Édouard Baldus

Édouard Baldus was born June 5, 1813 in Grünebach, Prussia. Fleeing Prussia over counterfeiting charges, he came to Paris to study painting in 1838, and had also worked as a draughtsman and lithographer before switching to photography in the late 1840s. He may have photographed in Provence as early as 1849. Baldus submitted work to each of the annual Salons of painting and sculpture in Paris from 1841 to 1851. He became a naturalized citizen of France in 1856.

In 1851 he was selected for the Mission Héliographique, a government-sponsored photography survey. Baldus was sent south, to Fontainebleau, through Burgundy, the Dauphiné and Lyonnais, Provence, and a small part of Languedoc. He subsequently won government support for a project entitled Les Villes de France photographiées, an extended series of architectural views in Paris and the provinces in 1852-54.

In August 1855, Baron James de Rothschild, who was president of the Chemin de fer du Nord (Northern Railroad), commissioned Baldus to produce an album of views along the rail route from Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer for presentation to Queen Victoria, when she visited France later that very month. Baldus would draw a second commission in 1861 to document the route of the PLM railway from Lyon to Toulon. 1855 was an auspicious year for Baldus. Not only was he commissioned for his first railway album, but he also exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris and got highly positive reviews. In addition, he began to photograph the construction of the New Louvre and Tuileries palaces.

In June 1856 Baldus was again sent by the government to the south near Lyon, Avignon and Tarascon to document damage caused by the Rhone River flooding. In 1860 a local prefect commissioned him to document buildings slated for destruction during rebuilding of the quays in Perigueux.

He died in 1889 in Arcueil, France, bankrupt and in relative obscurity.

Submitted by Contemporary Works/Vintage Works