Alphonse Eugène Hubert
[Still Life]

CultureFrench
Titles
  • [Still Life]
Date1839–1840
MediumDaguerreotype
DimensionsPlate: 6 1/8 × 8 in. (15.6 × 20.3 cm)
Frame: 12 3/16 × 14 3/8 × 9/16 in. (31 × 36.5 × 1.5 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase
Object number2022.480
Non exposé

Explore Further

Department
Photography
Object Type
Description


This remarkably well-preserved whole-plate daguerreotype by Alphonse Eugène Hubert, assistant and close associate of Louis Daguerre, was made just months after Daguerre revealed the secrets of his invention in August 1839. No doubt made outdoors in full sunlight, the arrangement of artistic bric-a-brac offered an immobile display with limited depth—desirable characteristics in the earliest days of daguerreotypy, when exposures were slow. Beyond practicality, however, such an arrangement was ideal for showing off the extraor­dinary precision of the process and for linking it to the realm of fine art, demonstrating photography’s ambitions even at its birth.



ProvenanceThe artist; given to Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau, 1840; likely by descent to his children, Hippolyte Louis Antoine Adrien and Marie Béatrice Antoinette, 1896; Château de Venteuil, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, Seine et Marne, France; likely purchased with a portion of the Jussieu library (Fizeau’s wife was Thérèse Valentine de Jussieu) by François Chamonal, Paris; purchased by Gérard Lévy and François Lepage, Paris, by 1975; by division to François Lepage, Paris, July 26, 1997; his estate, 2022; [sold “Succession François Lepage,” Millon, Paris, November 10, 2022, lot 42]; purchased by MFAH, 2022.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
The blue paper back of the plate package bears an inscription in ink by the Daguerreian pioneer Hippolyte Fizeau: Daguerréotype avec fixation au chlorure d’or Mr Hubert—architecte—1840

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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