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Félix Nadar: portrait of François Guizot, ca. 1855
The salt print portrait of François Guizot was made by Nadar in an outdoor studio at his first address, rue Saint-Lazare. Photographed between 1854 and 1860. Salted paper print after a collodion glass negative. The early portrait is signed and addressed in the lower right corner of the image by Félix Nadar. The original mount is blind stamped under the portrait.
salt print ca. 23,5 x 18,8 cm
original mount ca. 44 x 28,5 cm
We also have a carte de visite of a similar portrait made during the same sitting. Signed in the negative, ca. 1865. Nadar's dry stamp 'N' is visible in the lower left corner of the mount.
Guizot (1794-1874) was born at Nîmes to a bourgeois Protestant family. He was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848.
When François Guizot was 6, his father was executed on the scaffold at Nîmes during the Reign of Terror. From then on, the boy's mother was completely responsible for his upbringing. During the First French Empire, Guizot, entirely devoted to literary pursuits, published a collection of French synonyms (1809), an essay on the fine arts (1811), and a translation of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, with additional notes, in 1812.
Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he was at once selected to serve the government of King Louis XVIII, in the capacity of secretary-general of the ministry of the interior. Upon the return of Napoleon from Elba he immediately resigned, on 25 March 1815, and returned to his literary pursuits.
After the Hundred Days, he returned to Ghent, where he saw Louis XVIII, and in the name of the liberal party pointed out that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy – advice which was ill-received by the king's confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent was brought up by political opponents in later years as unpatriotic. "The Man of Ghent" was one of the terms of insult frequently used against him in the days of his power.
As Prime Minister, it was Guizot's ban on the political meetings of an increasingly vigorous opposition in January 1848 that catalyzed the revolution that toppled Louis Philippe in February and saw the establishment of the French Second Republic.
Down to the summer of 1874 Guizot's mental vigour and activity were unimpaired. He died peacefully, and is said to have recited verses of Corneille and texts from Scripture on his death-bed.
Another print of this portrait is in the collection of Museé d'Orsay and BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France).
👉 This salt print is part of the Bazar Nadar "History Class Collection".
Based on these unique images, we will tell you about the origins of the medium during workshops.