Nadar - Album de la Galerie Contemporaine. Biographies & Portraits

Nadar [i.a.] - Album de la Galerie Contemporaine. Biographies & Portraits - Paris - Revue Illustrée - [ca 1880] - 1st edition - [54] pp - Cloth binding - 28 x 35 cm.

Condition: Good - COMPLETE. Book binding (possibly restored) with wear, front cover some old stains, but sturdy and attractive as a whole.

Large format antique 19th century photobook with 12 pasted-in original photos (18 x 23 cm) depicting well-known French gentlemen. The clichés were made by famous French photographers and printed, using the Woodbury type process by Studio Photo Goupil & Co. Each portrait with 4 pages of information and facsimile of the handwriting of the person portrayed.

¶ Bound edition in linen luxury binding with portraits of 1. Général Chanzy (by unknown photographer), 2. Théodore de Banville (by Emile Tourtin) and 3. Octave Feuillet (by Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon). In addition three photos by Nadar (pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910): 4. Ferdinand Fabre, 5. Edmond Gondinet and 6. Ernest Legouvé.

Followed by six clichés by Étienne Carjat (1828-1906): 7. Arsène Houssaye; 8. Henri Monnier, 9. Louis Blanc 10. Colonel Denfert-Rochereau; 11. Eugène Spuller and (most famous of all): 12. the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). It is this picture that is used as an illustration on Baudelaire's Wikipedia page.