To celebrate the launching of the web site www.earlyphotography.nl, huis Marseille has organized an exhibition of some of the earliest photographs (the 1839-1860 period) extant in the Netherlands. This project, Early Photography in Dutch Collections (1839-1860), of which the web site is the result, was realized by the Rijksmuseum in collaboration with the Printroom of the Universtity of Leiden and has received financial support from the Mondriaan Foundation.
The web site www.earlyphotography.nl comprises a catalogue containing descriptions and reproductions of 3700 photographs from the pioneering era of photography in 25 Dutch museums, archives and librarys. Approximately 50 of these photographs will be on view in Huis Marseille. They come from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum (Dutch National Gallery); the Amsterdam Municipal Archives; the Amsterdam Historical Museum; the Printroom at the University of Leiden; the National
Museum of Antiquities, Leiden; the Municipal Archives Department for Kennermerland Haarlem; the Catherijneconvent Museum, Utrecht; and the Hague Municipal Archives. This selection includes photographs by Dutch photographers (Eduard Isaac Asser, Nicolaas Henneman, Louis Wegner, Pieter Oosterhuis, among others); foreign photographers (Benjamin Brecknell Turner, Charles Marville, Gustave Le Gray, Hill & Adamson, among others); famed places in the Netherlands (such as the Westermarkt in Amsterdam, the Nieuwe Uitleg in the Hague, a panoramic view of Haarlem); the Crimean War (Roger Fenton, James Robertson); Egypt (Maxime Du Camp, Félix Teynard, Francis Frith, among others); portraits of famous and ordinary people (the painter Nicolaas Pieneman, Nobel Prize winner Tobias Asser); Indonesian antiquity (Adolph Schaefer); daguerreotypes; stereographs; and, in a linkup to the Cultivated in the Open exhibtion, several nature and landscape studies by 19th century photographers.
In addition to the www.earlyphotography.nl site, the database Early Photography in Dutch Collections (1839-1860) can be found at www.vroegefotografie.nl and www.dutchphotocollections.nl.