[Galerie de la Madeleine with Scaffolding, Place de la Madeleine]

1843

Medium

Salted paper print

Dimensions

16.5 × 22 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-344979

Hippolyte Bayard arrived in Paris by early 1825 in the company of his childhood friend Edmond Geffroy. Like many others during the Bourbon Restoration (1814-1830), they left the provinces in search of opportunities in the capital. Geffroy came in pursuit of a career as an actor. While Bayard may have harbored artistic aspirations of his own, he soon went to work at the Ministry of Finance. By early 1839, Bayard had begun experimenting with light-sensitive chemicals in search of ways to fix an image from nature on paper. He immersed himself in this nascent technology/art form that was soon to be called “photography,” all the while maintaining his job as a bureaucrat. As the population of Paris continued to grow through the 1830s under King Louis-Philippe, it spilled into neighboring towns, necessitating renovations and new construction projects both in the center and at the edges of the city. Over the next decade, Bayard recorded the transformation of his adopted city with his camera. The Getty Museum’s collection has two similar views of this building on the Place de la Madeleine—this one probably taken from the grounds of the church, la Madelaine, and the other taken from a clo…