The Queen’s Photographer of Artists – Art Photography Pioneer EUGENE DRUET-Qianlong.com.cn

Eugène Druet (1867-1916) was a French art photographer, born and died in Paris. As a result of his research into orthochromics or silver bromide gelatin negative printing, he created the “Druet process” in photography, where he signed each photo with a dry stamp.His technique requires hours of exposure to achieve extraordinary velvety results, and through his unparalleled black-and-white style, coupled with extreme precision, allows him to bring to life the artwork of his painter or sculptor friends

Eugène Druet

Druet is the owner of the French Yacht Club. In 1893, he met the famous sculptor Rodin in his own cafe. His sympathy with Rodin made him fall in love with art photography. Drouet took many pictures of Rodin’s sculptures and soon became his official photographer. He recorded works and creative process for Rodin completely free of charge, and did not gradually leave until 1900. In 1900, Rodin also organized a large-scale retrospective exhibition at the Alma Pavilion during the World‘s Fair. Drouet almost supported the entire exhibition scene. A section of the wall is dedicated to his photography,

Taken in Rodin’s studio

Taken in Rodin’s studio

On Rodin’s suggestion, Druet opened a gallery in 1903, which subsequently became very famous in Paris. In Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, the gallery is mentioned in Chapter 3: ». His wealthy clients include The famous Moscow collector Ivan Morozov.

Taken in Rodin’s studio

He does art photography, especially taking snapshots of paintings. He then sells the paintings in his gallery, along with the photographs he takes of them. This idea of ​​selling copies of the paintings he exhibited made him a huge profit. Guillaume Apollinaire writes that through photographs from the Druet gallery, “the most astonishing paintings of Titian, Ingres, Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne, among others, are recreated” .

Between 1903 and 1938, his gallery exhibited nearly 1,300 artists such as Picero, Gauguin, Cézanne, Charles Carmon, Jarmain, and many more masters of Fauvism and Impressionism. It is also logical to become the most trusted royal photographer of these masters.

Works for Gauguin

At first, his work consisted mainly of photographs of the works of Auguste Rodin during his lifetime. The critic Claude Anet said of his prints that they “not only reproduce all the refinement, the beauty of the planes and lines of the shapes, but evoke the power of the work itself”. He then took a series of pictures of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. This series contributed to the dissemination of Van Gogh’s work at the time.

Works for Van Gogh

In a 1908 issue of the Bulletin de la SFP, his work was reviewed as follows: “Contrary to a large number of photographers, who were content with little concern for numerical accuracy, Mr. Druet has been concerned with orthochromatics, thus realizing the art of reproduction. the rendering fidelity necessary for the work”.

Most of his photographs are kept in the Architectural and Heritage Media Library in Fort St. Cyr, under the name of the Druet-Vizzavona Fund. The fund consists of approximately 150,000 photographic negatives, from the collections of the Eugène Druet family and the Vizzanova family, brought together in 1939.