Photographic History Collection: Charles Nègre
date: label: date made
content: 1850s
name: label: maker
content: Young, Nelson
notes: label: Description
content: The Charles Nègre collection consists of 118 prints. These are black and white modern prints acquired by the Smithsonian from by Andre Jammes, a well-known photography collector from France, in 1965. Jammes printed these images during the 1960 from original Nègre paper and glass negatives. The subject matter includes portraits, landscapes, architectural images, and images of urban and rural daily life in France during the 1850s. The size of the prints ranges from 4"x3" to 9.5"x13".
label: Description
content: Charles Nègre (1820-1880) was a French painter and photographer born in Grasse, France. In 1839, at the age of 19, Nègre moved to Paris and studied painting under the Academic painters Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Paul Delaroche. It was during this time he was introduced to photography by Gustave Le Grey (catalog numbers 6288, 6290, and 6501). Nègre began making daguerreotypes and then moved on to the collotype process. In the beginning, Nègre used photography as an aid to his painting rather than as another art form, but over time he began to focus on his photographic works more than painting.
label: Description
content: Starting in 1850, he became one of the first photographers to concentrate on unposed photographs of daily life in Paris. In 1952, he began photographically documenting life the region of Midi in southern France. Nègre took hundreds of photographs of trades people, landscapes, and architecture. In 1860, due to health issues, Nègre retired to Nice in southern France, where he made portraits for tourists until his death in 1880.
label: Description
content: A selection of 14 prints were on display in the "1876" exhibit in the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in 1976.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: COLL.PHOTOS.000054
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Charles Nègre Collection
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)