Saint-Honorat, Prés d'Arles

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Artist: Édouard Baldus (French, 1813–1889)
Medium: Salt print from waxed paper negative
Size: Image: 33.5 x 43.2 cm (13 3/16 x 17 in.); Paper: 33.5 x 43.2 cm (13 3/16 x 17 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
Culture: France, 19th century
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Two years after his initial photographic trip to Provence, Baldus returned in 1853 to again document some of the region’s most imposing classical and medieval architectural monuments. His genius both as an architectural photographer and as a printer is easily witnessed in this extraordinary photograph taken in Arles. It depicts an ancient cemetery, the Alyscamps, in the foreground, with the unfinished Romanesque Church of Saint Honorat, dominated by its distinctive two-story bell tower, in the background.

On this photographic campaign, this image was the rare occasion when Baldus succeeded in his desire to combine a picturesque aesthetic with an interest in the medieval past. Thirty-five years later, in the fall of 1888, Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh made several paintings of the Alyscamps. Dudley P. Allen Fund 2009.5