Prints and Authors in the Time of Manet

Barbizon Landscape in the Snow

Salt print from waxed paper negative, about 1855–60
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1990.10

Eugène Cuvelier studied to be a painter. Working in ‘plein-air’ (open air) around the Forest of Fontainebleau, Cuvelier associated with Camille Corot and other painters of the Barbizon school. As the son of a photographer and himself intimate with photographic methods, Cuvelier introduced the cliché-verre technique—using photographic plates as a matrix for printing images—to Corot and Charles-François Daubigny (see their work in this exhibition). Cuvelier made numerous photographs of the forest around Barbizon and it is thought that his photographic images impacted the painting style of Corot.