ticketsMember | Make a donation

[Windmills, Montmartre]

1839
Not on view
Even before the detailed processes of Talbot and Daguerre were revealed, a third inventor had successfully obtained photographic images using a process of his own creation. Hippolyte Bayard, experimenting in the hours left free from his civil service job, had brought his process from conception to fruition in the short space of a few months early in 1839. Like Daguerre's technique, Bayard's was a direct-positive process; like Talbot's, it produced photographs on paper. Each picture required some thirty minutes of exposure.

This photograph, inscribed on the verso "Essai de 1839 Avril Mai," is one of Bayard's earliest surviving prints and among the rarest of photographic incunabula. Its chemical stains and slight discoloration only heighten the modern viewer's sense of bearing witness to the magic that first enabled sensitized paper to retain an image thrown by the lens of a camera obscura.

The picturesque windmills of Montmartre, the outlying suburb that was becoming the bohemian quarter of Paris, were a frequent subject of Bayard's earliest photographs, and likely figured in some of the thirty pictures shown by the artist in the first public exhibition of photographs, held in Paris in July 1839. Remembering that occasion a dozen years later, the critic Francis Wey wrote of the exhibited works, "They resembled nothing I had ever seen. … One contemplates these direct positives as if through a fine curtain of mist. Very finished and accomplished, they unite the impression of reality with the fantasy of dreams: light grazes and shadow caresses them."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Windmills, Montmartre]
  • Artist: Hippolyte Bayard (French, 1801–1887)
  • Date: 1839
  • Medium: Salted paper print
  • Dimensions: Image: 9.3 × 10.6 cm (3 11/16 × 4 3/16 in.), irregularly trimmed
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
  • Object Number: 2005.100.32
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

More Artwork
A slider containing 5 items.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.
Femme portant un bébé (Woman carrying a baby)
Hippolyte Bayard
ca. 1847
[Classical Head in Profile], Hippolyte Bayard French, Salted paper print
[Classical Head in Profile]
Hippolyte Bayard
probably 1839
Bayard. XXV Calotypes 1812 - 1850
Hippolyte Bayard
André Jammes
1960s
[Still Life with Statuary], Hippolyte Bayard French, Albumen silver print from glass negative
[Still Life with Statuary]
Hippolyte Bayard
Early 1850s
[Classical Head], Hippolyte Bayard French, Salted paper print
[Classical Head]
Hippolyte Bayard
probably 1839

Related Content

Timeline of Art History

Entries from The Met's art encyclopedia.

Publications

Books, guides, and catalogues published by The Met.

Research Resources

The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.

To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.

Feedback

We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.