FÉLIX NADAR, ÉTIENNE CARJAT, ADOLPHE BRAUN, EUGÈNE... Lot n° 121

Series of 150 positive gelatin relief matrices prepared by Goupil, then Boussod, Valadon & Cie for the Galerie Contemporaine, Paris, 1876-1884 150 photoglyptic gelatin matrices, loose in the two original sampling albums. The Galerie Contemporaine, Littéraire, Artistique, published by Baschet with photoglyptic portraits by Goupil & Cie, was issued between 1876 and 1884 in Paris. Each issue dealt with the life and work of a writer, painter or sculptor, and included a photographic portrait: Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Doré, Rossini, François Coppée, George Sand, Gounod, le Duc d'Aumale,Gustave Corot, Edmond About, Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Droz, Bartholdi, Rouget de l'Isle, Adolphe Thiers, Edmond de Goncourt, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Baron Taylor, Jules Janin, Ernest Renan, Octave Feuillet, Ambroise Thomas, Alexandre Dumas fils, Alphonse Karr, Pierre Loti, Champfleury, Emile Littré, Théodore de Banville, Louis Figuier, Louis Blanc, Alphonse Daudet, Louis Pasteur and many more. During eight years the published portraits were printed in woodburytype, a fully continuoustone photomechanical process using carbon black, superbly stable from light fading. This process required negative lead matrices, filled with hot, gelatin-based, pigmented ink. A goodquality india ink was used to produce black images.Woodburytype images were also printed in dark-brown, brown, or purple-brown colors resembling gold-toned albumen photographs in which black was mixed with red pigments (cf. Stulik& Kaplan, Woodburytype, CCI). The lead mold, the negative matrix needed a positive matrix: a gelatin relief matrix like those. A high-power hydraulic press was used to press the gelatin matrix into some smooth, perfectly leveled plate of lead, forming then one, two, three negative lead matrices (molds). After a solution of gelatin, albumen, sugar, and ammonium dichromate was dried, it was exposed to sunlight under a glass negative of Nadar or Carjat. Any gelatin not fully hardened by light exp