Louis DAGUERRE, attribué à Lot n° 17

The visit to the tomb in a cloister Oil on canvas. 62 x 80 cm (Important stuccoed wooden frame dated 19th century) Louis Daguerre was known worldwide as the inventor of photography, although Niepce, who died at an early age, was the real initiator. The daguerreotype will be the initial photographic process, without competition during the years 1840/1850. Daguerre had begun an artistic career as a painter and then as a theater decorator (1822). He also realized dioramas with his colleague C.M. Bouton, gigantic translucent canvases painted in trompe-l'oeil whose appearance changes according to the lighting projected on the reverse. Our painting belongs to the artist's repertoire of Gothic cloisters and strange, lunar lights: Daguerre placed himself in the 1820s in the transition between troubadour painting and Romantic painting of Gothic inspiration. The discovery of photography made him abandon the brush.