Thanks Alan. When the Covid lockdown is over I may ask to see the originals at the National Photographic Archive which is about 20 yards from our gallery. The framed full sized print, which I have seen at Lissadell House, is very striking. Let me know if any other early Irish photographs are of interest to you.
Thanks Alan. There is a lot about Alfred Werner in Photography in Ireland, the Nineteenth Century, by the late Eddie Chandler. Werner's father, Louis, had studied at the Academie Des Beaux Arts in Paris with Paul Delaroche. A fellow student was the son of Daguerre. Werner came to Ireland in the 1850s and he initially had a portrait painting business while his wife Augustine had a photographic business. They set up a firm called Photographie Francaise and around 1880 their son Alfred joined the firm and it became Werner and Son. Alfred was successful both commercially and artistically and he did well at several international salons. In the 1890s he was also one of the first photographers to be given the distinction, FRPS. He was the President of the Photographic Society of Ireland from 1896 to 1901.
Eddie Chandler's book not only shows the photograph of Maud Gonne, but It also contains a picture of the giant camera which according to Eddie took negatives which were 180cm by 105cm or about 6ft by 3.5 ft. It was focussed by men inside the camera with a red filter over the lens. The photo of Maud Gonne is in the book. It is not fully clear where the original negative and print are, but there is a full size print of the photo in Lissadell House in County Sligo, presumably because of Maud Gonne's association with the poet W.B. Yeats. The negative and print were in the Photographic Society of Ireland archive and might now be in the National Library (which contains the National Photographic Archive) or the National Museum or Gallery. I'm on the Board of the Gallery of Photography, Ireland myself and I have enough connections to make some queries about the whereabouts of the original if you are interested. It is said that the Maud Gonne portrait is the only surviving one from the giant camera. The picture of the camera from the book is below.
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Thanks Alan. When the Covid lockdown is over I may ask to see the originals at the National Photographic Archive which is about 20 yards from our gallery. The framed full sized print, which I have seen at Lissadell House, is very striking. Let me know if any other early Irish photographs are of interest to you.
Thanks Alan. There is a lot about Alfred Werner in Photography in Ireland, the Nineteenth Century, by the late Eddie Chandler. Werner's father, Louis, had studied at the Academie Des Beaux Arts in Paris with Paul Delaroche. A fellow student was the son of Daguerre. Werner came to Ireland in the 1850s and he initially had a portrait painting business while his wife Augustine had a photographic business. They set up a firm called Photographie Francaise and around 1880 their son Alfred joined the firm and it became Werner and Son. Alfred was successful both commercially and artistically and he did well at several international salons. In the 1890s he was also one of the first photographers to be given the distinction, FRPS. He was the President of the Photographic Society of Ireland from 1896 to 1901.
Eddie Chandler's book not only shows the photograph of Maud Gonne, but It also contains a picture of the giant camera which according to Eddie took negatives which were 180cm by 105cm or about 6ft by 3.5 ft. It was focussed by men inside the camera with a red filter over the lens. The photo of Maud Gonne is in the book. It is not fully clear where the original negative and print are, but there is a full size print of the photo in Lissadell House in County Sligo, presumably because of Maud Gonne's association with the poet W.B. Yeats. The negative and print were in the Photographic Society of Ireland archive and might now be in the National Library (which contains the National Photographic Archive) or the National Museum or Gallery. I'm on the Board of the Gallery of Photography, Ireland myself and I have enough connections to make some queries about the whereabouts of the original if you are interested. It is said that the Maud Gonne portrait is the only surviving one from the giant camera. The picture of the camera from the book is below.