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Edouard Baldus - La Fascade Meridionale de la Grand Galerie, Paris
Edouard Baldus
La Fascade Meridionale de la Grand Galerie, Paris
$7,500
Edouard Baldus - Lyon, Viaduc du Rhone
Edouard Baldus
Lyon, Viaduc du Rhone
$8,000
Marquis de Rostaing (or Baldus) - Church of the Madeleine, Paris
Marquis de Rostaing (or Baldus)
Church of the Madeleine, Paris
$7,200
Edouard Baldus - Ecole Militaire, Paris
Edouard Baldus
Ecole Militaire, Paris
$5,000
Edouard Baldus - Les Remparts a Avignon
Edouard Baldus
Les Remparts a Avignon
$2,500
Edouard Baldus - Model of a Ornamentation for the New Louvre in Gypsum
Edouard Baldus
Model of a Ornamentation for the New Louvre in Gypsum
$450
Edouard Baldus - Le Bourse, Paris
Edouard Baldus
Le Bourse, Paris
$350
Edouard Baldus (possibly) - Study of Architectural Detail
Edouard Baldus (possibly)
Study of Architectural Detail
$500
By Alex Novak

Édouard Baldus was born June 5, 1813 in Grünebach, Prussia. Fleeing Prussia from a counterfeiting charge, he came to Paris to study painting in 1838, and had also worked as a draughtsman and lithographer before switching to photography in the late 1840s. He may have photographed in Provence as early as 1849. Baldus submitted work to each of the annual Salons of painting and sculpture in Paris from 1841 to 1851. He became a naturalized citizen of France in 1856.

Baldus expert Malcolm Daniel notes, "As a painter he met with little success and achieved no critical mention, but in the decade that followed, from 1851 to 1861, Baldus abandoned the easel and took up the camera, rose to the top of his new profession, won international critical acclaim, secured commissions from government ministries and captains of industry, and created a body of photographs now considered early masterpieces of the art."

In 1851 he was selected to be one of the photographers for the Mission Héliographique, a government-sponsored photography survey. Baldus was sent south, to Fontainebleau, through Burgundy, the Dauphiné and Lyonnais, Provence, and a small part of Languedoc. He subsequently won government support for a project entitled Les Villes de France photographiées, an extended series of architectural views in Paris and the provinces in 1852-54.

In August 1855, Baron James de Rothschild, who was president of the Chemin de fer du Nord (Northern Railroad), commissioned Baldus to produce an album of views along the rail route from Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer for presentation to Queen Victoria, when she visited France later that very month. Baldus would draw a second commission in 1861 to document the route of the PLM railway from Lyon to Toulon. 1855 was an auspicious year for Baldus. Not only was he commissioned for his first railway album, but he exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and got highly positive reviews. He also began to photograph the construction of the New Louvre and Tuileries palaces.

In June 1856 Baldus was again sent by the government to the south near Lyon, Avignon and Tarascon to document damage caused by the Rhone River flooding. In 1860 a local prefect commissioned him to document buildings slated for destruction during rebuilding of the quays in Perigueux, where he inadvertently took a self portrait (fig.66).

He died in 1889 in Arcueil, France, bankrupt and in relative obscurity.

Édouard Baldus: Architectural Landscapes
About This Artist
Image List

Exhibited and Sold By
Contemporary Works / Vintage Works, Ltd.

258 Inverness Circle
Chalfont, Pennsylvania   18914   USA

Contact Alex Novak and Marthe Smith

Email info@vintageworks.net

Phone +1-215-518-6962

Call for an Appointment

 

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