Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

The first semi-public exhibition of daguerreotypes in the Austro-Hungarian Empire took place at the end of August 1839 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, shortly after Louis J. M. Daguerre had officially presented his invention to the French Academy of Sciences on August 19, 1839. The two images on display - a view of Notre Dame Church in Paris and a still life – came from Daguerre himself. They were gifts to Emperor Ferdinand I and Prince Klemens von Metternich. By sending daguerreotypes to selected European courts, Daguerre hoped to obtain financial compensation and the recognition of his primacy in the photographic process [Trnková 2021, pp. 2-4]. The first daguerreotype exhibitions were small because the images were rare – they only became more common after the photographic process had spread and was more accessible. The main purpose of these exhibitions was simply to introduce the new technical invention to the public.

Prague saw its first daguerreotype in mid-October 1839 in the shop of local booksellers Borrosch & André, located between the Great Square (now Old Town Square) and the Small Square. The image on display showed "a garden corner with two statues placed in front of a wall covered with vines." Although the location may seem unusual, it must be understood that the activities of booksellers in the nineteenth century were not limited to the sale of books, art or other objects, but extended to a number of other disciplines. The magazine Bohemia published a report in which the author likened the quality of the picture, apart from some blurriness and a few imperfections in the foliage or sky, to the “finest aquatint”, although he wished there were other pictures to compare with. The comparison was soon possible, as a few days later a second daguerreotype – this time of the new Berlin Museum (now the Altes Museum) and the neighbouring Lustgarten – was on display in another Old Town bookshop, Gottlieb Haase Söhne. In Bohemia, the same author compared its execution to “information about light images that we receive from Paris.” He praised the subtlety of the various details, such as the fluting in the columns in front of the building and the various letter signs that could be deciphered with the aid of a magnifying glass. Compared to the previous daguerreotype, this one was clearly of better quality, but a month later the same bookshop exhibited an even higher quality print. It was a view of the church of La Madelaine in Paris, perhaps taken by the inventor himself, as a report from Paris suggested. The Bohemia reviewer wrote that “this new light image […] is considerably larger and comes much closer to the masterly aquatint than anything we have seen before. The plate reflects less, the sky is cleaner and brighter, and the execution of the church itself, especially the row of houses on the right, is exceptionally fine [...]".

Unfortunately, the fate of these three daguerreotypes is unknown, and while the provenance of the last of them is obvious, the first two likely came from Berlin – a note on the Paris image published in Bohemia states that the daguerreotypes previously exhibited in Prague came from Gropius in Berlin. Georg Gropius (1802-1842) was a Berlin bookseller and art dealer who showcased the first daguerreotypes in his own shop as early as mid-September 1839. These pictures were made by the local optician and mechanic Theodor Dörffel (1810-1878), one of the first Berlin daguerreotypists, who used a self-made camera [Dost - Stenger 1922, p. 27]. It is significant that among the images presented there we find motifs identical to those that were later exhibited in Prague, i.e. an interior with several sculptures and the exterior of the Altes Museum. While there is no further description of the first daguerreotype, the second was probably also described in the Berlin periodical Vossische Zeitung [ibid., pp. 28-30]; the motif and characterization there correspond to the description in Bohemia. The trail of the Berlin daguerreotype with this motif also leads to Leipzig, where, according to the Leipziger Tageblatt, a similar picture was exhibited at the end of October in the bookshop of the local bookseller and publisher Ludwig Schreck (1812-1868) [Anonymous author 1839, p. 2278]. However, there is no guarantee that in all these cases it was the same daguerreotype by Dörffel that Gropius exhibited in various cities. Berlin's Altes Museum was popular with vedutists and probably with the first daguerreotypists in the 1830s and 1840s. There may have been other images of the same provenance and subject in circulation [Trnková, unpublished manuscript]. Similarly, the only certainty we have about the first daguerreotypes exhibited in Prague is that they were associated with the circles of Georg Gropius.

Denisa Tichá

Works Cited

Anonymous author 1839: Anonymous author, Mittheilung aus der Meßversammlung des Kunst und Gewerbevereins, Leipziger Tageblatt und Anzeiger, 1839, no. 296, 23. 10., p. 2278

Dost – Stenger 1922: Wilhelm Dost – Erich Stenger, Die Daguerreotypie in Berlin 1839–1860, Berlin 1922

Trnková (unpublished manuscript): Petra Trnková, Tajemství kabinetu profesora Hesslera (unpublished manuscript)

Trnková 2021: Petra Trnková, Klemens Metternich a kynžvartská sbírka daguerrotypií, Historická fotografie XX, 2021, pp. 2–15

Further Reading

Petra Trnková, Exponované město. Archeologové, architekti a turisté v Praze, in: Kateřina Bečková – Miroslava Přikrylová – Petra Trnková, Nejstarší fotografie Prahy 1850–1870, Praha 2019

Vladimír Birgus – Pavel Scheufler, Česká fotografie v datech 1839–2019, Praha 2021