The Maillet Daguerreotype Collection

The Maillet Daguerreotype Collection

Sale Overview

This June, Christie’s offers one of the most important collections of daguerreotypes to come to market in the past 25 years. Announced to the world in 1839 and born of a collaboration between Frenchmen Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis Mande Jacques Daguerre, the daguerreotype was the ‘first truly practical photographic system’. By their nature, daguerreotypes are unique objects; they immediately became an international sensation.

Beginning in the 1960s, Lynn and Yann Maillet pursued collecting daguerreotypes with a fierce passion. It was a period when stupendous pieces were being unearthed, and a wide range of works were readily available in what was then a relatively nascent collecting market. Well-known within the field and yet resolutely private, the Maillets amassed a collection with great depth and outstanding breadth. This collection of over 200 lots of daguerreotypes have never before been on public view.

This collection contains significant and rare works by Samuel Morse, Robert Cornelius, John Ruskin, Platt D. Babbitt, Henry Fitz Jr., Plumbe, Moreau, Durand, Eynard, Plumier, Francis Grice, Bogardus, Helsby, more than two dozen plates by Southworth & Hawes, and a wide variety of American and European views, occupational portraits, and views of the California gold rush.

Auction times
12 Jun 10:00 AM (EDT)

Our specialist’s selection

Brought to you by

Darius Himes

Darius Himes

International Head of Department | Photographs

Darius Himes is Deputy Chairman, International Head of Photographs, based in New York City, where he oversees a global team holding auctions in Paris, London, and NYC. He is focused on private sales and business development, with a keen emphasis on bringing singular collections and individual masterpieces to market in innovative ways. In recent years, his strategic approach has yielded outstanding auction records for Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, and William Eggleston among others. In 2022 alone, the department achieved three of the four top prices for any photograph sold at auction.

Since joining the company in 2014, Himes has had the privilege of speaking with Sir Paul McCartney, Richard Gere, and Sir Elton John about their love of photography and has interviewed on stage numerous artists including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mona Kuhn, Todd Hido, and Bruce Davidson about their work. He was instrumental in bringing the personal collection of DJ Kool Herc, the founding father of Hip-Hop, to Christie’s for a landmark sale in the summer of 2022.

Prior to joining Christie’s, Himes was director of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco from 2011–2014. In 2007 he co-founded Radius Books, a non-profit publisher of books on photography and the visual arts. A lecturer and writer, his 3rd edition of Publish Your Photography Book, co-authored with Mary Virginia Swanson, was released in the spring of 2023.

Himes completed his Master of Arts in Liberal Arts at St. John's College in 2000 and received a BFA in Photography from Arizona State University, having studied under William Jenkins and Bill Jay. His love of the full breadth of the medium is evident in his work both within and outside the auction world.

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