# L'Atelier de l'artiste > Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre - 1837 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/louis-daguerre/daguerre-atelier-de-lartiste-sfp/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-10 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre - **Date:** 1837 - **Medium:** Daguerreotype: an iodine-sensitized, silver-plated copper plate, exposed in a camera obscura and developed in mercury vapor. On the balance of the documented chronology (see Technical and Open Questions), fixed in a pre-hyposulphite salt solution rather than the sodium thiosulfate ('hypo') fixer Daguerre adopted only after John Herschel's suggestion reached him in early 1839. - **Dimensions:** Not confirmed against a primary Societe francaise de photographie specification sheet in this research pass. A figure of 8 x 9 cm circulates in tertiary sources without institutional citation, and the Wikimedia Commons digitization measures 3,200 x 2,328 pixels with no accompanying physical scale; this record treats the physical dimensions as unresolved rather than repeating an uncited figure. - **Object type:** Photograph - **Period:** French, 1837, two years before the daguerreotype process was publicly disclosed - **Current location:** Societe francaise de photographie, Paris - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A small still life of plaster casts, drawings and studio props, arranged under a window and exposed onto a silvered copper plate in 1837, two years before Louis Daguerre's process was disclosed to the world. It is held today by the Societe francaise de photographie in Paris and is one of a very small number of demonstration plates Daguerre is known to have made before 1839, when he was still showing the invention privately to potential backers and patrons rather than selling it to the public.It is often introduced as the earliest surviving daguerreotype. That claim is not the settled, single fact it is usually presented as: at least one other 1837 still life in the SFP's own collection, dedicated to the Louvre's Alphonse de Cailleux, is independently described in the sources as Daguerre's oldest surviving plate. This record covers the specific object carried by the Commons file credited to the SFP and captioned 'L'Atelier de l'artiste', and treats the competing 'oldest' claim as an open question rather than resolving it by assertion.What can be said without qualification is narrower and still remarkable: whichever of the two 1837 SFP still lifes turns out to hold the stronger claim, both were made and fixed before hyposulphite, before Arago's announcement, before the government pension, and before a single member of the public had been told the process existed. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1837** Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre `[documented]` (origin) Made by Daguerre in his own studio in 1837, two years before the daguerreotype process was publicly disclosed, as part of a small, documented practice of producing demonstration plates to show potential backers, scientists and dignitaries. No inscription or dedication is documented for this specific plate. - **1837-1854 or later** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, custodian or transaction is documented for the period between the plate's creation and its appearance in the collection of the Societe francaise de photographie, an institution founded only in 1854. This gap of at least seventeen years, and possibly considerably more, is not bridged by any source consulted. - **unknown-present** Societe francaise de photographie, Paris `[documented]` (custody) The plate is credited to the Societe francaise de photographie in the Wikimedia Commons file's own extended metadata and identified with that institution by every secondary source consulted. The specific date and mechanism of acquisition are not documented in any source found. ## Open questions - On what day or month within 1837 was the plate actually exposed? No source consulted gives a date more precise than the year. - Is 'Interieur d'un cabinet de curiosites', the Cailleux-dedicated SFP still life independently described elsewhere as Daguerre's oldest surviving plate, a genuinely separate object from this record's plate, or the same object described inconsistently across sources under two different titles? The distinct titles, the specifically documented Cailleux inscription, and the distinct damage history reported only for that plate favor two separate objects, but this record has not found a source that states this explicitly. - When, from whom, and by what mechanism did the Societe francaise de photographie acquire this plate? The SFP was founded in 1854, seventeen years after the plate was made, and no source consulted documents any owner between 1837 and the plate's present custody. - What are the plate's confirmed physical dimensions? Figures circulating online are not traceable to a primary SFP specification in the sources consulted. - Has any conservation or material analysis of this specific plate been published, confirming its fixing method, its plate gauge, or its current physical condition? None was found in this research pass. - Does this plate carry any inscription, mark or dedication comparable to the Cailleux plate's verso text or the Kynzvart plate's dedication to Metternich? None is documented in the sources consulted, which is itself worth confirming rather than assuming. - What exhibition or loan history, if any, does this specific plate have? No exhibition record was found in this research pass. ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, File:Daguerreotype Daguerre Atelier 1837.jpg, file page and extended metadata (LicenseShortName 'Public domain', Credit 'Societe francaise de photographie', Artist Louis Daguerre, Date 1837), verified via the Commons API. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Louis Daguerre'. Tertiary source for the biography: training, the Diorama, the Niepce partnership, the 1839 announcement, pension and disclosure. Flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography such as the Gernsheims' study of Daguerre. - [3] Wikipedia (French), 'Louis Daguerre'. Tertiary source, consulted for the 1837 process chronology (mercury development, salt fixing) and the 7 January and 19 August 1839 dates. - [4] Wikipedia, 'John Herschel'. Tertiary source, consulted for the date (early 1839) and circumstances of Herschel's communication of the hyposulphite-of-soda fixing method to Talbot and Daguerre. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Kynzvart Daguerreotype'. Tertiary source for the 1839 Metternich-gifted still life, its subject, and its current custody at the National Technical Museum, Prague. - [6] UNESCO Memory of the World Register, 'The Kynzvart Daguerreotype - the birth of modern visual media', for the 1839 dating and the Metternich gift, and its 2017 inscription. - [7] Journal Genesis (OpenEdition), article discussing Daguerre's practice of sending demonstration daguerreotypes to political, scientific and artistic figures, of which roughly twenty are recorded as surviving, and Francois Arago's July 1839 presentation to the Chamber of Deputies. - [8] Laboratoire des premieres fois (Tumblr), quoting the verso inscription of Daguerre's 'Interieur d'un cabinet de curiosites' dedicating the plate to Alphonse de Cailleux, director of the Musee du Louvre. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a primary SFP catalogue description. - [9] Brewminate, 'Louis Daguerre and the Birth of Commercial Photography in 1837', for Alphonse de Cailleux's role as director of the Louvre and recipient of an 1837 Daguerre demonstration plate, and for the Sabatier-Blot portrait context. Tertiary source. - [10] Photoquotations.com, quotations attributed to Louis Daguerre, including the 1838 description of the process reproducing 'very fine gradation of tones'. Tertiary quotation aggregator; not independently verified against a primary manuscript. - [11] The J. Paul Getty Museum, collection record for 'Still Life With Plaster Casts' by Baron Armand-Pierre Seguier, 1839-42, accession 2002.41, consulted to distinguish this unrelated object from the plate covered by this record. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, File:Daguerre kynzvart.jpg, file page and extended metadata, for the Kynzvart plate's own description and July 1839 Chamber of Deputies context. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.