[Unidentified photographer]. Two negatives... - Lot 60 - Marie-Saint Germain

[Unidentified photographer]. Two negatives on wax paper. The ruins of the castle at Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne), 1859. Negative on oval wax paper 21.5x 18 cm. Located and dated in ink on the negative. The ruins of the castle at Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne), 1859. Negative on wax paper, 27 x 21.5 cm. Located and dated in ink on the negative. Active in the Cierges (Aisne) region between 1855 and 1859. A set of negatives on wax paper and positives on salted paper made in the Cierges region (Hauts de France) by a gentleman amateur photographer. The prints are dated from 1855 to 1859, and mainly depict our calotypist's property, located in the center of the village of Cierges opposite Notre Dame church, the surrounding countryside and the villages of Fère and Coulonges. Our calotypist uses waxed paper negatives based on Gustave Le Gray's process, described in the third edition of his "Traité nouveau théorique et pratique des procédés et manipulations sur papier et sur verre" published in 1852. "The process that I put at the head of this work, under the title of dry process, is the one I use every day. I especially recommend it to photography enthusiasts, as giving the most complete results, both for ease of handling and for the beauty of the prints". Not only does this process produce high-quality images, it also enables the preparation of easily transportable negatives in advance, which can be stored for several days after sensitization. In this fine collection of previously unpublished photographs, our gentleman takes pictures of his estate, the buildings, his cabriolet and the surrounding villages. Of particular note are the bas-reliefs on the pillars of the property's front door and on the rear garden façade of the main building, motifs used to create photo montages. He was one of the hundred or so calotypists active in France in the 1850s and 1860s who discovered and practiced photography on salted paper, by reading the technical and theoretical treatises on photography available at the time.