Collection of Eight Earliest Photographs of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
[Paris?]: [Furne et Tournier?], ca. 1857–1859. Original, vintage, black and white albumen prints. Paper size (5 smaller; 2 larger format): ca. 270 × 200 mm and 300 × 235 mm; image size: ca. 165 ×125 mm and 210 × 130 mm. Five images captioned in pencil, the inscriptions are faint, barely legible. Occasional spotting on the papers. One of the smaller images with some small damages. Overall in fine condition.
The pictures show fishermen’s houses and communal buildings in Saint Pierre and on the Île-aux-Chiens (today L’Île-aux-Marins) such as the timber-store Maison Cordon with a sawmill in front; the store of the Fitzgérald Fréres at the quay (Calle du Gouvernement); Café Sébastopol and another café, probably on rue Jacques Cartier; the view of the quay (barachois) with the rocky hill (Butte) in the background and the calvary; residential buildings under the calvary with a rowboat in the front; and other images of the city and the Île-aux-Chiens.
Paul-Émile Miot (1829–1900) was a pioneering French photographer and naval officer who produced some of the earliest known photographs of the east coast of Canada and Newfoundland. Miot was born in Trinidad and studied at the Naval Academy in Paris between 1843 and 1849. His interest in photography may date from 1855, the time he served as a naval officer in the Crimean War, by an encounter with French photographers recording the war on film. In 1857, prepared with a camera and equipment, Miot sailed to Newfoundland, a naval expedition that resulted not just in his earliest known photographs, but some of the earliest photographs of the region, and the first photos taken on the islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Michelon. Part of Miot’s photographs from the Newfoundland expedition was printed in Paris by Furne et Tournier, others were used as the basis of engravings for illustrated travel journals of the time. In the 1860s Miot completed a four years tour of duty in Mexico and Martinique and between 1868 and 1871 he participated in a circumnavigation of South America, some pictures produced during these voyages also survived. (Hannavy, 2008)
Literature: Hannavy, J (2008). Miot, Paul-Emile (1827–1900) French photographer and hydrographer. In: Hannavy J. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. New York: Routledge; 2008. pp. 932–3.
A collection of Paul-Émile Miot’s eight photographs, a series of the first pictures taken on the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon the French overseas collectivity near Newfoundland.
Price: €10,000.00