Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey

Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey studied at Beaux-Arts de Paris. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is photography. Work by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and J. Paul Getty Museum.

Girault de Prangey was a wealthy scholar who studied painting in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and traveled as he pursued historical archaeology as an amateur. He learned daguerreotypy, possibly from its inventor, Louis Daguerre, or from Hippolyte Bayard. Girault de Prangey was keenly interested in the architecture of the Middle East. His artwork always included highly detailed focus upon architecture. He recognized that photography was a tool that could enable him to be even more accurate in his artwork. Between 1841 and 1844, he made a grand tour that included Italy and the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, producing more than 900 daguerreotypes of architectural views, landscapes, and portraits of residents he encountered in their cultural settings. After his return to France, he made watercolour and pen-and-ink studies using his photographs and published a small-edition book of lithographs from them. Responses to the publication failed to encourage further publication of his artwork and he turned his concentration to his interest in the study of exotic plants at his estate. He made stereographs of his estate and the exotic plants he collected. Photography was not considered an art form during his lifetime. Being tools for his artwork, he made no effort to make his photographs known during his lifetime, and after using them for his artwork, stored them in wooden boxes in his attic.

• Illustration — The arch of Constantine, 1842 • Illustration — Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, 1842 • Illustration — Part of the Acropolis, 1842 • Illustration — Piferari, 1842 • Illustration — St Peter's Basilica, 1842 • Illustration — Old City of Damascus and the Umayyad Mosque, 1843 • Illustration — Dome of the Rock in Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem, 1844

Ruins and Foreground, Acropolis, Athens (55. Rose Window, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris (277. Apse, Basilica San Pietro, Toscanella (Tuscania) (43. Eglise de S. Northwest Facade, Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome (12. Capital, near the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem (184. Aleppo, Viewed from the Antioch Gate (252. Prise de Bab Antakieh. Mosque of Sultan al-Hakim, Cairo (117. Western Approach to the Acropolis, Athens (49. Hexagonal Court, Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek (290. Temple and Date Palms, Philae (236. Pompey’s Column, Alexandria (68. Vase, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome (61. Capital, Greco-Roman Theater, Miletus (71. Ponte Rotto (Pons Aemilius), Rome (31. Grand Minaret, Alexandria (73. Desert near Alexandria (74. Temple of Bacchus, Athens (53. Caryatid, Erechtheion, Athens (56. Temple of Artemis, Sardis (134. Damascus Gate, Jerusalem (208. Ramesseum, Thebes (201. Temple of Horus, Edfu (167.? Recognition and collections. Paul Getty Museum.