Before the development of railway lines, France resembled a group of small, independent states rather than a unified country. Dialects, education, and access to modern conveniences varied enormously throughout the country. The advent of the French national rail system not only stimulated communication, commerce, and travel but also engendered a sense of common history and culture.
In 1861 the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway company commissioned Édouard Baldus to compile an album comprising views of the landscape and the architecture that a traveler would experience along the southern portion of the line. Baldus’ photographs of the Vienne station and the Nerthe tunnel use the tracks to highlight the impressive feats of the engineers and to celebrate the industrialization and modernization of France.
Three photographs by Gustave Le Gray, the eminent French photographer and instructor, focus on the sea and the possibilities that lay beyond. Taken in Normandy, in the north of France, Le Soleil Couronné, 1856 (the third photograph shown on the adjacent wall) is thought to have been created using two wet-collodion negatives, one exposed for the sky and one for the sea. The first two views on this wall were both taken the following year in 1857 in the Mediterranean port of Sète (known as Cette at the time). All three views evoke the commercial and exotic potential of what lay over the horizon in the newly colonized world.