Émile Lévy was a Paris-born artist trained at the École des Beaux-Arts under François-Édouard Picot, Émile Lévy won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1854 with Noah Cursing Canaan. His years in Rome shaped a style that blended classical ideals with the emotional intensity of Romanticism. Back in France, he exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon and became known for luminous religious and mythological scenes as well as refined portraits of his contemporaries. Named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1867, Lévy remains an important figure of 19th-century academic painting.

Issued in installments by the Parisian publisher Goupil between 1876 and 1884, the Galerie Contemporaine, Littéraire, Artistique brought together 241 portraits of prominent figures in literature, music, science, and politics offring the French public an unprecedented visual gallery of the people shaping their cultural and civic life during the Second Empire and the early Third Republic.

The project was fueled by a spirit of national pride and by a new, more modern fascination with fame. Its subtitle—Littéraire Artistique—signaled a desire to elevate photography as a vehicle for high culture, while also capitalizing on the growing appetite for celebrity portraiture.
The images themselves were printed as woodburytypes giving the portraits a richness and permanence that aligned perfectly with the project’s lofty cultural ambitions.

Today, Galerie Contemporaine endures not only as a milestone in the history of photography and publishing, but also as a vivid record of the artists, scientists, and statesmen whose lives and ideas defined modern France.