Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Henri Le Secq

 
Art Encyclopedia: Henri Le Secq (des Tournelles)
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Art Encyclopedia

(b Paris, 18 Aug 1818; d Paris, 26 Dec 1882). French photographer, painter, printmaker and collector. After studying with the sculptor James Pradier and the painters Jean-Pierre Granger (1779-1840) and Paul Delaroche, he made his d?but at the Salon of 1842, winning a third-class medal there in 1845. He turned to photography in the wave of self-enrichment preceding the 1848 Revolution. With Charles N?gre he experimented with the waxed paper negative process of Gustave Le Gray, from whom he probably received personal instruction before 1850. Unlike other photographers, who later adopted glass negatives, Le Secq continued to use paper, at first employing photographs as studies for his genre paintings.

See the Abbreviations for further details.


Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Photography Encyclopedia: Henri Le Secq
Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Photography Encyclopedia

Le Secq, Henri (1818-82), French architectural photographer. The son of a politician, he studied art in the studio of Paul Delaroche in the early 1840s. Encouraged by fellow pupil Gustave Le Gray, he turned to photography, initially as an aid to painting. But his enthusiasm for his native Paris and its buildings led him to build a reputation as an architectural photographer. In 1851 he became a founder member of the Société Héliographique. That year, he was also invited to join the official Mission Héliographique to create a visual record of potentially threatened historic buildings. Le Secq's brief included, in addition to a number of ecclesiastical sites in the Paris area, the cathedrals of Chartres, Strasbourg, and Rheims. His practice was to produce salted-paper prints from waxed-paper negatives, and his oeuvre encompassed still-life and landscape studies as well as architectural work. At the end of the 1850s, when paper negatives were being superseded by glass, he largely withdrew from photography, concentrating on his painting and antiquarian interests.

— Robert Pols

Bibliography

  • Mondenard, A. de, La Mission héliographique: cinq photographes parcourent la France en 1851 (2002)
Wikipedia: Henri Le Secq
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Henri Le Secq

Portrait of Henri Le Secq by Gustave Le Gray
Born 18 August 1818(1818-08-18)
Paris
Died 26 December 1882 (aged 64)
Paris
Occupation Photographer

Henri Jean-Louis Le Secq (18 August 1818 –26 December 1882) was a French painter and photographer. After the French government made the daguerreotype open for public in 1851, Le Secq was one of the five photographers selected to carry out a photographic survey of architecture (Commission des Monuments Historiques).[1]

Contents

Early life

Henri Le Secq was born in 1818 in Paris and was a son of a politician. He was trained in sculpture and worked in several studios. He was also a collector of wrought iron objects and the Musée le Secq des Tournelles in Rouen is devoted to him.[2] He later started his photographic career under Paul Delaroche.[3]

Middle years

He experimented with various photograph processing techniques together with his colleague Charles Nègre and later worked with Gustave Le Gray learning the waxed-paper negative process. This process had the advantage that it produced negatives unlike the daguerreotype process. He, along with Hippolyte Bayard, Edouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray and O Mestral, was sent on Missions Héliographiques to document famous architectural monuments in France. He worked mainly on cathedrals in Chartres, Strasbourg, Reims and near Paris. Cameras capable of taking large photographs, size of 51 cm by 74 cm, were used. His works during this Commission des Monuments Historiques are considered to be his finest works.[4] In 1851 he became one of the founders of the first photographic organization of the world, unfortunately very short lived, Société héliographique (1851 - 1853).[5]

Large figures on the North porch, Chartres Cathedral[6]

Later years

He gave up photography after 1856 but continued to paint and collect art. Around 1870 he started reprinting his famous works as cyanotypes as he was afraid of possible loss due to fading. He gave the reprints dates of the original negatives, some of which are still in good condition.[7]

Notes

  1. ^ "History of photography by Robert Laggat". http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/le_secq.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  2. ^ "Musées de la ville de Rouen". http://www.rouen-musees.com/tournelles/index.html. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  3. ^ "Biography at eastman.org". http://www.eastman.org/fm/amico99/htmlsrc1/intro.html. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  4. ^ "Luminous-Lint". http://www.luminous-lint.com/__sw.php?action=ACT_SING_PH&p1=Henri__Le_Secq&p2=ABCDEFGHIJKLN. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  5. ^ "Getty Museum". http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1774&page=1. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  6. ^ "The Metropolitan Museum of Art". http://12.151.120.44/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=19&viewmode=0&item=1990.1130. Retrieved 2007-03-22. 
  7. ^ Ware, Mike. Cyanotype : The history, science and art of photographic printing in Prussian blue. ISBN 1-900747-073. 

References

  • Janis, Eugenia Parry, and Josianne Sartre. Henri Le Secq; Photographe de 1850 a 1860. Catalogue Raisonné de la Collection de la Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris 1986 ISBN 2-08-012056-5
  • Chartres & Prose Poems. With photographs by Henri Le Secq. NY: The Eakins Press, 1970
  • Antic de Mondenard, La Mission heliographique, Cinq photographes parcourent la France en 1851, published by Monum, editions du patrimoine, France, 2002
  • Shelly, Rice (1999). Parisian views. MIT Press. pp. 288. ISBN 0-262-68107-2. 

External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Henri Le Secq

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Photography Encyclopedia. The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Henri Le Secq".  Read more