Re: Pronounciation/Niepce

John Malcolm (images@airtime.co.uk)
Fri, 23 Feb 96 19:25:38 GMT

At 04:21 23/02/96 +1100, you wrote:
>>It was not Steve but I who wrote about the marble bust of Niepce. I did
>>ask M. Farge, the director of the museum, if a photograph of Niepce
>>existed. He said he had no knowledeg of one. Of course, as you know,
>>Niepce died before they were able to get a practical process perfected.
>>However, once he was dead, they could have left him out in the sun
>>for 8 hours or so in order to make a pewter plate/bitumen image. ;-)
>
>>Bob Schramm
>
>
>Poor Niepce, dead for a hundred and sixty three years and still being
>kicked around. No there are no photographs of Niepce, however there
>is a lithographic portrait of him. Where it originated I do not know but
>I have found a copy of it inside the front cover of Brian Coes book
>Cameras, From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, 1978. It is actually
>one of four portraits that were used to make up the end sheets of the
>book ( the other three are Daguerre, Fox Talbot and, of course, George
>Eastman.)
>
>Roger Watson
>George Eastman House

Brian Coe used the same portrait of Niepce on p15 of his *Birth of
Photography* (Ash & Grant, London, 1976). Since Brian was Curator of the
Kodak Museum in London at the time, chances are the origin of the portrait
will be found somewhere in the bowels of that organisation. Interestingly,
the reproduction that I have is inscribed *Heliog. Dujardin*, implying that
it was originally a photomechanical reproduction?. No date is attributed.
>