The Courret family first came to Peru in the 1830s and operated stores. Eugenio and Aquiles [sometimes Aguiles] Courret, better known under their "Courret Hermanos" imprint, were French-born photographers active in Lima beginning in 1863.
Eugenio Courret arrived in Peru in 1861 and worked for Eugène Maunoury studio, then representative
of the Nadar studio in Paris ("Corresponsal de la Casa Nadar de Paris"). After opening his own studio "Fotografia Central" on 9 March 1863 with his brother Aquiles, he travelled to Tahiti from September 1863 to March 1864 where he took the first photographs of Queen Pomare. The Courret Hnos studio covered the major events of South American Pacific coast including the First War of the Pacific between Spain and Peru (1863-1866), the earthquake in southern Peru (1868), the International Exposition Fair of Lima (1871), the Andean railways development and the War of the Pacific (known as Saltpeter War) between Chile and a united Bolivia and Peru (1879-1883). Known to have a studio in Bolivia, Courret Hermanos were also active in Valparaiso (Chile) under the Rowsell Courret Hnos imprint (1868-1871). They are also known to have distributed photographs by Paul-Emile Miot. Aquiles returned to France in 1877, but Eugenio remained in Lima until the late 1800s. Their studio continued under other management until 1935.
Recuerdos del Perú, an 1868 presentation album now held by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, contains numerous albumen prints of an excursion to southern Peru, including an earthquake-devastated Arequipa, and four Bolivian scenes: two of the main plaza in Oruro, and one each of the Plaza Murillo in La Paz and the church in Calamarca. (All but the Plaza Murillo print are incorrectly identified as La Paz views.) The Getty Research Institute in Santa Monica, California, has a two-volume Courret album, Views of Chile and Peru, which contains a few Bolivian views. A small portrait, about half the size of a carte-de-visite, perhaps of the size called "mignon," bears the imprint "E. Courret y Cía. Lima" imprint on verso, with a wetstamped addition of "La Paz, Comercio 41," indicating that the Courret brothers had an agency in La Paz.
[Courtesy of Dan Buck & Renato Mazzoni]
Courret Hermanos
Portraits
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Genealogy of Courret Hermanos
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