[Louis Robert, Onésipe Aguado, Olympe Aguado, Baron von Stoffel and others at the Aguado Country Estate, Grossouvre, France]
Louis-Rémy Robert French
Person in photograph Olympe Aguado de las Marismas French
Person in photograph Onésipe Aguado de las Marismas French
Not on view
The imposing size of this photograph—unusual for a nineteenth-century group portrait—imparts a sense of importance to the activity depicted therein: seven onlookers stare intently at three men crouched on the ground in front of a well. Have the men made a discovery? Are they plotting something critical to the future of the estate? Or are they simply playing a game of… chicken? Closer scrutiny reveals that the men (identified in the caption as the photographers, Louis Robert and Onésipe Aguado, and the French officer, Baron von Stoffel) are playing a game with coins or discs that seems to be related to galine (also known as poule, or chicken) in which players attempt to get their coin closest to a target. The game is simply a ruse to pose members of the Aguado family and some friends for a bravado feat of photography orchestrated on their country estate in Grossouvre, France.
