Jules Beau – The Mercenary of Photographers
One of the best-known sports photographers of his time, over the years Jules Beau covered the Gordon Bennett Cup races extensively. His photo albums have been made available by the Bibliotheque Nationale De France, the French National Library through their online platform, Gallica.
At the end of the 19th century France was the center of fashion, sports and motoring. To cover the diverse range of sporting events new magazines emerged, such as Le Sport Universel Illustré in 1895, La Vie au Grand Air in 1898 and others. These magazines required illustrations, especially photographs. Therefore photographers had to move out from their galleries in order to follow the events. Jules Beau came to epitomize this era.
Jules Beau (1864-1932) embraced the entire range of modern sports. Settled in the late 1880s with a partner, first on avenue des Ternes, then at 51, rue de Passy. In 1891 he set up his own studio, “la Photographie de Passy. Sportive, industrielle et artistique”. From then on, he developed an all-round activity around velodromes, stadiums, swimming pontoons, and soon motor racing circuits. The images he collected between 1894 and 1914 form a rich collection, most of which is held by the BnF, i.e. more than 3,000 photographs carefully classified by the photographer in around forty catalogues.
His contribution to the illustrated history of sport ended in 1913, after he became closer to the automobile press.
It seems that he then devoted himself to the conservation and archiving of photographs and documents of the Touring Club de France and to the management of the photographic archives of the Automobile Club de France. He died in 1932, aged 72.
Philippe Tétart called him the Mercenary of Photographers in his book, Histoires de Sports, recalling a story from 1900 featuring the two best-known sports photographer of the era, Zulimo Chiesi and Jule Beau: “One day in the summer of 1900, arriving together at the entrance to a cycling meeting at the Universal Exhibition, they were denied entry on the pretext that the organizing committee had decided that photographers could not enter the enclosure with the tripods to stabilize their heavy cameras. Photojournalists were therefore not yet completely ordinary characters, blending into the mass of spectators and journalists with notebooks and pens. In short, Zulimo Chiesi and Jules Beau protested, in vain. Zulimo Chiesi was, it was said, discreet and not very reckless, so he left And Jules Beau? Reputed to be bolder and, to tell the truth, sometimes having the air of a mercenary of photography with his bushy beard and his hardly comfortable gaze, he muted silently. As he always wore a very long coat flapping his sides down to his ankles in order to protect himself from the elements, he slipped away without grumbling, dismantled his tripod, slipped it under his coat and passed the control without incident”.
