Lot 600 Dα

Charles Marville, a pioneer of paper photography since 1850, was from 1851 to 1855 the most important supplier of images for the 'Imprimerie Photographique Blanquart-Evrard' in Lille. For their photographic albums, he supplied studies of medieval architecture in France and Germany, impressions of landscape and buildings on the banks of the Rhine, the forest of Fontainebleau and from Algeria. Between 1858 and his death, Marville was commissioned by the city of Paris to photograph the capital, which was undergoing constant urban changes. In 1865, shortly before the extensive modernisation of the city by Baron Haussmann, Marville photographed streets and residential buildings, the last inventory of the "old Paris".

In the albumen print offered here, photographed in December 1876, Charles Garnier's new opera house stands in the central background of the composition as a symbol of the magnificent architecture of the Second Empire; the foreground and middle ground, as well as well-set figures, serve as a scenery of transience, illustrating the beginning of a new era.