Lot 538: VICTOR PREVOST (1820-1881)

VICTOR PREVOST (1820-1881)
Columbia College, 1855
two salted paper prints from calotype negatives
signed and dated (in the image); signed and inscribed in ink (on the mount)
13 x 19 1/8in. (33.2 x 48.7cm.) (overall)

Welling, Photography in America: the Formative Years, 1839-1900, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1978, p. 106

French born Victor Prevost (1820-1881) spent most of his career in New York where, during the 1850s, he operated a photography studio. His calotype negatives survive as rare examples of some of the earliest paper photographs of New York City. Prevost learned the calotype process of using sensitized waxed paper to make photographic negatives from Gustave LeGray while visiting France in 1853. Upon his return to New York in the fall of that year, Prevost opened a photography studio at 627 Broadway between Houston and Bleecker Streets, with P.C. Duchochois as his partner. They were among the few photographers in the United States producing calotypes commercially but, due to increasing competition, they closed the business in 1855.