Louis Pasteur, 1869

PASTEUR, Louis (1822-1895). Portrait photograph inscribed and signed ("L. Pasteur"), n.p., January 1869.

Oval albumen photograph, 252 x 190mm on a 354 x 278mm mount (moderate dampstaing over top half of photograph and mount, photograph mostly detached, small creases, mount cleanly cut along bottom margin with slight dampstain).

Inscribed to a fellow scientist: "A mon ancien e bon camarad, J. Marcou / Souvenir affecteaux / ca 1er janvier 1869 / L. Pasteur." Jules Marcou (1824-1898), to whom the photo is inscribed, was a French geologist, professor of minerology at the Sorbonne and later of paleontology in Zurich. Marcou travelled in America with Louis Agassiz, the Swiss zoologist, and in 1860 he settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he resided until his death. Pasteur, himself a professor of geology at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and Marcou had no doubt been colleagues in Paris. Photographs inscribed by Pasteur, especially from this relatively early period of his career, are rare. Provenance: Christie's New York, Jerome Shochet Collection of Manuscripts and Signed Photographs, 20 May 1994, lot 67.