The Album des Deux Frontières

In the 1850s, a two-volume set of lithographic views circulated in Bayonne and Paris under the title Album des Deux Frontieres . The two frontiers were those of France and Spain, whose boundary remained, at that moment, officially unfixed. The Album des Deux Frontieres is one of countless examples of printed representations of the Pyrenees that appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. Maintaining boundaries required both political intervention and cultural differentiation, especially in the valleys of the Pyrenees, where the limits between France and Spain were stubbornly confused. Blanche Feillet Hennebutte began work on the Album in 1846 while living in Bayonne. Lithography allowed for the widespread distribution of images of the French countryside to French citizens across the nation, producing an “imagined community” tied to the landscape. Like lithography itself, soon eclipsed by photo reproductive processes, the flurry of Pyrenean representation was shortlived.