69:0265:0204
Unidentified Photographer
DESCRIPTIVE TITLE:
Casa del Marques del Apartado and Convent and College of
the Ensenanza
ca. 1839
NON-GEH NUMBER: #10D-532 (Cromer)
Buerger, Janet E. --French Daguerreotypes.-- Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989. pg. 45.//
EXHIBITION HISTORY:
INSCRIPTION:
(hallmark) Alphonse Giroux
NOTES:
Cataloged JB, updated 9/89, SB.
Fernando Osorio Alarcon believes that there were the first
photographic images of Mexico and suggests that these were made by
Jean Prelier Dudoille, a French engraver living in Mexico City. It is
recorded that Prelier arrived in Vera Cruz on December 3, 1839. A
newspaper account dated Jan. 21, 1840, noted that Prelier had
recently made several daguerreotypes in the area of the Cathedral in
Mexico City as a public demonstration of the process.
Osorio speculates that Cromer may have acquired the plates from Baron
Louis Gros, who visited Mexico in 1852. They may have been purchased
from Prelier, or from descendants that returned with the plates to
France. Additionally he raises the possibility that Fanny Calderon de
la Barca (1804-1882), the Scottish wife of the first Spanish envoy to
independent Mexico, acquired the images as momentos of her travels in
Mexico (Dec. 18, 1839 to Jan 8, 1842), or may even have been the
daguerreotypist herself.
Osorio Alarcon, F. "Los Daguerrotipos Mexicanos..." in "Mexico en el
Tiempo, revista de Historua y Conservacion" Year 3, No. 22
(January/February 1998).
SUBJECTS:
daguerreotype
whole plate, 22.0 x 16.5 cm.
Gift of Eastman Kodak Company: ex-collection Gabriel Cromer
GEH NEGS: 22945 23164
69:0265:0204
"French Daguerreotypy", US, NY, Rochester February - June, 1977.//
"From Today Painting is Dead: Emergence of Photography During July
Monarchy", US, NY, Rochester December - March 11, 1989.//
architecture, facade / Casa del Marques del Apartado
architecture, building / Convent & College of the Ensenanza
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