 (lot 5, est. $80/120,000); and Fampoux – Près d’Arras, which realized $192,000 (lot 12, est. $70/100,000), all selling to Parisian dealer Serge Plantureux.  These three photographs were featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, Eugène Cuvelier, Photographer in the Circle of Corot, in 1997.

One of the two photographs by Adalbert in the collection, Along the Scarpe River, Near Arras, achieved $240,000, a record for the photographer at auction, selling to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (lot 26, est. $80/120,000).  The photograph shows a group of artists sketching under umbrellas along a picturesque river bank, and highlights both Cuveliers’ involvement with artists.

Eugène and Adalbert Cuvelier
Working primarily in the mythic forest of Fontainebleau, Eugène Cuvelier was a cohort of many of the key painters in the Barbizon school. Cuvelier counted among his friends Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, and others.  Like his painter friends, Cuvelier drew creative inspiration from the wild and varied terrain of the Fontainebleau forest.  For both Eugène and Adalbert, photography was strictly an artistic pursuit – neither worked as a professional photographer, nor exhibited widely.  And, while most of Eugène’s images are known in only one or two prints, only a handful of Adalbert’s are known to exist.  The collection being offered by Sotheby’s is by far the largest group of Cuvelier photographs to be sold at auction, and it is distinguished by the superb quality of the prints, their nearly pristine condition, and their extraordinary provenance.  The photographs were discovered in a Rhode Island auction in the late 1980s, in 19th-century packing crates with the stenciled address, ‘John C. Bancroft, Newport, R. I.’ As a young man, the New Englander John Chandler Bancroft studied painting in France in the early 1860s, and was connected to the painters of the Barbizon school. Sent to America in the 19^th-century, the photographs remained unknown until their appearance at auction.

Born and raised in Arras, Cuvelier learned photography from his father, Adalbert, an accomplished practitioner of the new art. In an age when a photographer, by necessity, mixed his own chemicals and prepared his own paper negatives and printing paper, the Cuveliers were craftsmen of the first degree.  Adalbert is known to art historians for having introduced first Corot, and then other Barbizon painters, to the cliché-verre process, a photographic method of printmaking in which the artist draws or etches on a prepared glass plate, which is then contact-printed onto photographically-sensitized paper.  This process became tremendously popular with artists, and both Adalbert and Eugène printed the glass plates for Corot, Rousseau, Daubigny, and others.

Eugène first visited Fontainebleau in the 1850s. In 1859, he married Louise Ganne, daughter of Barbizon’s principal innkeeper, Père Ganne (who billed himself as hôtelier des artistes). Corot and Rousseau served as official witnesses to their union.  With its 42,000 acres of wild and varied topography – including old-growth forests, massive oak trees, dramatic rock formations, and picturesque glades – the royal forest of Fontainebleau provided 19^th-century painters with a wealth of natural subject matter.  By the 1850s, Fontainebleau forest and its towns, Barbizon among them, had become a welcoming rural bohemia to artists escaping the upheaval of the industrial revolution, the crowded conditions of the city, as well as the strictures of academic painting.

Sotheby’s
Sotheby’s is a global company that engages in art auction, private sales and art-related financing activities.  The Company operates in 35 countries, with principal salesrooms located in New York and London.  The Company also regularly conducts auctions in 13 other salesrooms around the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Singapore.  Sotheby’s is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BID.  Visit : www.sothebys.com/