A group of three shops mounted on a platform in the Prado de San Sebastián, seen from afar and from above. This is the first existing photograph of the Seville April Fair. Dated 1859, it was taken by the Seville photographer Francisco Leygonier and reproduces the familial booth of the Dukes of Montpensier.
This photograph can now be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville, as part of the monographic exhibition dedicated to this pioneer of photographic art. The exhibition gathers, until June 8th, more than 80 originals, the vast majority coming from the Fernández Rivero collection. Among them, there are also views of monuments in Seville, Granada, and Córdoba, as well as portraits, reproductions of paintings, and some prints of Andalusian festivals, such as Holy Week.
This is a unique image. There are no other copies or duplicates of this salted paper positive calotype, measuring 132 x 230 millimeters. It was acquired by Juan Antonio Fernández Rivero, curator of this exhibition alongside María Teresa García Ballesteros, in an auction held in Paris and had not been exhibited until now.
«Without a doubt, this is the first documented image of the Seville April Fair», states Fernández Rivero, who also points out that it would take over two decades, until the 1880s, to document other snapshots of the Seville fairground, specifically, «those of the Seville photographers Ramón Almela and Emilio Beauchy, as well as those from the Parisian house Léon et Lévy, and even, to a lesser extent, those from the Granadian Rafael Garzón and the Cordoban Tomás Molina«.
Back of the carte de visite of Leygonier showing his accreditation as the photographer of the Dukes of Montpensier, ca. 1857. Fernández Rivero collection.
«The photograph of the booth of the Dukes of Montpensier at the fair is one of the highlights of this exhibition,» assesses the Minister of Culture and Sport, Patricia del Pozo, who believes the exhibition pays «a fair tribute to its author,» Francisco Leygonier. «He was ahead of his time, as evidenced by always being aware of the innovations in photographic technique to incorporate them into his Seville studio, open to the public for no less than 35 years,» recalls Del Pozo.
At the time this image was taken, 1859, Leygonier held the appointment of official photographer to the Montpensier household, a title granted to him four years earlier. By then, he had already carried out several photographic projects for the duke, such as shots of their Seville residence – the San Telmo Palace, family portraits, various views of Seville, as well as reproductions of the paintings that were part of the private collection of the couple formed by the Dukes of Montpensier: Antonio María de Orleans and María Luisa Fernanda.
This appointment, along with the frontal sweep presented at the bottom of this snapshot, a characteristic feature of this photographer, allows the attribution of the authorship of this first image of the Seville Fair to Leygonier. This photographer, as expert Fernández Rivero indicates, «used to cover or mask the negative of the calotypes to make the ground of a shot disappear when he didn’t like the result.» A practice that can be seen in several of the images reproduced in the exhibition, as well as in its catalog.
The Ybarra and Bonaplata Fair
At the initiative of two Sevillian councilors by adoption: José María Ybarra and Narciso Bonaplata, the Seville City Council recovered the celebration of the cattle fair, which dated back to the times of Alfonso X the Wise. After the approval of the council, the Seville Fair was finally inaugurated on April 18, 1847, at the Prado de San Sebastián, with 19 booths and a notable success in terms of public and business.
In 1858, a project for the reorganization of the booths in the enclosure was presented, which finally became a reality a year later. It was then that the familial booth of the Dukes of Montpensier, according to research by the architect Rafael Fernández García, was moved to the location where it appears in the photo taken by Leygonier: at the exit of the New Gate or San Fernando, a monument that was destroyed in October 1868.
First of the Seville photographers
Francisco Leygonier (Seville 1808-1882) is the most precocious of the enormous list of professional photographers from Seville in the 19th century. Alongside Luis Masson and Emilio Beauchy, he forms the great triumvirate of photographers who, from Seville, left a deep mark of their photographic work at a national and international level.
Leygonier’s case is unique because his early photographic activity transcended the city of Seville to become a true pioneer in the use of the daguerreotype and the calotype – the first negative/positive process that allowed for multiple reproductions – in Andalusia and Spain. The press in Seville, as well as in Madrid, echoed his creations.
Seville, San Telmo Palace, south facade, ca. 1858-1862. Albumin, 208 x 269 mm. Francisco Leygonier.
His views of Seville were, in many cases, the first photographic images that travelers could acquire. His are the most primitive calotypes that we can contemplate of the city, and which are now brought together for the first time in the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville: the Royal Alcazar, the Town Hall, the Plaza Nueva under construction, the Church of La Caridad, the Cathedral, the Giralda, the Casa de Pilatos, the Torre del Oro, the San Telmo Palace, or the Maestranza Bullring, among others.
Francisco Leygonier, who was born in Seville into a family of French origin, had to go to France after the death of his father. At just 11 years old, he went to live in the neighboring country at the house of his older sister, who had married a Napoleonic officer seasoned in the War of Independence. He returned to Seville at the age of 33 surrounded by a certain mystery, given his previous profession as a sailor that had taken him around the world.
Since his return and to the surprise of his fellow countrymen, Leygonier practiced the young and innovative art of photography in Seville. The arrival of the Montpensier family in the city in the early 1850s brought his Sevillian photographs to light in a catalog that he expanded in the following years with images of Granada and Córdoba.
Francisco Leygonier’s studio, located successively in Cantimplora Street, Ravetilla Street, and the Patio del Alcázar, offered his portraits and views for over three decades, until the end of the 1870s.
The Pretender and the «Little Court»
The Duke of Montpensier was the fifth son of Louis Philippe of Orleans, king of the French from 1830, and Maria Amelia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Following France’s interests, he married the Spanish infanta Maria Luisa Fernanda (1832-1897), sister of Queen Isabella II, with aspirations to the Spanish throne.
The exile of his father from France, by the revolution of 1848, led them to move to Spain. The Government of Isabella II did not consider it prudent for them to establish their residence in the capital, which is why they chose Seville to settle. They acquired a place outside the walls, the San Telmo Palace, formerly the University of Mareantes and then the Second Teaching Institute, to make it their home.
The duke, who had the writer Antonio de Latour as his private tutor, was a highly educated man, a great lover of the arts and sciences. A patron and ambitious art collector, as well as an amateur archaeologist, he was also a lover of photography, an art he promoted extensively, commissioning works from photographers such as Leygonier, Charles Clifford, Luis Masson, and Jean Laurent, among others.
In a few years, the Montpensier family transformed the San Telmo Palace, one of the most photographed monuments of the time, into a true court, popularly known as the «Little Court,» where intellectuals, artists, and politicians gathered. So much so, that this «court» even rivaled that of Madrid.
In any case, the Duke of Montpensier was a prominent instigator of conspiracies against his sister-in-law to seize the throne. The revolution of 1868 led to the abdication of the queen, but Montpensier did not reach the throne due to the opposition of Prim, who chose Amadeo of Savoy. He then had to go into exile. Upon his return to Spain, in 1870, he engaged in a pistol duel with Isabel II’s brother-in-law, Enrique de Borbón, ultimately ruining his chances of ascending to the throne.
His daughter María de las Mercedes married his nephew, King Alfonso XII, but passed away shortly afterward. Montpensier died during a hunt in another Andalusian enclave where he also had a residence, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in 1890.
