François Félix Fescourt

I recently bought a lot of some 27 old, large (image about 20 by 27 cm) photographs depicting mainly Roman buildings and ruins in the Provence. For 15 of them, I was unable to find the name of the photographer, or in many cases other online examples of the same image. The other 12 formed a (complete?) set though, which is nice. 

Now, I'm not a photography specialist at all, so it may well be that a lot of what I say here is either already wellknown or simply wrong: feel free to use the reply option below to post any corrections or additions of course. 

The photographer is  François Félix Fescourt (1817-1881), from Nîmes. He starts working as a photographer around 1860, it is unknown what he did before. While he also worked as a portrait photographer, he is now mainly remembered for two things: a series of stereoscopic images of the Roman ruins in and around Nîmes, and a booklet (about postcard-sized) of photos of the same, with an explanatory text on the back of each image. 

His large size images of the ruins seem to be much less known though; of the twelve, I could find five which were elsewhere attributed to him (either like this, or in a smaller format only), and five which were known but not attributed to him: the other two seem to be completely unknown. 

In at least two cases, unsigned works by Fescourt were attributed to Édouard Baldus (1813-1889), a much better known and highly sought after early photographer who photographed many of the same locations, often in a very similar way. 

Catawiki sold the above image of the Arena of Nîmes as "attributed to Baldus" for 220 Euro last year. 

Fescourt, interior of the Temple of Diana in Nîmes

Attributed to Baldus (Ader enchères)

Attributed to Baldus (Rijksmuseum)

Hard to blame them though, as specialists Ader did the same in the same period: 9 photograps (sadly only two shown) attributed to Baldus, sold for 1920 Euro together. The 7 which aren't shown all have a subject which is also included in my set of 12, so I suppose that they all are by Fescourt. When one compares the Fescourt photo with one which probably is by Baldus (found at the Rijksmuseum site), the confusion becomes understandable. 

Similarly, one of the unknown photos, a stunning view of the Pont du Gard, resembles the work of Baldus as well. 

Two other photographs are known (without an attribution to an artist) from the Hallwyl museum in Stockholm, having been personally bought by founder Wilhelmina von Hallwyl during her trip in southern France in 1880-1881: an exterior view of the temple of Diana, and a view of the Maison Carrée.

Baldus

Remarkable in that second image is that the background has been, well, photoshopped; the Maison Carrée is surrounded by houses, but looks better without them. This again is something Fescourt seems to have copied from Baldus, as can be seen in this image from the Metropolitan Museum collection.

An image of the cathedral of Nîmes is known at Ribapix, but again without the name of the artist and with a slightly too late date. 

The other 15 images, for which I sadly haven't found the artists, are in somewhat worse condition overall, and seem to range from the 1850s to ca. 1900. A real specialist should take a look at them presumably.