Lot 36: EUGÈNE CUVELIER 1837-1900

'LE SULLY'

measurements note
13¼ by 10 in. (33.7 by 25.4 cm.)

salt print, numbered '271' by the photographer in the negative, mounted, titled in an unidentified hand in pencil on the mount, matted, 1860s

PROVENANCE

The collection of John Chandler Bancroft, Middletown, Rhode Island

Gustave J. S. White Co., Auctioneers, Newport, Rhode Island, 1989

Acquired from the above by a New England antiques dealer

To the present owners, 1989

LITERATURE

Ulrike Gauss, Henning Weidemann, and Daniel Challe, Eugène Cuvelier (Stuttgart, 1996, in conjunction with the exhibition), no. 271 (this print)

NOTE

One of the many venerable oak trees in the forest of Fontainebleau, Le Sully was almost certainly named for the Frenchman Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (1560-1641). Bethune was sent as boy to the court of Henri de Navarre, who would later become King Henri IV of France, and served under him in various capacities, ultimately becoming director of the Council of Finance in 1596. In this office he implemented a series of revisions of the country's tax laws, and wielded an ever increasing amount of influence. He was named duc de Sully in 1606. Sully proposed an elaborate canal system to facilitate the transport of grain and produce to areas in need: the resulting Canal de Briare connected the Loire and Seine rivers and was completed in 1642, a year after Sully's death. It is likely his interest in forests and his efforts to prevent their destruction that earned him the namesake pictured here by Cuvelier.

Gauss accounts for only one print of this image: the salt print offered here.