| On July 14, 1855, Bastille Day, the French naval vessel La Capricieuse put into port at Québec City. She was the first French warship to sail the St. Lawrence since the Conquest in 1760. This daguerreotype* was presented as a gift to Captain Paul-Henri Belvèze. It portrays Mr. Alfred Chalifoux posing with four boys in historical costumes; from left to right they represent Saint Jean Baptiste, an Indian chief, Jacques Cartier and a Canadian bearing the colours of France. *An early photographic process invented in France by Louis Daguerre in 1839, in which the impression was taken upon a silver plate sensitized by iodine and then developed by a vapour of mercury. PA-139248 |