HF The History of Photography 600pág

The carte-de-visite period 295
Within a few years, Disderi opened branch establishments in Toulon, Madrid, and
London (August r 86 5), and the characteristic signature on the back of his cartes became
a distinguished trade-mark throughout Europe. It is impossible to calculate the
sums which passed through his hands : by 1861 he was reputed to be the richest photographer
in the world, taking £48,ooo a year6 in his Paris establishment alone. This
figure, at the price of 20 francs per dozen cartes, means that Disderi's establishment
had an average of 200 sitters every day. Assuming that each sitter ordered only a
dozen copies, the daily output amounted to 2,400 prints, and the large staff of 90
dealing with this work were able to promise delivery within 48 hours. By February
1866 Disderi was able to advertise a stock of 65,000 portraits of celebrities-a total
presumably made up from all his studios. Whether they liked it or not, other photographers
in Paris were obliged to follow the carte craze, and an army of new photographers
exploited the boom. In the summer of 1861 it was stated that 33,000 people
made their living from the production of photographs and photographic materials
in Paris alone.7 The same year the number of portrait studios in London had risen
from sixty-six in I 8 5 5 to over two hundred ; in I 866 when the carte-de-visite craze
had reached its peak there were 284.
A typical parvenu, Disderi spent his money as quickly as he made it; the luxury of
his apartment, his several country houses, and expensive stables, were the talk of
Paris. His fame was such that he was impersonated at a vaudeville theatre in r 861,
with his bald head and large beard. But the good times did not last very long. By Pl i 80
the end of r 866, the demand for carte-de-visite portraits was on the wane, and though
Disderi was quick to take up other novelties such as photographs on enamel, photographs
on silk, 'natural photography without retouching', photo-painting, etc., he
dissipated his fortune and finally was forced to sell his business, with his name, and
ended as a beach photographer at Nice, where he died in the poor-house, deaf and
half-blind.
In England the carte-de-visite portrait had been introduced in 1857 by A. Marion
& Co., a French firm of photographic dealers and publishers. These early cartes,
which are very rare, have only a small portrait approx. rt in. x ri in. or ri in. x 2!
in., and no printed matter on the back-not even the photographer's name. The new
style did not find favour in fashionable circles until J. E. MAY ALL, one of the front
rank portrait photographers, published in August 1860 his 'Royal Album' consisting
of fourteen carte portraits of the royal family, which he had taken on 17 May and
r July. Hundreds of thousands of these cartes were quickly sold, for everyone was
eager to possess life-like representations of the universally loved Queen and her family.
Their unparalleled success gave great impetus to this branch of photography through
the understandable desire of every photographer to reap an equally rich harvest with
cartes of other distinguished personalities, who in their turn were only too glad to
follow the example set by the royal family, and to see their portraits for sale in shop
windows alongside those of their sovereign.
The fashion for collecting cartes in albums, like stamps, began with Mayall's
publication. The Hon. Eleanor Stanley, one of Queen Victoria's Ladies in Waiting,
wrote on 24 November r 860: 'I have been writing to all the fine ladies in London for
their and their husbands' photographs, for the Queen. I believe the Queen could be
bought and sold for a photograph.'8 Several of the Queen's diary entries show that
she derived much pleasure from her r ro photograph albums. Some of the thirty-six
royal carte-de-visite albums were arranged by the Prince Consort, as indicated by
inscriptions in them. Photographs were exchanged with related royal families abroad,
and others were obtained simply by asking for them, so that all European dynasties