Friday, August 11, 2023

At Home and Abroad with Girault de Prangey

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Autoportrait
1840
daguerreotype
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Portrait of a Woman holding a Flower
1842
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Portrait of Mme Annette Langerrois
ca. 1842-44
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Portrait of Two Women
ca. 1842-55
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Study of a Tree
1841
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Cedars of Lebanon
1844
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Cathédrale Notre Dame, Paris
1841
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
At Sea, on board the ship Le Chaillé
ca. 1842-43
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Arch of Constantine, Rome
1842
daguerreotype
private collection

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Reliefs at Base, Arch of Constantine, Rome
1842
daguerreotype
private collection

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Ponte Rotto, Rome
1842
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"When Girault photographed the Ponte Rotto, the oldest stone bridge in Rome, only two of its original five arches remained standing, and locals used it as a fishing pier. Built over the Tiber [as the Pons Aemilius] in the second century BC, it had suffered serious damage from generations of flooding.  At the end of the nineteenth century one of the arches was demolished [the perpetrators of that atrocity now slowly roasting in Hell] to make room for a new bridge, leaving the single arch that survives today." 

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome
1842
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Vase, Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome
1842
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Temple of Artemis, Sardis
1843
daguerreotype
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Greco-Roman Theater Capital, Miletus
1843
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Caryatid on the Erechtheum, Athens
1842
daguerreotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey
Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens
1842
daguerreotype
private collection

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey never exhibited his pioneering daguerreotypes, nor, dying without heirs, did he make any provision for their survival.  Most of the small metal plates, stored in small wooden boxes, lingered in his abandoned villa until their accidental discovery decades later by a neighboring landowner.  The majority are now in public institutions, but the example directly above, dating from the artist's 1842 sojourn in Athens, made its way to auction in 2003.  At that time, with the fame of Girault at last established, it commanded a hammer price of $922,488.