Deconstructing the Creation of Daguerre’s dessins-fumées: A Photographic Process or Just Smoke and Mirrors?

In the years before the public announcement of the daguerreotype process in 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and others experimented with variations on photographic processes, including a heretofore mysterious process used to create a group of objects known as dessins-fumées (or smoke drawings). Exacting in style and miniature in scale, each depicts one of a limited number of architectural motifs in black media. While compositions are repeated within the small set of known dessins-fumées, variations in superficial details and shading are observed between “copies.” The J. Paul Getty Museum has two of these rare objects, Moorish Arch and Courtyard of a Gothic Castle. The black materials used by Daguerre were characterized with non-invasive analytical methods, including digital microscopy, macro x-ray fluorescence scanning, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and Raman micro-spectroscopy; mockups were created to assess their potential methods of application. This research revealed that the Getty dessins-fumées are drawings and not produced by photographic or printmaking techniques. This study also characterizes the materials used to create the drawings and confirm the order in which they were applied. They are discussed with respect to how they address the uncertainty surrounding the development of photographic processes by Daguerre and others in the 1820s and 1830s.