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Exceptional Late 19th Century Goupil & Cie Art Photograph Collector’s Album – 148 Images – c.1877–1880s
Offered here is an unusually large late-19th-century collector’s album containing 148 mounted photographic/photomechanical reproductions of European paintings, many associated with the celebrated Paris art publishers and dealers Goupil & Cie.
The album appears to have been privately assembled during the late 1870s or early 1880s from commercially issued art reproductions rather than published as a fixed-volume book.
Research has identified images in the collection corresponding to works issued by Goupil & Cie through Musée pour tous: Album de l’art contemporain, as well as subjects represented in Goupil’s broader photographic publishing program.
Institutional collections including the British Library and Rijksmuseum preserve comparable Goupil reproductions from Musée pour tous, variously catalogued as carbon prints, Woodburytypes/photoglypties and other period photographic or photomechanical reproductions.
The album is particularly appealing because the original collector carefully identified many of the images in faint period pencil, generally writing the artist’s surname and French title beneath each reproduction.
Artists represented include numerous important and popular 19th-century European painters, with subjects encompassing fashionable society, children, domestic interiors, courtship, historical scenes, rural and peasant life, animals, military subjects and sentimental genre painting.
Album details:
• 148 mounted images
• 57 image-bearing leaves
• Heavy album leaves approximately 17 × 13½ inches
• Largest images approximately 8½ × 11 inches
• Images mounted in varying arrangements, generally 1–4 per page
• Numerous period handwritten French artist/title identifications
• Three unused album leaves remain following the final mounted images
• Decorative terminal/end leaf
• Dating approximately late 1870s–early 1880s
The varying sizes and arrangements of the images, handwritten identifications and unused leaves at the rear strongly indicate that this was a purpose-made collector’s album individually assembled by its original owner, rather than a standard published volume with a predetermined plate count.
The collection has remained together as an album and is being offered intact.
Album pages measure approximately 17 x 13.5 inches. The album weighs approximately 28.8 pounds before protective shipping materials.
Condition:
Antique condition with expected age-related wear. Album leaves show scattered foxing, toning, spotting and occasional marks. Individual reproductions exhibit varying degrees of fading, toning, surface wear and age-related discoloration. Pencil captions are extremely faint in places. The album/binding shows substantial age and wear, including loss/damage to the exterior cover/binding as shown in the photographs. Three unused leaves remain at the rear before the decorative terminal leaf.
Please examine all photographs carefully as they are an important part of the condition description. Due to the age, size, weight and nature of this album, it is being sold as found and has not been restored.
A remarkable survivor for a collector of 19th-century photography, French Salon art, Goupil & Cie material, European art history, antique albums or historical ephemera.
The album will be exceptionally well protected for shipment. It has been individually wrapped and cushioned, reinforced with rigid board, and securely packed within a heavy-duty double-wall shipping carton.
