Choiselat & Ratel
1849
The Pavillon de Flore and the Tuileries Gardens

Daguerreotype
15.2 x 18.7 cm (6 x 7 3/8 in)
 
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, 2005 (2005.100.29)
 
Marie-Charles-Isidore Choiselat (French, 1815-1858); Stanislas Ratel (French, 1824-1904)
 
(Curatorial description, accessed: 19 January 2023) Taken in September 1849 from a window of the École des Beaux-Arts, this daguerreotype exhibits the dazzling exactitude and presence that characterize these mirrors of reality. True to the daguerreotype's potential, stationary objects are rendered with remarkable precision; under magnification one can clearly discern minute architectural details on the Pavillon de Flore, features of statuary and potted trees in the Tuileries Gardens, even the chimney pots on the buildings in the background along the rue de Rivoli.
 
Daguerre himself had chosen a nearly identical vantage point in 1839 for one of his earliest demonstration pieces, and it may well have been with that archetypal image in mind that Choiselat and Ratel made this large daguerreotype a decade later. Choiselat and Ratel, among the earliest practitioners to utilize and improve upon Daguerre's process, first published their methods for enhancing the sensitivity of the daguerreotype plate in 1840 and had achieved exposure times of under two seconds by 1843. Unlike Daguerre's long exposure, which failed to record the presence of moving figures, this image includes people (albeit slightly blurred) outside the garden gates, on the Pont Royal, and peering over the quai wall above the floating warm-bath establishment moored in the Seine. Still more striking is the dramatic rendering of the cloud-laden sky, achieved by the innovative technique of masking the upper portion of the plate partway through the exposure.

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(Mike Robinson, Facebook comment, 19 January 2022) I suspect is was a mask sandwiched between the plate holder and camera back based on the definite soft edge. As the mask would have to be at the bottom, the daguerreians would have to have it in place for a brief first exposure, (a second or two) then replace the darkslide to remove the plate holder to extract the paper. Finally returning the plate holder to the camera to complete the exposure. Dodging with a card in front of the lens may have worked also but the penumbra would be softer and less precise…I guess.
 
(Alan Griffiths, 11 July 2020) In a Zoom meeting on "French Daguerreotypes" presented by Malcolm Daniel, curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Mike Robinson described two ways this plate could have been made. One way was using a mask within the camera but the easier way would be to hold a mask steady in front of the camera as this would allow the correct exposure of both the buildings and the clouds.
 
LL/7443