Who really was Charles Marville? The man, who immortalized the monuments and arteries of Paris before and after the transformations of the capital undertaken under the Second Empire, is among the pioneers of photography in the 19th century. Yet his life and work remain enigmatic in many respects. This is what the first biography dedicated to the character tells us, an XXL work, richly documented and illustrated, which reads like a detective novel.
In the role of the bloodhound, the architect and historian Bertrand Lemoine set out to retrace the journey of Marville, whose real surname was only discovered a few years ago: born Charles-François Bossu in 1813, mocked by his comrades school because of his name, he adopted a pseudonym from his beginnings as an illustrator and engraver.
For Inspector Lemoine, it all began in Lectoure, in the Gers, when he discovered, in 2018, a painting in the window of an antique dealer. The canvas, which depicts a man, brush and palette in hand, resembles a self-portrait. After research, the man turned out to be Charles Marville. Did he represent himself? Did he pose for one of his artist friends? And, moreover, did he even work as a painter, he who presented himself in this way, but of whom, apart from the photographic collection that he left, only drawings have reached us?
We don’t know the intimacy of this discreet character, who worked out of sight in his workshop on rue d’Enfer – today Denfert-Rochereau -. Remaining single until his death in 1879, he was close to Ingres whose works he photographed, flanked by a young assistant who seemed to occupy a more important place than that of a simple collaborator, blessed with a mysterious companion who will become his heir.
Over the course of 650 pages of Bertrand Lemoine’s book, Old and New Paris unfold before our eyes, the transition from daguerreotype to calotype comes to light, while the Commune sets the City of Light ablaze. Deciphered in detail, the production of the precursor of the lens, who left neither correspondence nor writings, reveals a sensitive artist: virtuoso photographer of the great Haussmann works and the spire of Notre-Dame erected by his contemporary Viollet-Le- Duke, Charles Marville also devoted himself to sumptuous studies of skies, captured from his balcony, heralding Impressionism.
Charles Marville, from the brush to the darkroomby Bertrand Lemoine, Presses des Ponts editions, 656 p., €65.