Julien Vallou de Villeneuve

Julien Vallou de Villeneuve (12 December 1795 in Boissy-Saint-Léger – 4 May 1866 in Paris) was a French painter, lithographer and photographer.

Vallou de Villeneuve studied with Jean-François Millet, and started his career at the Salon of 1814, exhibiting images depicting daily life, fashion, regional costumes and nude studies. In 1826 he showed at the Salon ‘Costumes des Provinces Septentrionales des Pays-Bas’. He published in 1829 lithographs of Types des Femmes. In 1830 with Achille Devera and Numas, Maurin and Tessaert, he contributed to the compendium of erotica Imagerie Galante (Paris 1830). He developed an international following for his 1839 folio-sized lithographic erotic series Les Jeunes Femmes, Groupes de Tetes, depicting racy episodes in the life of young women and their lovers.

From 1842 de Villeneuve took up photography, not long after its invention, as an adjunct and aid to his graphic work, producing some daguerreotypes but predominantly softly toned salted paper prints from paper negatives that enabled the retouching he employed for artistic effect. Following the method of Humbert de Molard, he fixed his prints with ammonia which avoided the bleaching of highlights caused in salt prints by hypo, and thus incidentally ensured the archival permanence of his prints, which survive today. He had many of his prints made by photolithographer Rose-Joseph Lemercier (1803–1887). In 1850 de Villeneuve opened a photographic studio at 18 Rue Bleue, Paris, where his subjects were 'academic studies', small prints of nudes as models for artists. He printed a series of these studies as ‘Etudes d’apres nature’, and many were published in La Lumiere, journal of the Society Francaise de la Photographie. There was also a ready market for his photographs of well-known actors in full costume posing against theatrical scenery.

In 1851 he joined the Société héliographique. From 1853–1854 he was a founding member of the Société française de photographie (S.F.P.).

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