Mission Pelliot Archive

Item set

Type: Public collection See all item sets with this value; Archive See all item sets with this value
Title: Mission Pelliot Archive
Description: An expedition under the guidance of the French scholar Paul Pelliot conducted between 1906 and 1908, which gave the opportunity to one of its participants – Charles Nouette – to constitute a comprehensive archive of photographs. Several public institutions are holding materials from this archive.
content: MUSÉE NATIONAL DES ARTS ASIATIQUES - GUIMET

Hereafter referred to in the Museum collection as “Document de la Mission Pelliot", this archive contains:

• Over 1500 photographs (including over 1000 glass plates, around 400 celluloid films and 30 or so prints on paper),

• Letters sent by and to Paul Pelliot,

• Pelliot’s notebooks and manuscripts,

• Other documents (invoices, receipt, orders…).

Based on the internal document held at Musée Guimet that lists all the photographs contained in the archive, the operator alternated with the following negative sizes: for glass plates: 8,8 x 8,9 cm (square format); 8,9 x 17,8cm (panoramic view); 9x12 cm (quarter plate); 13 x 13,2 (square format); 13 x 18 cm (half plate); 18 x 24 cm (full plate); 24 x 30 cm (one of the larger formats possible at that time with 30 x 40 cm). For film: 8,5x17 cm (standard format for stereographs); 8,7 x 17,2 cm or 8,8 x 17,4 cm (panoramic view); 18 x 24 cm; 24 x 30 cm.

The glass plates were first donated to the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie [Library of Art and Archeology, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, France] in 1912-13. In 1921, they were sent to the Musée Guimet (partly due to the outbreak of the First World War).

The glass plates have been entirely digitized and can be accessed in situ at the Museum’s Photographic Department upon request. Primary materials (photographs, notes, letters, and so forth) are held in the Museum’s library upon request.

The photographic archive created during Pelliot’s Mission underwent a wide process of diffusion across borders and throughout time, which continues up to this day. Some key examples:

- The first method of disseminating the photographs was the official publication Pelliot edited in the aftermath of the expedition titled Les grottes de Touen-Houang [The Dunhuang Grottoes] in 1924.

- Throughout the expedition Pelliot continued to send photographs (mostly of manuscripts) to individuals (peers, family members, international and local private collectors), and to institutions.

- Conferences were also useful circumstances through which photographs were communicated in the 1910s.

- In 1931 Pelliot embarked on the compilation of another monograph that incorporated Nouette’s photographs entitled La Haute Asie [The High Asia]

- Photographs were reprinted frequently in the 1920s-30s in Chinese language periodicals.

- In 2008, The Centenary Catalogue of Dunhuang Mogao Caves: Pelliot’s pictures of Dunhuang (敦煌莫高窟百年圖錄 : 伯希和敦煌圖錄) published two large volumes offering essentially a catalogue of pictures that juxtaposed before and after photographs, with the older before images being those shot during Pelliot’s Mission

- In 2011, the Dunhuang Academy set up an exhibition in 2011 and published a catalogue of early twentieth-century photographs of Dunhuang, which included those taken during Pelliot’s Mission.

- March 2022: conference at the Institut français d'études sur l'Asie centrale (IFEAC) entitled « Le Kirghizstan de 1906 à travers les yeux de deux français, le scientifique Paul Pelliot et le photographe Charles Nouette ».

Identifier: Pel. Mi; Pel. S; Pel. C; Pel. D…; art.rmngp.fr; ----------------------------------

INSTITUT NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE DE L’ART (INHA)

Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA, translated as the National Institute of History of Art) holds 16 folders from Pelliot’s expedition to China. Each of them includes photographic gelatin and silver on photographic paper mounted to cardboards. They are described as the following:

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 1 Goume Toura” containing 50 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 2 Kyzyl Sairam” containing 71 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 3 Oursumtch” containing 39 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 4 Kaghgar, Koutchar, Yar, Tô Fo Sse” containing 28 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 5-11 Touen Huang (ou Dunhuang)” containing several sub-folders with a total of 370 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 12Toumchong, Sou Bachi” containing 64 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 13 Chine” containing 152 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 14 Chine, Japon” containing 53 photographic prints,

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 15 Chine, Asie" containing 234 photographic prints

• “Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot I, 16” containing 55 photographic prints.

The bibliothèque d’Art et d’Archéologie – today Library of the INHA – was founded by the French couturier and collector Jacques Doucet (1853-1929).

As mentioned above, the glass plate negatives of these prints were first donated to the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie in 1912-13. In 1921, the glass plates were sent to the Musée Guimet (partly due to the outbreak of the First World War). The photographs printed on carboards remained at the Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie.

Identifier: Photothèque Archéologie Mission Pelliot, 1 à 16; www.calames.abes.fr
Temporal Coverage: Twentieth century (dates CE) See all item sets with this value
Spatial Coverage: Tashkent See all item sets with this value; Moscow See all item sets with this value; Xinjiang See all item sets with this value; Gansu See all item sets with this value; Dunhuang See all item sets with this value; Beijing See all item sets with this value; Shanghai See all item sets with this value; Yangtze River See all item sets with this value
Subject: Archaeology See all item sets with this value; Black-and-white photography See all item sets with this value; Documentary photography See all item sets with this value; Architecture See all item sets with this value; Portraits See all item sets with this value; Artifacts (object genre) See all item sets with this value; Street scenes See all item sets with this value; Townscapes (built environment) See all item sets with this value; Landscapes (environments) See all item sets with this value
Language: French; Chinese
References: Pelliot, Paul. Les Grottes De Touen-Houang: Peintures Et Sculptures Bouddhiques Des Époques Des Wei, Des Tʻang Et Des Song. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1920-24.

———. La Haute Asie. Paris, L'Édition artistique J. Goudard, 1931.

Pelliot, Paul, Jérôme Ghesquière, and Francis Macouin. Carnets de route: 1906-1908. Paris: Indes savantes, 2008.

Dunhuang Mogaoku Bainian Tulu (boxi He Dunhuang Tulu): Bei-wei, Tang, Song Shiqi De Fojiao Bihua He Diaosu (dun Bian Di 3-465 Hao Ku Ji Qita) ; Gansu Sheng Guji Wenxian Zhengli Bianji Zhongxin [敦煌莫高窟百年圖錄 (伯希和敦煌圖錄) : 北魏, 唐, 宋時期的佛教壁畫和雕塑 (敦編第3-465號窟及其他) ; 蘭州大學敦煌研究所 ; 甘肅省古籍文獻整理編輯中心]. Lanzhou: Gansu renmin, 2008.
location: Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet See all item sets with this value; INHA See all item sets with this value; Paris See all item sets with this value
address: Musée Guimet, 6 Place d'Iéna, 75116 Paris; www.guimet.fr; Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), 6 Rue des Petits Champs, 75002 Paris; bibliotheque.inha.fr

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Charles Nouette
Charles Nouette was originally a self-taught photographer who only later became familiar with archaeological methods. Biographical information regarding Nouette is rather scarce, except from the obituary Pelliot wrote on his memory in 1910. Thanks to this we know that Nouette was originally an electrician and that an illness had prevented him from continuing in this profession. He then dedicated his life to photography and this combined with his scientific knowledge and natural ingenuity attracted the attention of various contemporaries, notably Pelliot. According to L’Annuaire du Commerce et de l’Industrie Photographiques of 1902, Nouette had a studio located at 22 rue Henri Barbusse (former rue Denfert-Rochereau) in the fifth arrondissement in Paris. His studio’s presentation says: “Agrandissement et réduction de plans, machines, architecture, bijoux, étoffes, en un mot toutes photographies ayant pour objet les catalogues et les épreuves à conserver ou à graver. (…) Tous formats. – Prix suivant format et difficulté. » Nouette contracted tuberculosis during his trip in China, and died six months after he returned to Paris, while he was still developing Pelliot’s expedition photographs. Nouette was forty-one. He is buried at the Monthléry cemetery. Information concerning the initial encounter between Pelliot and Nouette remains unknown. Primary sources only mention that Pelliot contacted Nouette during an early stage of his preparations for the expedition and asked him to serve as its main operator. Letters exchanged between 1905 and 1906 also revealed that the two men discussed in detail the photographic equipment that would be suitable for the expedition. The particular attention paid to photography from the preparation phase was related to the new methodological emphasis and value ascribed to photography in the archaeological field. In the same way that these kinds of expeditions were multidisciplinary, Nouette had multiple duties. Pelliot’s notebooks describe that amongst other duties he also checked on the workers that excavated the sites, drew schematic plans of grottoes, took some rubbings and managed the bulk of mails to be delivered. Yet his role as the operator of the mission appeared to be his most prominent position.