Séraphin-Médéric Mieusement (1840-1905) was a French architectural photographer born in Gonneville-la-Mallet, a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of Northern France. As a young man, he established himself as a photographer in Blois in the Loire Valley and worked for acclaimed architects including Jacques Félix Duban (1798-1870), Anatole de Baudot (1834-1915), and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) to provide photographic supplements for restoration projects on historic monuments. Some of his first photographs were of the Château de Blois and the Château de Pierrefonds. At 22 years old, Mieusement had his first exhibition of his photographs in London in 1862, and two years later exhibited at the Société française de photographie in Paris. In 1870, Mieusement’s first four photographs, picturing the Gaston d'Orléans staircase in Blois, entered the collection of the Commission des monuments historiques accompanied by a note from Félix Duban about the ongoing restoration.
In 1872, the photographic collection of the Commission included only around 600 photographic prints of monuments by Édouard Baldus (1813-1889), Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887), Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), Henri Le Secq (1818-1882), Auguste Mestral (1812-1884), and others taken two decades earlier. After identifying the gaps in their collection, Mieusement proposed a new, monumental project to the Commission, which included a detailed travel itinerary to photograph designated monuments throughout France, as well as a request for one hundred and fifty thousand francs to deliver around thirty-five photographs per month over a ten-year period, over 4,000 photographs plus negatives. His 1872 proposal was refused due to the limited budget of the Commission, which solely financed repairs to buildings. On January 7, 1873, the Commission revised its official list of monuments and the following year amended its budget to include the acquisition of photographs – purchasing prints by Charles Marville (1813-1879), Dominique Roman (1824-1911), Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917), and in late 1874, one hundred and thirty-seven photographs by Mieusement.
Mieuseument began actively working under the Commission des Monuments Historiques, detailing his 1875 journey to the Commission in various towns and cities: "Nevers, Moulins, Lyon, Vienne sur Rhône, Avignon, Arles, Nîmes, Marseille, Toulon, Nice, Vintimille, Genoa, Florence, return via Chambéry, Mâcon and Blois,” to which the Commission responded with a list of monuments in each location. After receiving these commissioned photographs from Mieusement, they tasked him in 1877 with producing three-hundred fifty photographs for L'Exposition universelle de 1878 to highlight the restoration work in monuments across France. The photographer was awarded a silver medal for these photographs and was soon admitted to the French Society of Photography, where he became president of the Society of Artistic Excursions of Loir-et-Cher.
As a trusted photographer associated with the Commission, Mieusement signed contracts with other organizations including the Ministère des Cultes which commissioned Mieusement in 1881 to photograph one category of buildings outside the control of the Commission: cathedrals, which remained solely under the ministère des Affaires ecclésiastiques. In 1883, Mieusement was granted an exclusive sales counter at the Trocadéro, and permitted to sell the photographs he had taken for the Commission as well as those from his private collection. In 1885, he moved his studio to Paris at 13 Rue de Passy. In 1886, he was granted a second sales counter in the Hôtel de Cluny Museum.
In 1890, after the marriage of Mieusement’s daughter Laure to photographer Paul Robert (1867-1898), Mieusement passed by dowry his contract with the Commission of historic monuments and the management of the Mieusement collection to his son-in-law. Three years later, Mieusement traveled to Algeria on a photographic survey mission for the Ministry of Worship. Upon his return, he continued to work in Provence before retiring in Blois. In 1894, Paul Robert was granted the exploitation of all photographs of the Commission and unified all photographs under the rating Monument Historique. He assisted with organizing and cataloging the photographs of Mieusement, as well as photographing some monuments himself in specific regions of France. In 1897, Paul Robert became the secretary of the Chambre syndicale de la photographie, but died prematurely only a year later. Mieusement’s concession and the exploitation of the photographs in the Commission transferred to the Neurdein Brothers House – a family of French photographs. Other photographers, including Jean-Eugène Durand were hired to document historic monuments for the Commission and Durand’s photographs are included in the vintage photographic albums.
From the late-1870s through the early-1900s, American architect and art historian Russell Sturgis (1836-1909) acquired over 600 photographs by Mieusement, including photos by Paul Robert, to add to his private collection of over fifteen thousand 19th century architectural photographs, now housed in the collection of Washington University.
On September 10, 1905, Miesuement passed away in the oceanside commune of Pornic at the age of 65.