Portrait de Edmond Goncourt

Photoglypty from the Galerie contemporaine. Portrait of Edmond Goncourt.
Mounted sheet on which a photoglypty of 19x24cm has been laid down. Caption at the bottom of the mount: Galerie Contemporaine, 126 boulevard de Magenta. Phot. Goupil et Cie. Cliché Nadar, 51, rue d'Anjou-St-Honoré. Superb condition.
Handsome portrait of the writer seated, with a fixed and fierce gaze, a cigarette in his right hand, his elbow resting on attributes that represent him.
Close to a carbon print by its warm and deep tones, photoglypty is a complex photomechanical process of photographic reproduction which the publishing industry used for about 20 years, from 1875 to 1895. Seeking an ideal and aesthetic image of famous men, the plates were always retouched and repainted, to erase an unsightly wrinkle or too troublesome defect, to polish the hair, etc. Thus photography and printmaking converge in a new representation.
The Galerie Contemporaine became a publishing house that sold images of contemporary men, these images were assembled into 8 folio volumes by Paul de Lacroix but continued to be sold separately at the headquarters of the Galerie Contemporaine.