This exceptionally large and dramatic salt print is also exceptional in its apparent lack of subject. Rather than take an obvious viewpoint and clear subject matter, the angle chosen in oblique and it is stone work, rather than street or buildings that is most prominent. The result anticipates the ways that walls and texture would become such a staple of the twentieth century Modernist.

The Getty records the following:

After studying Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard's modifications to William Henry Fox Talbot's positive/negative calotype paper process, Henri-Victor Regnault probably began to photograph around 1847. He photographed landscapes, architecture, portraits, and genre scenes. A founding member of the Société héliographique in 1851, he also served as the founding president of the Société Française de Photographie in 1854. A chemist and professor of physics, he directed the Sèvres Manufactory from 1852 until 1871 and established a photographic department there. He eventually gave up photography to support and promote the promising painting career of his son, Alex-Georges-Henri. His son was killed in the Franco-Prussian War, which also destroyed Regnault's laboratory at Sèvres.