Early in the 1870s, the Parisian firm
Goupil et Cie. purchased the French rights to the woodburytype process that had
been developed in England a decade before and began to create one of the most
extensive photographic documentations of celebrated personalities ever
attempted. The firm's periodical, called the Galerie Contemporaine, included
photographs by the noted portraitists Nadar and Etienne Carjat as well as
portraits by the nobleman Vicomte Albert d'Amoux, known as Bertall, who was active
in Paris during the 1860s and early 1870s.