Henri-Victor Regnault was one of a small group of artists at
the Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres who experimented with paper print
photography beginning soon after the 1848 revolution, when the factory’s
activity slowed with the absence of royal commissions for lavish wares. His
training as both a painter and chemist prepared him well for the new art of
photography, and he found his subject close at hand in the lazy river and
peaceful village landscape just west of Paris. Although the beauty and
ambitious scale of Regnault’s pictures show him to have been a skilled
photographer, few of his photographs survive.