My only desire being to propound this process which is the future of photography, and the complete success of which will be my pleasantest reward. Niepce de St. Victor, Oct 1853

This test proof, acquired from the collection of Charles Négre, represents a turning point in the invention of photogravure and the translation of impermanent salt prints into permanent printer’s ink – one of the greatest technical challenges of the 19th century. It is an early result of the collaboration between Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor and Augustin Francois Lemaître to evolve the heliographic process invented by the elder Niépce (Nicéphore) who is credited as the inventor of photography.

Written to Fox Talbot Sep. 11, 1853: I have the pleasure of forwarding you, on the part of M. Niepce de St. Victor, four of his last results in photographic engraving, which I have just brought with me from Paris. Their surprising progress & perfection will doubtless please you much. There is no retouch anywhere except in the plate of beetles, the third beetle had to be slightly retouched, from an accident in the plate. Some of the plates as you will notice have a rather dirty appearance round the objects, but in the last he has managed to obviate this. Thanking you for your kind communication to me of specimens of your efforts in the same direction hitherto I am Sir yours very respectfully J. O. Murray As I am leaving tomorrow or next day for Paris, for a week, I shall be glad to communicate any remarks or desires of yours to M. Niepce, if you should wish it – writing to me chez M. de Lammenais – 12 Rue du Grand Chantier – . [1]

In 1852 the French Academy of Sciences decided to use photography to illustrate one of its studies examining the rare animals in the collection of the Museum of Natural History. La Lumiere treated it as a watershed in the developing relationship between photography and science. The first fascicles of the volume were issued with salted paper prints by the Bisson frères tipped in, but in 1853 the Academy switched to Niépce de Saint-Victor’s newly announced photogravure (heliographic) process. Members of the academy favored the new printing process over the silver-based calotype because the ink-based method was permanent. Cousin of the pioneer of the medium, Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor returned to the principles of Niépce’s Cardinal d’Amboise and, again like the elder Niépce, worked with the master printer Lemaître to perfect his heliographic process.

The volume is thus the first substantial publication to be illustrated with photogravures.

Writing about the book’s photogravure plates in his summary of photography at the Universal Exposition of 1855, Ernest Lacan declared that Dès maintenant, il est prouvé que la gravure héliographique peut se prêter à toutes les applications de la photographie… Bientôt, nous en sommes convaincu, elle amènera une véritable révolution dans la librairie. Un jour viendra, en effet, où l’historien, le voyageur, le naturaliste, ne voudront plus confier l’illustration de leurs livres qu’aux graveurs héliographes. (From now on, it is proved that heliographic engraving can lend itself to all applications of photography … Soon, we are convinced, it will bring a real revolution in the bookstore. A day will come, in fact, when the historian, the traveler, the naturalist, will no longer wish to entrust the illustration of their books to the engravers.) More surprising than that, this most enthusiastic critic and publicist for photography declared that Pour nous la photographie, si complète qu’elle soit dans ses résultats, n’est qu’un procédé transitoire, et c’est à la gravure héliographique ou à la photolithographie qu’appartient l’avenir. (For us photography, so complete as it is in its results, is only a transient process, and it is to gravure or photolithography that the future belongs.)

The application of an aquatint ground directly onto the bare metal plate before emulsion coating was described by Talbot in his patent of 1852. This approach was modified in May 1853 and incorporated into the heliogravure process devised by Niepce de Saint-Victor and Lemaître. Their technique called for resin-dusting the partially etched heliographic plate which was then mildly heated to soften the resin particles and adhere them to the surface. The plate was then etched to completion. While it was intimately connected to older graphic traditions of printing multiples like etching and lithography, Niépce and Lemaître’s process remains an essential origin point for both photography (images made with the action of light) and photomechanical printing (images made with the action of light printed in ink).

Graphic art printers, as well as political economists and industrialists, used their respective trade journals to promote the project as the first practical test for photogravure while officials of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle also promoted Photographie Zoologique as the first institutional attempt to apply the medium of photography to a systematic cataloguing effort. The project therefore occupied more than one seat at the table of new photographic applications.