Eugène Cuvelier

1837–1900

Eugène Cuvelier (French, 1837–1900) was born to the amateur painter, established photographer and merchant Adalbert Cuvelier, who was one of the co-inventors of the cliché verre technique. Owing much of his photographic skills to his father, Cuvelier had also learned from him that a photograph needed to be carefully composed like a painting, and carry a similar sentiment. After he had become friends with painters Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot in the early 1850s, Cuvelier moved to Barbizon in 1859. His photographs are printed with a rich texture – on both albumen and salted papers. The photographic work of Eugène Cuvelier and his father Adalbert was long forgotten and only rediscovered in the1980s.