Antoine Claudet (1797-1867)
French born Antoine Francois Jean Claudet enjoyed a successful business career, first in banking and later in glass manufacturing. In 1829 he moved to London in order to expand the glass-making business. In 1839 he moved back to Paris to investigate the new daguerreotype photographic process with its inventor, fellow Frenchman Jacques Louis Mande Daguerre, who had just announced his discovery to the world. The French government soon purchased Daguerre’s patent rights and gave them freely to all countries except Great Britain.
Claudet saw the potential of the Daguerre’s discovery and purchased a license to produce daguerreotypes in Britain. He received his training in the new process personally from its inventor and, in 1841, opened his first studio in London, one of just two studios producing daguerreotypes under license at the time, the other being the Beard studio.
Claudet quickly came to realize that the daguerreotype process needed some improvement and began to experiment with various methods to reduce the time involved in producing an image. He is credited with the discovery of a process that resulted in greatly reduced exposure times; coupled with improved camera lenses, this eventually reduced exposure time to less than a minute. Claudet was also the inventor of the dark room light or red safe light that is still used by photographers to this day.
In 1851 Claudet moved his London studio from its original location on the rooftop of the Adelaide Gallery near St. Martins in the Field Church to 107 Regent Street. He referred to the new location as his “Temple of Photography”. This new studio proved to be highly successful. One sad side note is that it was destroyed by fire within a month of his death in 1867 and many of his great photographic works were lost.
In the mid-1850′s Claudet began producing stereoscopic daguerreotypes. This format used a pair of nearly identical images mounted side by side which, when viewed in a stereoscope, produced a three dimensional image. He also invented a type of folding stereoscopic viewer and a table-top viewer that utilized a belt mechanism holding 100 views. This made it practicable for many stereoscopic images to be viewed at one sitting.
During his lifetime Claudet received may accolades for his achievements in photography, including membership in the Royal Photographic Society in 1853 and Photographer in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in the same year. In 1863 he received an award from the Emperor of France for his work.
Claudet’s images were of the highest quality. He used elaborate studio settings and highly skilled artists to color the images. His work is among the most prized by collectors today and individual examples can range in price from a few hundred dollars to several thousand depending upon size, condition and subject matter.
Known primarily for his daguerreotypes, Claudet offered clients several formats but did seem to specialize in stereo daguerreotypes and is considered to be one of its early masters. He also produced ambrotypes, cartes de visite, and albumen prints. Examples of these formats do turn up from time to time and a collector can expect to pay a premium for any image bearing the Claudet name. The price as usual will depend upon the condition and subject matter.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Robert M. Ginns.