The Hector Berlioz Website - Berlioz Photos and Portraits 5

The Hector Berlioz Website

Berlioz Photo Album : 1864 – 1865

Berlioz’s photos and portraits

Photograph by Karl Reutlinger – before 15 August 1864

This picture has been scanned from an 1890 reprint of Berlioz’s photo in our own collection.

Oil painting by Ed Winkler
after photograph by Karl Reutlinger

This 1958 postcard is in our collection.

Drawing after photograph by Karl Reutlinger

This is a print from the original pen & ink drawing by the Russian Alex. Gribayedoff made at the turn of the19th/20th century.
A copy of this print is in our collection.

Drawing after photograph by Karl Reutlinger

This drawing is reproduced here courtesy of http://portrait.kaar.at, whose organisers allow to use for free “up to a maximum of five pictures on any website or publication”. We are most grateful to Ralph Unterburg for sending this image and drawing our attention to its source.

We have not been able to identify the artist or the exact date of the drawing, but it is most likely to be after 1869. As Mr Unterburg rightly points out, it is not included in volume 26 of the New Berlioz Edition, published by Bärenreiter: The Portraits of Hector Berlioz, edited by Gunther Braam in collaboration with Richard Macnutt and John Warrack (December 2003).

Drawing – by Henrik Major (1895-1948)

This postcard, published in Gyoma, Hungary, is in our own collection.
Major was born and worked in Hungary; died in New York. We are most grateful to Dr. Janet I. Wasserman for letting us know the name of the artist who drew the original caricature, and further information about him.

Photograph taken between summer
1864 and July 1865, by Franck

This photograph appeared in the first edition of Berlioz’s Mémoires, published posthumously in 1870. The notes written under the photograph are from the third bar of the first movement of the Symphonie fantastique – a self-borrowing from a piece Berlioz composed before he left La Côte Saint-André for Paris in 1821.

The photographer is François-Marie-Louis-Alexandre Gobinet de Villecholle, also known as Franck. He took two photographs of Berlioz at the same session, one of which Berlioz chose as frontispiece for the Mémoires. They were made between summer 1864 (after his promotion to Officier de la Légion d’honneur) and July 1865, when the Mémoires were bound and the whole print run of 1200 copies were put in Berlioz’s office at the Conservatoire.

Lithograph after the photograph taken by Franck

This picture has been scanned from a biographical article entitled "Berlioz (1803-1869)" by J. M. J. Bouillat in Les Contemporains, No.182., published in Paris on 5 April 1896, a copy of which is in our own collection.

We are most grateful to M. Benoît Carlier who owns the above picture and has kindly scanned and sent us this copy. M. Carlier’s research at the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire de Bruxelles [Library of the Brussels Conservatoire] shows that this picture is a reproduction of an earlier photograph printed some time between February 1866 and April 1869. The signature, in ink, does not appear to be in Berlioz’s hand. The name and address of the company which printed the picture is under the signature: Richault et Cie éditeurs de Musique – 4, Boulevard des Italiens, Paris.

This picture could be the second photo taken at the same session as the one which Berlioz chose for the frontispiece of his Mémoires. However, the colour of Berlioz’s vest is different. Also, a similar picture, printed by a different publisher, Buttner-Thierry, is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The BNF attributes the original photograph to Reutlinger, and the printed lithograph to Paul Maurou, made ca 1865; it describes the signature under the lithograph as a facsimile of Berlioz’s.

Gunter Braam, who is an expert in Berlioz iconography, confirms that the picture is in part the second photo taken by Franck; he further explains the origins of the lithograph:

This is a very funny mixture of two photographs: You will see by comparison that the waistcoat and cravat are from the photograph taken by Bertsch et Arnaud (also engraved by Carey for Mirecourt’s book on HB (1856); later engraved again by H. Dochy for Jullien (1888); the head is indeed by Franck. ... I think [the lithograph] is posthumous. The author is indeed Paul Maurou, who has signed his name in the oval [of the print which belongs to the BNF] (personal communication).

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