Lot 4001: Quenedey, Edme / Gilles-Louis Chretien: Physionotrace portraits

Quenedey, Edme / Gilles-Louis Chretien: Physionotrace portraits Edme Quenedey (1756 - 1830), Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1754 - 1811), Etienne Bouchardy pere. Profile portraits. 1809. 4 physionotrace engravings (6 cm diameter) on circa 10 x 10 cm paper (2 by Quenedey, 1 by Chrétien and 1 by Bouchardy). With engraved annotations below the images.
Physionotrace portraits were made by first producing a silhouette portrait of the sitter. This portrait was then transferred in reduced form onto a copper plate by using a mechanical apparatus which was invented by Gilles-Louis Chrétien in 1786. Shortly after Chrétien had founded a very successful portrait studio in Paris together with Edme Quenedey in 1788 , the latter established his own portrait studio, which was also very successful. In Paris, at the height of "Daguerreotypomanie" in 1847, the most successful photographers produced up to three thousand portraits annually, while between 1786 - circa 1810 there were only two studios in Paris which produced a relatively small number of physionotrace engravings. Consequently very few of these intriguing portraits are preserved today. Because of their origin and the realism physionotrace portraits have, they can be seen as true photo-graphic objects and are therefore classified as a forerunner of photography. - Two with some foxing in margins, otherwise attractive prints in good condition.
Lit.: H. Beraldi/R. Portalis. Les graveurs du dix-huitième siècle, Tome III. Paris 1882, pp. 364-65.
Gisèle Freund. Photographie und Gesellschaft. Munich 1976, pp. 16-23.
Beaumont Newhall. The History of Photography (fifth edition). Boston 1994, pp. 10-11.