Lot 26: John Beasly Greene , 1832-1856 'la tombeau de la chrétienne'

salt print from a waxed-paper negative, matted, framed, 1856

measurements note 11 7/8 by 9 3/8 in. (30.2 by 23.8 cm.)

Jill Quasha, The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs (New York, 1991), pl. 40 (this print)

Thackrey & Robertson, San FranciscoAcquired by the Quillan Company from the above, 1989

The photograph offered here was taken during an archeological and photographic expedition to Algeria in 1855, where John Beasly Greene photographed the excavation of the second century B. C. funerary monument, 'Tombeau de la Chrétienne.' The large mausoleum of Numidian king Juba in North Africa was termed the 'Tomb of the Christian' for the cross-like pattern that decorated its false door. It is this false door that Greene photographed on 5 April 1856, after the second site excavation was completed. John Beasly Greene scholar William Stapp locates only three prints of this image in public collections. The first is from an album of Greene's Algerian photographs documenting the excavation of 'Tombeau de la Chrétienne,' in the collection of the Institut de France in Paris. The second is owned by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and a third is in the photography collection at The Museum of Modern Art. In the Algerian album of Greene's work in the Institut de France, this image is captioned, Vue de fausse porte du Nord le 5 avril 1856 á la fin des travaux de la 2e exploration (view of the false north door at the end of the second round of excavation, April 5, 1856). The Boston-born son of a banker and a founding member of the Société Française de Photographie, Greene was perhaps the first archaeologist to use photography. His interests in photography and archaeology took him to the ruins and excavated sites in North Africa and the Middle East. By 1853, Greene had mastered Gustave Le Gray's new waxed-paper process, which he would utilize on the first of his trips to Egypt and Nubia in 1854. In late 1855, the year before his death, he traveled to a site excavation in Algeria, where the present photograph was taken. Greene returned briefly to Paris in 1856 before returning to Egypt once again for what would be his last trip. The photograph of 'Tombeau de la Chrétienne' offered here, made in the year of the photographer's untimely death at age 24, possesses a lyrical beauty not often associated with documentary photographs of archeological sites.