Still Life: Cauldron, Pitcher, and Vegetables,

1853

As director of the Royal Manufacture of Porcelain at Sèvres from 1852 to 1871, Regnault played a strategic role at the intersection of art, industry, and national enterprise in Second Empire France. He also assumed a central position in the first generation of French paper-photography amateurs, cofounding the Société Héliographique in 1851 and serving as first president of the Société Française de Photographie in 1855. This modest "garden corner" arrangement recalls the nested still lifes in the Dutch genre paintings that enjoyed a vogue in mid-century France. The setting is the grounds of the Manufacture, where Regnault, his colleagues, and their families lived. The print is the work of Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, an early enthusiast of paper photography in France who introduced key technical improvements to Talbot’s process. Blanquart-Evrard’s Imprimerie Photographique in Lille published portfolio editions of works by various photographers, including thirteen images by Regnault.