The Crimean War, spring 1854
Carol Szathmari, among the first war photographers
In the spring of 1854, Carol Popp de Szathmari photographed both armies on the Danube, almost a year before Roger Fenton reached Balaklava. He developed his wet-collodion glass plates in a wagon darkroom, and his album of about 200 pictures went on show in Paris.
Universal ExpositionParis · 1855second-class medal
- 1854
- the Danube year
- ≈200
- pictures in the album
- ≈11
- months ahead of Fenton
- 10–15
- minutes of wet plate
From brush to glass plate
A painter becomes a photographer, with a war in the middle.
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A child of Cluj
1812
Born on 11 January 1812 at Cluj, then Kolozsvár in the Austrian Empire. From about the age of 18 he ties his work to Bucharest; after studies and travels, he settles there for good in the early 1840s.
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Apprenticeship in Rome
1832–1834
Studies painting in Rome for two years. Back in Bucharest, he paints for the Wallachian boyars and becomes a court painter.
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The first photograph
November 1848
Photographs a plaster Cupid with no arms on calotype paper, and writes on it, in German, that it is the first photograph he ever made.
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A Bucharest studio
by 1850
By 1850 he was running a commercial photographic studio. His clients included Russian and Turkish officers; by 1853 he was already a celebrated studio portraitist.
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Wet collodion
1851
Frederick Scott Archer publicly communicates the wet-collodion process: glass must be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within about ten to fifteen minutes. Szathmari moves from paper to glass.
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The Danube war
spring 1854
Takes his darkroom wagon to the banks of the Danube and photographs Turkish and Russian troops, fortifications and commanders. In the first days of April, near Oltenita, the Turkish artillery fires on the wagon, taken for a spy's shelter.
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Paris and Osborne
1855
The album of about 200 pictures shows at the Paris Exposition Universelle, in the Ottoman Empire's pavilion, and takes the second-class medal. On 19 July Queen Victoria receives him at Osborne and gives him a gold medal; copies reach Napoleon III and Franz Josef I too.
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The ruler's photographer
1863
In 1863 he receives from Alexandru Ioan Cuza the title of Court Painter and Photographer. He later works for Carol I as well and photographs the Bucharest elites for decades.
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The end
1887
Dies in Bucharest, aged 75; the consulted sources differ on the day: 3 June or 3 July. According to Ionescu, the studio house perishes in the bombing of Bucharest on 25 August 1944.
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200 years
2012
The Cotroceni National Museum devotes him the retrospective «Carol Popp de Szathmari, painter and photographer» (9 May–10 August 2012), with over 400 works, 200 years after his birth.
The 1854 album
In the first year of the Russo-Turkish war that became the Crimean War (1853–1856), Szathmari packs a wagon with cameras, glass plates and a developing darkroom. His clients included Russian and Turkish officers; his contemporary Ernest Lacan writes that his standing as an artist and known talent opened the generals' doors to him. He photographs Turkish infantrymen, artillerymen with horse-drawn guns, Cossacks, Russian volunteers and officers of both sides, bringing «both camps together in his album».
The closest call comes in the first days of April 1854, near Oltenita. He wants to photograph the quarantine, and the Turkish gunners take the laboratory wagon for a spy's hiding place and fire on it: the third ball, Lacan writes, «ploughs the ground a few paces from him and covers him with sand». The plate, though, came out magnificent.
The plates are bound into an album described in the sources as holding about 200 pictures (Lacan speaks of «more than two hundred plates») and shown at Paris in the summer of 1855, in the Ottoman Empire's pavilion of the Exposition Universelle: the first images of the war, praised by the critics and awarded the second-class medal.
Then come the monarchs. On 19 July 1855 Szathmari presents a copy to Queen Victoria at an Osborne audience, in the presence of Prince Albert, and receives a gold medal. That same year he is received by Napoleon III, and further copies reach Franz Josef I and other European courts.
Paris, 1855
M. de Szathmari, the skilled amateur photographer of Bucharest, whose arrival we recently announced, had the honour of being received by the Emperor on Wednesday evening. Their Majesties wished to see all the prints bound in his magnificent album; the portraits of the Russian and Turkish generals interested them most.
How the wet process usually worked
The wagon proves the process: Szathmari used wet-collodion glass plates, developed on the spot. Below, how the process usually worked, after the Royal Collection Trust and Victoria and Albert Museum technical pages: everything through developing had to be finished in about 10–15 minutes, before the coating dried.
Step 1 of 6
Everything through developing: about 10–15 minutes
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Pour the wet window in the wagon
Wash the glass plate and pour iodized collodion in a thin, even coat. Everything happens in the wagon's darkroom.
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Sensitize the wet window in the wagon
Dip the plate in the silver nitrate bath. The glass turns light-sensitive; from this moment, the wet window is counted in minutes.
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Expose the wet window outside, at the camera
Set the plate in its holder and expose while the plate is still wet; the time varied with light, lens and chemistry, from a few seconds to a few minutes.
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Develop the wet window in the wagon
Carry the plate back into the dark wagon and pour on the developer, then rinse. Every step this far had to be finished before the coating dried; otherwise the wet process stopped working normally.
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Fix and finish after developing in the wagon
Fix the image, wash the plate, let it dry and varnish it. The dried plate leaves the wet window: it is now the glass negative.
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Print separately, in daylight later, at the studio
From the glass negative strike copies on albumen paper, by direct contact, in daylight: a separate operation, from a few minutes to over an hour.
The negative is born in about 10–15 minutes; the paper copy comes later, in daylight.
Almost a year ahead of Fenton
Roger Fenton remains the celebrated name of Crimean photography. The sources place Szathmari ahead of Fenton in the photographic record of the Crimean War.
April 1854
about 11 months
March 1855
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April 1854
Szathmari
In April 1854 his wagon is taken for a spy's shelter and comes under the Turkish artillery from Oltenita; in the Danube campaign he photographs troops and commanders of both camps.
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20 February 1855
Fenton
Leaves for Balaklava, sent by the publisher Thomas Agnew, with 2 assistants, 5 cameras, 700 glass plates, 36 chests of provisions and a wine merchant's van refitted as a darkroom.
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8 March 1855
Fenton
Lands at Balaklava, about eleven months after Szathmari's April 1854.
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summer 1855
Szathmari
The album of about 200 pictures shows at Paris; on 19 July a copy reaches Queen Victoria.
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1855
Fenton
Works in the Crimea for over three months with the travelling darkroom, after the great battles.
Two honest reservations. The historian Adrian-Silvan Ionescu opens his survey on the condition that the unknown American daguerreotypist of the Mexican-American war (1846–1847) stays unidentified.
At Varna in 1854 the French photographer Ernest Edouard de Caranza photographed the French troops; without more precise dates, the order of their work cannot be settled from the cited sources.
The man who photographed the powerful
Back in Bucharest, Szathmari stays the photographer of the powerful. After the Union, his camera records the ruler, Princess Elena Cuza and the political leaders of the day.
In 1863 he receives from Alexandru Ioan Cuza the title of Court Painter and Photographer; he later works for Carol I too, and his panoramas and views show mid-nineteenth-century Bucharest as it was.
Where the pictures are now
No complete, intact copy of the war album is known today. According to Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, the copy given to Napoleon III is said to have burned in the Tuileries Palace during the Commune of 1871; the Austrian and German copies vanished in the two world wars, and what was left in the studio was lost in the bombing of Bucharest on 25 August 1944.
Photographs linked to the copy given to Queen Victoria survive separately in the Royal Collection: thirteen salted-paper prints (RCIN 2500615–2500627) with the provenance «Acquired by Queen Victoria»: Turkish artillerymen and officers, infantrymen, aide-de-camps, Cossacks, Russian volunteers, Ömer Pasha with his staff and a military band.
- 2 photographs: Turkish artillerymen with horse-drawn guns
- 1 photograph: five Turkish officers on horseback
- 5 photographs: Turkish infantrymen
- 1 photograph: three Ottoman aide-de-camps, major, colonel and captain
- 1 photograph: Cossacks
- 1 photograph: three Russian volunteers
- 1 photograph: Ömer Pasha with his aide-de-camps
- 1 photograph: the Turkish infantry band
At Rochester, New York, the George Eastman House keeps three salted-paper pictures, dated 1855 in the catalogue: the Russian lancers' encampment at Craiova (15.4×21.1 cm), the bombardment of Silistra (15.3×21.1 cm) and the portrait of Lieutenant-General Soimonoff, commander of the 104th Russian Division, killed at Inkerman (25.1×18.4 cm).
In Bucharest, the Library of the Romanian Academy keeps Szathmari photographs and glass plates. Ionescu wrote in 1998 that the plates had not been copied since their acquisition in the 1930s; in 2006 he listed among the Academy's album pictures the Turkish camp, two cavalry compositions, the Oltenita quarantine and a supply base.
Earlier or later?
Five cards, five pairs of years. Say whether Szathmari's year came earlier or later than the rival year.
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1
The Crimean War
Szathmari's Danube carries the year 1854, Fenton's Balaklava 1855.
Answer
Earlier by 1 year: about eleven months separate April 1854 from March 1855.
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2
The first photograph
Szathmari's first photograph dates from 1848, the wet-collodion process from 1851.
Answer
Earlier by 3 years: the plaster Cupid is a paper calotype, glass comes after.
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3
The Bucharest studio
The studio is on record by 1850, the first photograph dates from 1848.
Answer
Later by at most 2 years: first the 1848 experiment, then the business on record by 1850.
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4
The Court photographer
The Court photographer title comes in 1863, the Osborne audience in 1855.
Answer
Later by 8 years: the road from Queen Victoria to ruler Cuza takes eight years.
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5
The retrospective
The Cotroceni retrospective takes place in 2012, the artist's death in 1887.
Answer
Later by 125 years: over 400 paintings and photographs 200 years after his birth.
No card played yet.
Sources
The facts come from contemporary sources (Ernest Lacan, 1856; La Lumière, 1855, both via Ionescu 2006), the Royal Collection Trust and George Eastman Museum catalogues, and historical studies (Ionescu 1998, 2006, 2013; ESHPh 2020); the month and year differences are computed from those dates, and the La Lumière lines are translated from the French.
The death date differs between sources: 3 June 1887 in Ionescu (2013), 3 July 1887 in Hannavy (2013, via EN Wikipedia); the page shows both. The count of about 200 pictures is the sources' figure, not pieces counted today; the chain of losses (Tuileries 1871, the Austrian and German copies, 1944) is Ionescu's account.
The man and the war
- Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Szathmari's Crimean War photographs in American and British collections, Muzeul Național X/1998
- Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, Szathmari and the Crimean War, Historical Yearbook III/2006, pp. 81-90: the La Lumière audiences, the medal, the album
- Adrian Silvan Ionescu, Szathmári, un mare artist documentarist, RIHA Journal 0070/2013: settling in Bucharest, the 1848 calotype, the 1863 title
- Ernest Lacan, Esquisses photographiques, Paris 1856, pp. 155-162: contemporary account of the album, both camps, Oltenita
- Adrian-Silvan Ionescu, the Photography in Romania survey, PhotoResearcher 34/2020: the 200-picture album, Paris 1855, Carol I's court
- The 2012 Cotroceni retrospective: over 400 works, 9 May-10 August (Nine O'Clock, 8 May 2012)
Fenton and the caveats
The process
- Royal Collection Trust, the wet collodion process: coat, sensitize, expose wet, develop, rinse, fix, wash, dry, varnish
- V&A, photographic processes: exposures from seconds to minutes, dried collodion turns waterproof, albumen printing is separate
- NASA, Astronomy Picture of the Day, 2 January 2021: coating to developing in about 10-15 minutes before drying
Survivals today
- Royal Collection Trust, the 13 Szathmari photographs (RCIN 2500615-2500627), salted paper prints, provenance «Acquired by Queen Victoria»
- George Eastman Museum, the 3 Szathmari pictures (1982.1893.0001-0003), dated 1855, with per-object dimensions
- Royal Collection Trust, the Windsor fire: 20 November 1992, the Royal Library undamaged, only two artworks lost
Pictures
- Ömer Pasha with his aide-de-camps, 1854 (RCIN 2500622) · Wikimedia Commons
- Self-portrait, Library of the Romanian Academy (unknown date) · Wikimedia Commons
- Lithographed panorama of Bucharest, Illustrated London News, 1 April 1865 · Wikimedia Commons
- The Oltenita quarantine, dated 1854 in the Commons metadata · Wikimedia Commons
- Turkish infantry, 1854 (RCIN 2500619) · Wikimedia Commons
- Turkish artillery, 1854, attributed to Szathmari (RCIN 2500615) · Wikimedia Commons
- Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855 · Wikimedia Commons
- Alexandru Ioan Cuza, photograph by Szathmari (dated before 1873) · Wikimedia Commons
- Turkish cavalry, dated 1854 in the Commons metadata · Wikimedia Commons