A paper negative - to which there is a matching positive - of one of Robert's most beautiful portraits.

Laurie Dahlberg writes of this work:

"The portrait of Henriette reading is somewhat unusual in his portraits in that it suggests a mise-en-scene. Although his portraits look quite candid, their exposure was still lengthy, lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to three or four minutes. For this reason, it was convenient to find poses that would allow the model some stability'; the guise of a reader absorbed in the pages of a book was a a very old tradition in portraiture that allowed the sitter to sit still for a length of time, while conveying an entirely natural appearance. ' (Laurie Dahlberg, 'The Portraits of Louis Robert' in Louis Robert: L'alchemie des images, 1999)

The present untrimmed print may be compared to a cropped version in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Their catalogue entry records the following:

'Robert was a gifted portraitist, as evidenced by this tender depiction of his daughter Henriette reading. In its quiet contemplative mood and soft atmospheric tonal palette, Robert's rendering transposes the lexicon of contemporary French painting to the new medium. It is no surprise that the photograph recalls Corot's several paintings of women reading, as the painter was also a member of the circle at Sevres.

Only in the late 1840s and early 1850s, after a decade of daguerreotypty, did ambitious artists, trained in the aesthetics of painting and the requisite chemical manipulations, take up the still experimental processes of paper print photography. Best known are those professional photographers in Paris - Gustave Le Gray, Edouard Baldus, and others - who played major roles in the photographic salone and societies of the capital and who shaped grand orchestral compositions from the trees of Fontainebleau Forest, Gothic architecture, or modern boulevards, bridges and railroads. Without the preoccupations of the professional photographer - the business of running a portrait studio, the politics of securing government commissions, the economics of publishing one's work - a second constellation of inspired photographers developed in Sevres along the Seine on the outskirts of Paris. Louis Robert and Victor Regnault were its central figures. Equally as accomplished as their Parisian colleagues, the |Sevres photographers turned their cameras toward more intimate subjects - the gardens, courtyards, and narrow roads of |Sevres, friends and family at home and in the factory's ateliers, views of the banks of the Seine, and table-top still lifes - an rendered them with deliberate informality and painterly fracture.

Cataloguing by Phillips:

Henriette
Robert, early 1850s

Untrimmed waxed salt print and its unique waxed
paper negative. Image: 23.5 x 18.5 cm (91/4 x 71/4 in.)

Sheet: 34 x 26 cm (133/ 8 x 101/4 in.) Negative: 23.5 x 18.5 cm (91/4 x 71/4 in.)

This paper negative
is unique. This salt print
is one of only two known prints
of this image to date;
the other print,
trimmed to image,
is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Louis-Rémy Robert spent his life and career at the porcelain
factory at Sèvres, assuming the role of head of the painting
workshop in 1847, and together
with Henri-Victor Regnault
(lot 5), was a central
figure among the Sèvres photographers. Robert took up paper photography around 1850, intrigued
by the combination of painting
and chemistry found in the new medium. His earliest
photographs were intimate
portraits of his family, friends and colleagues at the factory.
His daughter Henriette, seen here, was one of his regular sitters at the time.

This contemplative portrait
in both positive and negative provides a glimpse of Robert’s painterly
sensibilities. The thin waxed paper negative
highlights his play with light as seen in the halo around the figure of his daughter. The tonal patches
of chemical staining visible on the paired salt print create suggestive
textures, resulting in a unique object that is lyrical and full of expressiveness. The present lot reveals Robert’s instinctive approach to creating
his salt prints and best exemplifies his ability to draw out
aesthetic effects from early photographic techniques.

This paper negative is unique. This salt print is one of only two known prints of this image to date; the other print, trimmed to image, is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ouis-Rémy Robert spent his life and career at the porcelain factory at Sèvres, assuming the role of head of the painting workshop in 1847, and together with Henri-Victor Regnault (lot 5), was a central figure among the Sèvres photographers. Robert took up paper photography around 1850, intrigued by the combination of painting and chemistry found in the new medium. His earliest photographs were intimate portraits of his family, friends and colleagues at the factory. His daughter Henriette, seen here, was one of his regular sitters at the time.

This contemplative portrait in both positive and negative provides a glimpse of Robert’s painterly sensibilities. The thin waxed paper negative highlights his play with light as seen in the halo around the fgure of his daughter. The tonal patches of chemical staining visible on the paired salt print create suggestive textures, resulting in a unique object that is lyrical and full of expressiveness. The present lot reveals Robert’s instinctive approach to creating his salt prints and best exemplifes his ability to draw out aesthetic efects from early photographic techniques.