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ART AND
PHOTOGRAPHY
AARON SCHARF
The invention of photography in the 1830s was to affect painting and other visual arts in a way,
and on a In
scale,
never before contemplated.
what the Observer called 'one of the most interesting
and enjoyable books of the year'Aaron Scharf traces the interaction of these art-forms up to the present day showing how they have grown to occupy two distinctand equally important- roles
in cultural life.
Photography as he argues, took over from the landscape and portrait painter: the artist, untrammelled by the dictates of realism
and
intrinsic in
yet able to benefit from the peculiarities
photographic form, was his
left
free to pursue
own intuitive artistic vision.
With the aid of photographs and paintings the author analyses the influence of photography on the Realists, Impressionists and Cubists; shows how it helped the work of such
artists
as Ingres, Delacroix
and Degas;
work of the early photographers (Muybridge, Julia Margaret Cameron) and concludes with a section on art and photography in the twentieth century discusses the
Art and Photography PELICAN BOOKS
Dr Aaron Scharf was born U.S.A.
He
in
1922 in the
studied art and anthropology
at the University of Cahfornia,
and subse-
quently took his doctorate at the University of London's Courtauld Institute.
He was
a bomber pilot during the Second World
War and spent some
years after the
war
as
He is married and has one son. He is now Professor of the History of Art in the Open a painter and potter in Los Angeles.
University. His other publications include Creative Photography.
Penguin Books
•
t
Aaron Scharf
fi
Art
and Photography
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Inc., 71 lo Ambassador Road, Maryland 21207, U.S.A. Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood,
Penguin Books Baltimore,
Victoria, Australia
First published
by Allen Lane The Penguin
Press, 1968
Published with revisions in Pelican Books, 1974
Copyright
©
Aaron
Manufactured This book shall not,
be
is
.Scharf. 1968,
1974
in the L^iited States of
America
sold subject to the condition that
it
by way of trade or otherwise,
lent, re-sold, hired out,
or otherwise circulated without
the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which
it is
published
and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Preface
7
Introduction
//
1
The
2
Portraiture
3
Landscape and
invention of photography jj^
genre
77
4 Delacroix and photography 5
The dilemma
6
The power
7
Impressionism
8 Degas
9
The
ig
of
Reahsm
of photography
iig
i2y
/^j
i6§
and the instantaneous image
representation of
movement
in
181
photography and
10 Photography as art: art as photography 1
Beyond photography
12
Beyond
art
255
Conclusion
32;^
Notes
24g
32J
List of illustrations
Index
333
^yg
5ini\el
.
iR")4
103
104
used by Scddon in the execution oi Jerusalem.
The
sale catalogue (1882) listing
the contents of Rossetti's studio following his death, includes lot 'A
Seddon
in preparation for his picture of
Gallery.'
and glazed, by the
beautifully painted, framed
pliotoi^rapli,
number 326 late Thomas
"Jerusalem" now in the National
During the year the canvas was painted Seddon joined Holman Hunt
and the photographer James Graham in Jerusalem and the jjhotograph in question was taken by Graham. Ruskin, however, deficient in
its
still
it is
not unlikely that
held the refractory view that the photograph was
reproduction of nature, and that
artists,
true to the principles
of Pre-Raphaelitism, could surpass the camera. In 1856, to prove that so,
this
was
he compared a daguerreotype of the towers of the Swiss Fribourg with
drawings which he made of the subject
(67).
The
details, lost in the lightest
and
l;^-
I
,
^..
and a daguerreotype of the towers of the Drawing in the "Dureresque" style which he
67. Ruskin: Drawine;s
Fribourg. supporteti.
i8t^(). 'i,.
i.
jSfr
Swi:
DiiiU'ing in the Blottesque" st\ie w'llieh he rejected
darkest areas of the photograph, are accounted for in one of the drawings.
While the photograph only suggests the textured character of the stone and the tiled roof,
and the
the shadows, the
Ruskin wrote of
foliage
and the w indows are almost completely obscured
drawing describes
his
experiment
all
these with
much
in
greater precision.
The
other day
sketched the towers of the Swiss Fribourg hastily from the Hotel dc
I
adding a few details, and exaggerating the exaggerations. The next day, on a clear and calm afternoon, 1 daguerreotyped the towers and this uaexaggerated statement, with its details properly painted, would not only be the more right, but infinitely the grander of the two. But the first sketch nevertheless conveys, in some respects, a truer idea of Fribourg than the other, and has, therefore, a certain use. For instance, the wall going up behind the main tower is seen in my drawing to bend \ery distinctly, following the Zahringen. ...
1
have engraved the sketch .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
diflerent slopes of the
He
.
hill.
In the daguerreotype
this
bend
hardly perceptible.
is
then pointed out other characteristics of the subject which though sensed by
the observer could not be effectively realized in art without meaningful exag-
geration 'so that the hasty sketch, expressing
has a certain veracity wanting
this,
altogether in the daguerreotype'.
Despite the apparent truth of Ruskin's demonstration, photographers were
not disposed to yield to painters one of the most important assets of their
medium insist
:
They continued
the ability to rciider absolutely precise detail.
to
on the inherent superiority of the photograph, and could indeed produce
views taken with such care as to bring into focus, over a great depth of
field,
a profusion of objects, their details sharply and clearly defined. In an article entitled
'Photography in
its
was asserted that 'Wherever of value in
relation to the Fine Arts', published in 1861,
it
accurate detail, perfect imitation
is
literal truth,
there photography takes honourable prominence, for the most
art,
may
painstaking pre-Raphaelite
emulate in vain
Another kind of accusation levelled
was that
their
works were
by presenting frozen,
its
wondrous
daguerreotype
not true to nature, failing as the
lifeless
precision.'
at the Pre-Raphaelite painters, in 1857,
objects unlike those seen with
normal
failed,
vision.
This
appears in the novel, Two Tears Ago, by Charles Kingsley, himself an amateur photographer.
Though
have been the immobile forms in pictures Millais's Ophelia
and
on
the criticism centres like
Brett's Stonebreaker that
portrait painting,
Holman Hunt's
Pre-Raphaelite painting. Claude,
maintains that they, in
and the paintings of
fact,
this
must
Hireling Shepherd,
artist
critical
did not copy nature. Nature
is
Claude Mellot
of these
beautiful, he insists,
ugliness'. If the artist had copied nature, explains Claude, the painting
life,
detail,
would
every wrinkle, every horrible
not naturally, through his eyes, but unnaturally, as though
through a microscope. Stangrave objects copies nature? Claude; Exactly. there,
artists,
Pre-Raphaelite are 'marred by patches of sheer
have beeti beautiful. By painting every knuckle, he sees
also
provoked, in Kingsley's novel, the
conversation in an art gallery between Stangrave and the as they inspect a
it
And
:
Didn't you say that the highest art
therefore
but what you see there. They forget that
you must
human
paitit,
not what
beings are
men
is
with
105
1
06
two
and not daguerreotype
eyes,
lenses with
one eye, and so are contriving and
striving to introduce into their pictures the very defect of the daguerreotype
which the stereoscope
and roundness, daguerreotype will
to every outline.
landscapes,
distant
required to correct. Stangrave
is
double vision of our two eyes gives a
forget that the
always be
is
Claude
.
.
which the Prc-Raphaelites have forgotten daguerreotype]
tries
to represent
thousandth part of a second; that
who is
perfectly
still,
;
and
indistinctness,
therefore, while for
yet for taking portraits, in
.
not only for the reason
useless,
and
and already softened by atmosphere, the
motionless,
invaluable
Exactly so
:
comprehend. They
I
:
softness,
as
a
is,
.
.
.
face;
yet was.
sense,
it
gave, but for another one
what
mean
I
what never yet was
still
human
which no man e\cr
I last
any true
and
Claude
as seen
is
this
:
for
still
[the
the
by a spectator
reinforces his
argument
by describing the beauties and the optical logic of the softened wrinkle and
tlie
blended sliadow. The only way, he continues, of realizing the Pre-Raphaelite ideal,
would be
'to set
a petrified Cyclops to paint his petrified brother'.'-'*
THE PRE-RAPHAELITES' USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY Ruskin's injunctions about painting from nature alone seem to contradict his other recommendations that photographs could be of some limited advantage to artists.
But he meant them
to
be used for study or dra\sing, never to be
painted from directly. For photographs revealed certain subtleties of contour
and he admitted that much could be learned from them. Their convenience, when working up a painting in the
and tone which might escape the
eye,
studio, should not be underestimated.
amount of evidence which
With
indicates the use
Raphaelitcs, their friends and followers.
exact
manner
in
mind one may note a certain of photographs by the Pre-
this in
Though
it
is
diflicult to discover the
which they employed photographs, there are some documents suggest, that in this respect their practice was no
which prove, or strongly
from that of most other
different
Ford that he
artists.
Madox Brown, for example, wrote in his diary 12 November 1847) went to see Mark Anthony about a Daguerreotype think of having 1
'
:
some struck
The camera
off for the figures in the picture, to save time'.
\vas a
convenient means of collecting studies of costumes and models and could save the artist the cost of several sittings.
posed a model in a Millais, to
who
suit
occasionally used photographs for his portraits
have commissioned Rupert Potter
both for portraits and landscapes
Edward Burnc-Jones and William Morris
of armour, 'to be photographed in various positions'.
for
like Chill October
to
and who
Miirthlr
known
provide him with photographic material
landscape backgrounds, insisted that in
and
is
his later
Mo^s (68 every touch was painted from
nature. Yet the character of these paintings
1
and of others
like
The Old Garden
loy
68. Millais: M„il/ih Moss. 1887
In).
l-.IIHlMm UIkI CjUOtlall
Photograph from
:
(•urtfll
I
M
inr^Uli^
iff'
In
Jon
f
.
Life and Landscape on the .Norfolk Broads.
1
886
io8
and
Autumn strongly suggests,
Lingerbig
if
graphs, that indirectly the camera had insinuated dillicult to believe that
is
it is
known
Murthlj Moss had
commencing
that before
had not consuked photowork (69). It
the artist
little
itself into his
do with photograph) when
to
and
the picture Millais
his
son Geoflrey,
described as an able photographer, spent a few days looking around Murthly
Waters
for a suitable point of
The
promising.
artist,
it is
said,
view and photographing those \shich seemed could then
that specially attracted his attention,
Did Holman Hunt,
best'.
and
by
see, 'side
finally
possibly like Seddon,
.
.
.
make
side, the various
select
views
what he thought
use of James
Graham's
trip to the Holy Land in 1854? Several of the artist's drawings of Jerusalem that year, strangely fortuitous in composition, suggest
photographs on their that he did. Rossetti
him
served
for
owned many photographs of Jane Morris which may have
drawings and paintings in which she
is
the model.
walks w ith Frederick Sandys at Northiam and Tenterden, Rossetti,
would note
He
made'. Dear
'
the best spots for painting,
wrote to
his
mother
On
country
like Millais,
and order photographs of them
to
be
in 1864:
Mamma, Would
you give Baker the photograph of Old Cairo whicli hangs in any stereoscopic pictures, either in the instrument or elsewhere, which represent general views of cities, would you send them too, or anything of a fleet of ships? I want to use them in painting Troy at the back of my your parlour
;
and,
if
there are
Helen.
Just as Cairo might do for Troy, Siena could be substituted for Florence. There
evidence which indicates that the background of one of Rossetti's versions of
is
was to some extent based on photographs of Siena sent to by Fairfax Murray. The backgrouirds of other paintings like the late Dream strongly suggest that here, too, photographs were consulted.
the Salutation of Beatrice the artist Da?ite's
Forever faithful to the Pre-Raphaelite ideal, John Brett, in 1889, read an interesting paper,
Camera Club basis of all
views. .
.
.
.
.
.
in
good
The
'The Relation of Photography to the Pictorial Art", London. He reiterated the old axioms of the P.R.B. pictorial art consists of a reproduction of natural
painter's art
is
'The
images or
founded on correct representation of real things
[he should] exalt natural appearances.'
for these purposes, his
to the :
And though
Brett believed that,
'equipment' was superior to that of the photographer,
he conceded that 'photography invaluable teacher to the
is
an invaluable scr\ant, and', he added, 'an
artist '.-^
COMPOSITE PICTURES In English pictorial photography, from about the 1850s, practice to
compose a photograph from
a
it
was sometimes the
number of views taken under a variety Two H'ays
of conditions. Oscar Gustave Rejlander's famous large piiotograph.
log
70.
H.
P.
Robinson:
H'omejt and Children in the Counlry. i860 Icompositc
of Life, for example, was fabricated from
photograph)
more than
thirty different negatives,
and H.P.Robinson's many photographic compositions were made in the same manner (70). When Rejlander's composite picture was criticized for being constructed in this way, the Art Journal, approving of the technique, defended
him no more than the Royal Academician does he makes an individual study, and he groups those separate 'negatives' together,
the photographer artist does
each figure to
:
form a complete positive picture.
The procedure was repudiated in France, and the Photographic Society there prohibited its members from exhibiting photographs made by this method. Similarly rejecting piecemeal composition, Charles Meryon made it clear that the uncritical use of photographic studies endangered the consistent formal
appearance of a picture. According
saw Meryon's views of Paris the
artist,
hood of
asking
his
him
chateau
to
in 1855
to Philippe Burty, the
Duke
of Aremberg
and 1856 and the following year
sent for
reproduce certain picturesque places in the neighbour-
He
him a daguerreotype camera, and made him management of what was then a novel instrument.
take lessons at Brussels
liought for
in the
.
.
.
Meryon had taken a
which he displayed chateau beyond a park watered by a lake - a Pavilion the pure Italian style - first photographed entire, then only as to the portico
few photographs, the selection of which showed the special
One
in everything.
built in
sees the
- then a chmip of trees
:
.
'These
.
taste
.
trees
remind
me
of Leonardo da Vinci', he said,
speaking of the effect of light. 'But after alT, he continued, 'however seductive these
may
how can you complete
the whole you change, all the rest falls to pieces? ... a photograph ought not to, nor even can, enable an artist to dispense with a sketch. It can only aid him, whilst he works, by assurance and confirmation, by suggesting to him the general character of the actuality which he has studied, and oftentimes by discovering to him minor details which he had overlooked but it can never replace studies with the pencil.
studies
when,
appear, in reality they are useless. For
as in this instance,
it
incomplete, save as to a third, which
is
if
;
Traditionally, the composite fabrication of paintings did not presuppose the
had been incumbent upon the artist to weld all homogeneous statement. But formal cohesivencss in so many Pre-Raphaelite and
of pictorial unity. Indeed,
loss
it
elements, however diverse their sources, into one the apparent disregard for
Victorian paintings could not but be aggravated by the prevailing attitudes
concerning the use of photographic studies. In Millais's portrait of Ruskin the subject stands
on a rocky ledge before a background wealth of
carefully
delineated natural forms, on which the figure appears to be superimposed. Not so
much
as a
shadow
unites
it
to
its
surroundings. In his Autumn Leaves (1856)
the foreground objects appear separated from the background, the incisive, figures cut them oil from the distant landscape. some photographs 'reveal a sharp line of light round the edges of dark objects' and earlier, in 1859, methods for avoiding it in photographs were discussed. Paintings of this kind resemble some of the picccdlight contours
Ruskin noted
around the
in 1870 that
togcther photographic compositions by Robinson. These latter very often lack consistent formal integration.
They produce
the fragmented cfTccts of
montage
- which in fact they were. Notably absent in combination photographs, though visible in nature
and normally found
in ordinary photographs, are the soft
unifying aureoles of light attending contrasting tones and colours which blend
almost imperceptibly into adjacent areas. 'Cut-out' figures placed against backdrops, anomalies in light sources, tonal scale
and focus can be found in
Millais's paintings. Spring {Apple Blossoms) (71)
aiid
The Woodman's Daughter. The appearance of bas-relief in these canvases
due
to the artist's propensity for painting into the
background do
this,
foreground figures from the
in order to obtain a crispness of contour.
By using deep colours
the resulting dark outline (rather than a light aureole
employed
later
by Seurat) has the
efl'ect
is
as, for
to
example,
of severing the figures from the land-
1
71. Millais: Afipir Blmujms. 1856-59.
Exhibilcd a>
.S//,!;
in
1859
scape. Arthur Hughes's painting, The Sailor least twice
figures,
between 1856 and 1863,
is
Return, a picture altered at
Bofs
extremely awkward in the scale of the
and the tonal character of the foreground
is
utterly incompatible with
that of the distance with no logical pictorial transition
Such abrupt breaks
in aerial perspective
paintings - in Harmony, for example.
made between
the two.
can be found in Frank Dicksee's
Madox Brown's Stages of Cruelty and
Work,
both of which were executed over periods of several years, are piecemeal in their
appearance, and suggest the careless use of daguerreotypes.
examples
in English painting are not lacking.
By
Other
virtue of their general softness
and tonal consistency,
Rossetti's
works on the whole, despite
graphic studies, have -
like those
say of the Barbizon painters - a inore cohesive
his use
of photo-
appearance.
In
many ways
it
single photographs, to paint
was more expedient
for the painter to
work
whether or not nature was to be consulted
from snippets of a large
file
entirely
from
directly,
than
of photographic aides-memoires.
took up photography especially to be able to compose their
Some
artists
own photographic
from them. The Journal of the Photographic Society in illuminating in this respect and there one reads, for example, a
'sketches' prior to painting
London
is
statement by
Newton which makes
primarily as studies for paintings.
it
He
clear that his photographs
describes the
manner
in
were intended
which he mani-
pulated the camera, throwing objects out of focus, recording only the large
1
I
1
2
masses of light and shade, and otherwise making the photograph as possible to the
image intended
for the painting.
come
as close
He would photograph
a
subject several times under different conditions 'until one was found entirely suited to the group of figures about to be painted'.
In France, Charles Negre, once a pupil of Dclaroche and Ingres,- and a
member
of the Photographic Society in Paris, often intended his photographs
,ahi)vt'). Charles Negrc: Market Scene on the Qjtai\.
"/J
Paris
7;-;-
foil
on canvas:
(Miarirs Negrc:
Market Scene on
the Qjtais.
Paris 1852 (calotype
to
be complete studies for paintings, which were exhibited at the Salon until
about 1864. His Scene took of a Paris
quay
de marche,
painted directly from a photograph which he
in 1852, reproduces the
photograph and the
as they are in the
broad tonal masses almost exactly
figures are uniformly
overall tonal flux (72, 73). His Joueur (Forgiie, entirely painted
shown
absorbed in the
at the Salon of 1855,
was
from one of his calotype photographs of urban genre scenes (24). Ernest Lacan, himself a painter who then devoted most of his
A contemporary,
time to the advancement of photography as an In copying faithfully from
this
photograph,
M.
art,
wrote in 1856:
Charles Negre has produced a charm-
Why should not other painters advantages they would gain in reproducing the groups of figures that make up their subjects, by means of photographs. In such a way they would have an exact sketch taken from nature which, if necessary, they shown
ing picture which was follow his
example One !
at the last Salon.
easily sees all the
could modify on the canvas.
Newton and Negre, and other
painters
who
followed the same practice, had
An
a wide range of formal effects available for their photography.
account of
the discovery of a variety of very curious and most interesting photographic processes in England was given in 1848, in the Art- Union. Included among the '
'
and the chrysotype, the amphytype, the chromotype and in a few years one could add the albumen-onglass method, the ambrotype and, most consequential, the new collodionon-glass process which became as important in France and other countries as inventions were the catalysotype, the ferrocyanotype
it
did in England.
Though
the lens was
still less
flexible
than the brush, the large
by the mid century, plus a number of mechanical and retouching methods then known, enabled the photographer
variety of photographic techniques possible
to exercise
a significant degree of control over his
aesthetic preferences.
camera,
it
was said
medium
As photography became more
in keeping with his
versatile,
an
artist
in 1853, could 'plunge into Pre-Raffaelism, or
ism, or Reynoldsism' as he chose
and
especially advantageous,
if
with his
Rembrandtthese photo-
graphs were to become the bases of paintings, he could hide the fact of having used them at
all.^"
CLOUDS The difficult problem of painting cloud formations with meteorological accuracy, not to say poetry, was an old story in art by the time
photograph could be of assistance. Ruskin
laid so
much
it
appeared that the
stress
on the inclusion
of clouds in landscape painting that the index for the five volumes of Modern Painters contains almost three
pages of entries under that heading.
The impor-
tance he gave to clouds, and his views about the service photography could
i
13
114
render, contributed, no doubt, to the growing eagerness of artists to obtain
good photographic specimens of these
memory ofJohn
fugitive forms. C. R. Leshe,
honouring the
Constable, deplored the indifference of both landscape painters
and photographers to 'the beauty that canopies the earth'. Writing in 1854, Leslie claimed to have seen only two calotypes of skies, erroneously believing that landscape views with cloudy skies
were already within easy reach of the
ordinary photographer. But the photographing of clouds, particularly
landscape was also to be included, was then a very
exposure times were necessary
if
if
the
difficult matter. Different
both the expanse of
light sky
and the darker
tones of the land below were to be recorded correctly. In practice, either the
sky was over-exposed and the definition of cloud forms lost in the brightness, or, if the
exposures were
exposed. There were journals of the 1850s. difficulty
forms would be under-
set for the sky, the terrestrial
many complaints about this in the photographic and The most obvious method proposed to circumvent
art
the
was that of taking separate pictures of land and sky and piecing
together the negatives from which prints could then be made. Another was
simply to paint the clouds in the
summer
announced the
of 1853,
in.
At a meeting of the London Photographic Society
Mr Henry
Cooke, described
painter-photographer,
as a
had developed a means of photographing both the sky and landscape simultaneously. Yet Cuthbert Bede in his amusing book, Photothat he
graphic Pleasures (1855), observed that
And
photography could not yet make clouds.
the following year, the Art Journal carried a review of the
1
856 exhibition
of the Photographic Society, in which the need for cloud studies was mentioned '
How
valuable to the
be, since few
artist
know how
Though a few producing the
would a good
of photographic cloud studies
to paint them.'
successful cloud studies
first
series
:
was given
in 1856 to
can be found
earlier, the credit
of
Gustave Le Gray. His dramatic photo-
graphs of the sea and sky were taken usually at those hours of the day when the
sun was low on the horizon, with clouds casting shadows upon clouds in sharply contrasting tones (91). That was one solution to the problem. His photograph, Brig upon
with
the
much
at the
Water, exhibited that year in cloud-hungry
enthusiasm as the
first
successful
London, was acclaimed
photograph of this kind.
Still,
even
end of the century complaints were made that photographs were being
pieced together, composite landscapes with cloudy skies
'
taken at noon, above
a quiet landscape taken in the morning or evening'. disparagingly described, 'with clouds hung low above
had no
reflections,
and over which they
cast
Some
still
of these were
water in which they
no shadows'. By that time, how-
ever, the meteorological character of cloud formations represented in paintings,
some of which had
rarely, if ever,
been known
in art before
photography, either
resulted directly from the use of photographic studies or
had become,
indirectly,
the expression of obeisance to the camera.-"
JOHN LINNELL John Linnell's paintings of particular cloud and weather effects were done with more concern probably for their dramatic intensity, than for their meteorological accuracy.
He was
interested in the appearance of the Italian landscape
:
in a letter of 1861 to his son in Italy he wrote that to the grandest scenery in ihc world, and they bring home capital information, not so good, however, as photos. 1 would rather have some good photos of Italian Romance - the wildest - wilder than any modern pictures of Italy I have
many go
seen.
be wise of you to get
It will
as are only to be seen in Italy.
all
As
the photos
for the
you can of scenery and figures, skies that young ladies talk
wonderful
siich of, I
never expect to see them on canvas.
Though scenes
Linnell was praised
and
for his
by Ruskin
for his 'elaborate'
meticulous painting technique,
how known
pion of Pre-Raphaelitism would have been had he
typically English landscapes, with their glowering skies
may
and
'skilful' forest
disappointed the chamthat the painter's
and bucolic
subjects,
not have been authentic, nor done entirely from nature, but were possibly
composites of English and Italian scenery. In another letter to his son in Italy three years later, Linnell wrote
Very few of the best things seem to be done. Are there no fotos of the wonderful bulls, rustic waggons and figures, or are we to have those in words only? I hope you will not return without studies and fotos to back up your description. ... I should be glad for once to see something to correspond to the boasted Italian sky the pictures sent - though very nicely finished - are
Thanks
for the fotografs, as the Italians spell
it.
;
only English
Linnell
skies.
may have contemplated
Newton and Negre,
to use
it
practising photography himself possibly like
for his paintings.
He
seems
to
have written
to
Cornelius Varley, the well-known designer of optical instruments and himself a water-colour painter, expressing a desire to learn the photographic technique.
Varley's letter to Linnell of 2 July 1853 suggests that the latter wanted Varley
and
his sons to
fit
up the apparatus
into play with the
for
him
as
he was determined to go heartily '
sunbeams, the most glorious associate the
arts ever had'.^^
PICTORIAL TRUTH AND ALTERNATIVES That the character of contemporary painting had been conditioned by photography was admitted 'upon all hands' as one commentator concluded in 1858. Walter Thornbury, a few years
later,
suggested that photography was largely
1
15
1
1
and
responsible for the preoccupation with high finish
detail as in Pre-Raphaelite
painting. Derisively, and with abundant justification, artists
to
be
were content
to paint entirely
fatal to artistic progress
which may well seduce the
Academy,
the Royal
' :
artist
there
from
a winning charm about photography
is
his true path'.
who was
Sir Charles Eastlake,
Photographic Society, praised photographs 'artists
would greatly
benefit
was said that many
it
trom photographs, and that was believed
Yet even the President of
also the
like those
first
President of the
of Newton, saying that
by studying them'. With unremitting persistence
eulogies to the "truth to nature' were invoked. Exhibition rcvie\vs, especially in
England, were the
'skill",
The most
full
of phrases glorifying the 'careful execution of accessories",
and the 'scrupulous truth" of the works shown.
the 'fastidiousness',
essential ingredient in painting
it
was
insisted - indeed,
very reason
its
for being - was the 'perfect imitation of reality'.
The ambiguous must have served
on the
qualifications placed
use of photographic material
heighten the confusion of
to
artists.
Philip
Hamerton,
like
Ruskin, criticized the inaccuracies of photographs (which no photographer
would admit). He reprimanded graph, describing
how
artists for
of photographs, he insisted, was only as
memoranda"
to
\\orking too closely with the photo-
he himself had abandoned the camera. '
an obedient slave
The proper
use
for the collection of
be used to give liveliness to the foregrounds. Even more anti-
pathetic to the use of photographs, Frederick Leighton categorically declared that
on principle the
cuts he
artist
would do injury
Poynter, decried the pictures
among
'
should
he had, their use
reject, as
to his creative spirit.
trivial
and photographic
the younger school
in
colour,
in taking short-
studies of nature
of landscape painters".
Orchardson belie\ed that the camera was of little photography, even photography
;
Another academician, Edward
the
tise to
which pass
for
And William
artist,
that
cannot help the painter to achieve
greater successes, either in draughtsmanship or in the interpretation of colou.' and tone, than
have already been achieved by hundreds of
before these scientific developments were so
much
.
.
.
great painters
thought
as
who
lived
.
.
.
of.
W'hat were the alternatives? In France, during the latter part of the i88os especially, the vexing questions
provoked by the relation of photography
were seriously debated con-
to art
currently with the growing interest in the abstract significance of form and colour, the representation of
concerned
movement, and the
\vith physiological
theories of scientists
and psychological
a highly conceptual art was being expounded.
optics.
The
and others
There, the validity of
permissible extremes of the
use of the imagination, and other ideas wholly antagonistic to the precepts of
nineteenth-century naturalism preoccupied
many
artists.
In England, Whistler notwithstanding, no such situation existed. Whatever their attitudes
about photography,
of naturalistic representation. in 1886,
though
it
artists
and
critics still insisted
The founding
of the
signalled a change in English art,
on the primacy
New
English Art Club
was
essentially a trans-
plantation of French Impressionism. Orientated to naturalism,
viewed with suspicion by Ruskin-dominated, Franco-phobic
critics
With few exceptions, not until the present century did English to discard the long
and tenacious devotion
it
to imitative art
was
and
artists
still
artists.
begin
and thus
free
themselves from the apparently insoluble dilemma created by the appearance
of photography.^^
i
1
4. Delacroix
and photography
Eugene Delacroix was among those
artists
in the nineteenth century
welcomed the discovery of photography, seeing in art.
On
occasion, he helped pose models for
least for a few years he used the
Paris.
He was
supported
a charter
member
facilities
of the
some of
who
something beneficial his
own photographs
for ;
at
of an active photographic studio in
photographic society in France.
first
the efforts of photographers to
it
He
have their works included in the yearly
Salon exhibitions. His journal and essays contain some extremely perceptive refferences to the subject,
and with no misgivings he
utilized
photographs in the
execution of some of his paintings and drawings. Delacroix's
first
recorded observations on the meaning of photography for art
were made in 1850 (the lacunae in his journal deprive us of knowing his reactions before 1847). They appeared in his review of Elisabeth Cave's publication,
Drawing without
a Master.
the painter, had devised a
Mme Cave, for many years an intimate friend of
method by which an
artist
could enhance his visual
memory. Here, accuracy of observation was considered 'spirit'
essential before the
could be allowed to enter into the creative process. By a system of
copying and correcting, not unlike the technique developed later by Horace
Lccoq de Boisbaudran, perceptual acutencss,
it
was hoped, would
significantly
increase.
In Delacroix's opiirion
concerning
his subject
it
was of fundamental importance that nothing
should be neglected by the
artist.
He
should acquaint
himself with the true character of light and shade, observe the subtle nuances of tonal recession, initiate himself into
the other 'secrets of nature'.
all
photograph, Delacroix believed, was a perfect vehicle for
this
The
kind of training
Many
I artists have had recourse to the daguerreotype to correct errors of vision maintain with them, and perhaps against the opinion of those who criticize teaching methods employing tracing through glass or lawn, that the study of the daguerreo-
type
:
if it is
but to use tracing,
it
well understood can itself alone it is
properly one needs
much
fill
the gaps in the instruction of the artist
experience.
A
daguerreotype
is
more than a
the mirror of the object, certain details almost always neglected in
drawings from nature, there - in the daguerreotype - characteristically take on a great importance, and thus bring the artist into a full understanding of the construction. There, passages of light and shade show their true qualities, that is to say they appear with the precise degree of solidity or softness - a very delicate distinction without which there can be no suggestion of
relief.
However, one should not
lose
120
sight of the fact that the dagtierreotype should be seen as a translator
nature
to initiate us further into the secrets of
reality in certain aspects,
ways
because
false just
it is still
it is
because in spite of
commissioned astonishing
its
only a reflection of the real, only a copy, in some
so exact.
may
shocking although they
;
The
literally
monstrosities
it
shows are indeed deservedly
be the deformations present in nature herself;
but these imperfections which the machine reproduces faithfully, will not offend our eyes
when we
The
look at the model without this intermediary.
our being conscious of it. The imfortunate discrepancies of are immediately corrected by the eye of the intelligent artist speaks
to soul,
and
This idea of
eye corrects, without
literally true perspective :
/;;
painling
it is
soul which
not science to science.
Mme
criticizes those artists
is the old quarrel between the letter and the spirit it who, instead of taking the daguerreotype as a reference work,
Cave's
;
make
They believe they are getting manage in their painting not to spoil the result obtained mechanically in the first place. They are crushed by the disheartening perfection of certain effects they find on the metal plate. The more they try to imitate the daguerreotype, the more they reveal their weakness. Their work kind of dictionary,
like a
much
then
closer to nature
is
efibrt,
they
only the copy - necessarily cold - of a copy,
In a word, the
The
into the picture itself
it
when, by much
artist,
artist
becomes a machine harnessed
itself
to
imperfect in other respects.
another machine.
Delacroix believed, must compromise with what
value and not be misled by the truth. In art everything external reality arc only a
Two
means
to the greater
is
a
is
lie,
traditionally of
and the
guidance of the
facts of
instincts.
days after the publication of his essay, Delacroix was visited by a group of
acquaintances including the painter Frangois Bonvin.
graphy was discussed
for they
It is likely
that photo-
aroused their host's interest in a large
number
daguerreotypes, some of the male nude, w hich had been taken by the
Jules-Claude Ziegler, once a pupil of Ingres and Cornelius. him,' noted Delacroix in his journal, 'and ask Ziegler possibly
who introduced
newly formed group which called
him
to lend
'
I
will
me
itself
as
one of the founding members who scientists,
among
It
was
name
first
is
of
listed
photographers included
in addition to
other professions.
Delacroix does not seem to have been active time. But in
some.'
the Societe Heliographiquc, the
kind in France, for in the society's publication, La Lumiere, his
and
artist,
go and see
Delacroix, about four months later, to the
its
painters, writers
of
1853, apparently after he
photographer, Eugene Durieu in Dieppe,
became
m
that organization at the
better acquainted with the
his interest in
photography increased.
In February that year he sent a note of thanks to someone, probably Durieu, 'for the
splendid photographic prints which
I
prize so highly (74, 75, 76).
beautiful examples,' he wrote, 'are treasures for the
These
artist.' In May, using photographs given him by Durieu, Delacroix subjected some dinner guests to an interesting experiment which a few days earlier he had tried on himself:
71
''
Eugene Duricu Photographs :
of
male nude irom album belonging
to Delacroix.
^MW
8.®
77.
Delacroix: Sheet of sketches
made from photographs taken by
Durieu.
c.
1854
Probably
185;^
122
78.
Marcantonio Raimondi: Afltim Enticing Eir.
After Raphael. Early sixteenth centur\.
after they
had studied
these photographs of
nude inodels some of whom were poorly
buih, oddly shaped in places and not very attractive generally,
put before their
I
We
eyes engravings by Marcantonio. (78) all experienced a feeling of revulsion, almost disgust, for their incorrectness, their mannerisms and their lack of naturalness, despite their quality of style
moment we
- the only thing one could admire. Yet at that
could no longer admire
daguerreotype as
it
ought
to
it.
be used, he
Truly,
if
a
In October an entry in the journal reiterates the
graphy
is
man
of genius should use the
will raise himself to heights artist's
he wrote, perhaps
to us.
conviction that photo-
potentially a blessing for art. If only that discovery
thirty years ago,
unknown
had been made
would have been fuller. The a man who paints from memory is
his career
information given by the daguerreotype to of inestimable advantage.
The
genre
and
history painter,
Leon Riesener, was concerned with the came to see Delacroix
propriety of using photographs taken by someone else and
one evening in November 1853. He spoke of the great care \vith which Duricu and an assistant took their photographs, and felt that their success was undoubtedly due to the seriousness with which they were executed. He suggested
about
it
that Delacroix publish his sketches as photographs.
doing
so.
And
He had
already thought of
then Riesener confessed that, trembling with anticipation, he had
asked Durieu and his associate whether without indiscretion and without being
accused of plagiarism he might use their photographs for painting pictures. The year 1854 is perhaps that of Delacroix's greatest involvement with
photography, and several sessions spent
in Durieu's studio are
recorded in the
journal. There,
seems, he advised and assisted his photographer
it
arranging and lighting of
friiiul in the
Sometimes, with the models posing
his subjects.
made
only a minute or two, both photographs and sketches were
August and September Delacroix was
in Dieppe,
for
of them. In
having brought with him
Duricu's photographs from which to draw. These he shared there with the painter Paul Chenavard. Deposited in the Bibliothcque Nationale in Paris
is
an album of thirty-one photographs which once belonged to Delacroix and which can be shown to have served the artist for several drawings and for at least
one painting. Very
accompanied the
likely these include
some of the
'
anatomies
'
which
on his holiday to the north coast that summer. The album are of nude and partly draped men and women, most of them posed in a manner reminiscent of the artist's own style. It is probably useful to try to construct a provenance of that album although some of the facts photographs
artist
in his
in the matter are slightly obscured.
After Delacroix's death in 1863, his devoted housekeeper,
Jenny (JeanneMarie le Guillou), sent Constant Dutilleux the manuscripts of the journal and a number of books which had been in the artist's possession. Among these volumes may have been the album of photographs for it appears to be the one referred to in Dutilleux's notes
Raymond
inedites,
part of which was published in 1929 by
Escholier as follows
Delacroix admired photographs not only in theory, he drew considerably after
daguerreotype plates and paper
women,
which were
in poses
Incredible things
The
!
1 have an album made up of models, men and by him, and photographed right in front of him.
prints.
set
choice of figures, the positions, the lighting, the tension of
would say of many of these had been taken after originals by the master himself. The artist was in some way the lord and master of the machine and of the subject-matter. The radiating sense of the ideal that he had, transformed the models into vanquished and dreaming heroes, into nervous and panting nymphs, at three francs a session. the limbs are so extraordinary, so deliberate, that one prints that they
After the death of Dutilleux in 1865, Philippe Burty received the artist's papers, perhaps also the album, though an inscription scribbled in
'Ph.B.69', claims that the
humous
signed
album was purchased by the writer at the postand that a 'considerable
sale of the Delacroix atelier held in 1864,
number' of pencil
studies
the artist's studio.
On
made from
these photographs were found in boxes in
Burty's death his papers, which included those of
Dutilleux, passed into the hands of
album of photographs In any case, the
Maurice Tourneux who presented the
to the Bibliothcque
''etudes
Nationale in 1899.
au crayon d'apres ces photographies' described by 'Ph.B.'
must include some sheets of sketches now
Museum
it,
(77).
At
least ten
of the figures
in the collection of the
drawn on them
Bayonne
are unmistakably
123
124
79 ('''/Z^- Photo.^raph of female nude from the Delacroix album
8n
{hf/oiv).
8
ihflow
Delacroix: Sheet of drawings
left).
PhotoEjraph of female nude
from the Delacroix album 82 [beluw
right
I.
Delacroix; Odalisque. 1857.
(
12 x 14 inches)
based on photographs of the muscular male model to be found in the album.
The drawings
and from
arc linear,
appearance should leave
tlicir
that, in this instance, Delacroix used tlie
may
though he
well have been intrigued
which the forms are described. Again
in
douljt
little
photographs as anatomical
studies,
by the strange tonal delicacy with
Dieppe
must have brought with him photographs
October of 1855, Delacroix those in the album, for he
in
like
wrote that he looked 'enthusiastically and without tiring at these photographs of the nude men - this human body, this admirable poem, from which I am learning to read - and
I
learn far
more by looking than the inventions of any
scribbler could ever teach me'.
Delacroix executed a small painting of an odalisque which 1857 (82).
The
painting,
began
in
now
in
made
of the painting l)efore it
a
little
signed and dated
after his return
it.
album
was finished
much zest'), The reference
Delacroix picked to
conceivable that tiring
is
1854 of working up again three years later
(the artist wrote in it
working from a daguerreotype does not
necessarily rule out the use of a paper print since 'daguerreotype'
very
commonly used
term
as a generic
for
In his catalogue of Delacroix's works,
and he made an
d' Alger dans son inlerieur
there was
(81).
from Dieppe that year, and which he
'd'apres un daguerreotype'. It
it
'without
and completed
his
the Niarchos Collection, may be the odalisque which he
October of 1854,
described as being
on
is
depends obviously on one of the photographs in
It
no reference
movement,' he wrote,
photographs of all kinds.
Robaut
called the painting
interesting observation about
to the use of a
photograph
' :
it,
Femme though
the nonchalance of the
accentuated by the position of the
'is
was then
legs,
which have
a perfectly natural air of relaxation'. Indeed, that very quality of 'naturalness'
which Delacroix found
and
so striking in Durieu,
The
so lacking in
Marcantonio,
awkward, turn of the foot with the toes splayed out in such an ungainly way, the clumsy cramping of one leg under the other, the all too natural tilt of the head and steadying of the hand makes a strange contrast with the traditional elegance of such a pose the
characterizes his Odalisque.
peculiar, even
:
Delacroix kind of pose, which
emerges from beneath the photographically
still
conditioned superficies. And, of course, these features are
photograph.
And some
that the artist
of
its
all to
be found in the
forms are so impossibly true, so naturally crude,
must have altered them
deliberately, elongating, for example,
the foreshortened thighs, credible enough in the photograph but which would
become too unbelievable
What '
the daguerreotype
false just
in the painting.
Delacroix wrote in his essay of 1850
because
[is]
it is
is
only a reflection of the
so exact.
.
.
.
The
fulfilled in the
real,
small Odalisque:
only a copy, in some ways
eye corrects.'^*
125
5.
The dilemma
of Realism
STYLE BE DAMNED! VOILA L'ENNEMI! In France, between 1850 and 1859, a 'school' of Realism appeared which
advocated an extreme of pictorial objectivity feasible only with the photographic camera. During the same period, photographers proposed investing their pictures with the spiritual attributes, with the subjective qualities, ordinarily associated
with painting. The coincidence of those anomalous ideas was
bound
many
to upset
previously held notions about art and photography. It
precipitated a flood of vituperation resulting in an inquiry into the nature of art
and
photograph.
reality in relation to the
Gustave Courbet's calculated pronunciamientos about the impartiality of vision
must have served
to
confirm
the opinions of those for
photography were one and the same thing. a
as saying, 'I look at
man
or any other object in nature.' 'Where
I
he declared elsewhere, 'any location
good
my
later
is
quoted
as I look at a horse, a tree
place myself
all
is
as long as I
the
same
to me,'
have nature before
Other postulations advocating the merit of the innocent eye had
eyes.'
been made
and
his
Realism and
'I assure you,' the artist
with the same interest
is
whom
by Constable,
earlier
for
example,
at the
same time by Ruskin
by Monet. But while Constable admitted the impossibility, and even
questioned the desirability, of a total disengagement between what one saw
and what one knew, Ruskin and the French painters adopted a more absolute attitude. Courbet would have liked to see museums of painting closed down Monet, to have been born blind, his sight restored later in life, in order to guarantee the complete objectivity of vision.
Though
to us
by convention,
it is
his
ments would lead us to
apparent that Courbet's work was more highly conditioned
eye
less
blind to the works of earlier masters, than his state-
to believe,
have sprung from nowhere,
much
they
may have
were struck with
liis
he was generally thought by his style
what he represented, both Delacroix and Ingres and independent style. To Ingres, commenting on
may
which was frequently encountered ce gargon-ld, c'est
contemporaries
disliked
ability
the reality of Courbet's work,
'
his
uninfluenced by any school. However
un wiV
be attributed the source of that statement in the last half of the nineteenth century
Consequently, Courbet's paintings, and those of other reahsts, either directly or by implication, were often equated with photographs
vulgar or as ugly, as
artless, as feeble, as
machine. The great error,
said to be as
were the images produced by the
his critics asserted,
truth. Art, as Delacroix insisted,
and
was
to believe that veracity
was
was not simply the indifferent reproduction
of the object but a matter of intellectual and visual refinement, often of wilful
exaggeration to place the
at the service of the truth.
lie
Courbet's
critics
objected to his disregard of the traditional rules of art, to his lack of propriety,
meaning of realism by
to his perversion of the 'true'
even a stark and ugly Nature. His Return from
the Fair,
his insistence
on depicting
a rather innocent painting
of a group of peasants and their animals, exhibited at the 1850-51 Salon was
described as 'a banal scene worthy only of the daguerreotype'. His enormous
The Burial
canvas.
was likewise by
its
at
belittled
commonplace
oblivious to
its
Oriians,
which scandalized
by comparing
it
visitors at
subject, infuriated
by
its
spectacular
for a
it is
same Salon,
it
is,
completely
'In that scene,
;
faulty daguerreotype, there
coarseness which one always gets in taking nature as just as
size,
merits, the critic £tienne-Jean Delecluze wrote
which one might mistake
it
the
with a photographic image. Insulted
and
is
the natural
in
n-producing
seen.'
Courbet's irrepressible bombast too must have put doubts in the minds even ol those
who had
painters
and the gentle
Amand
Legros and
and seemingly an ultimate Ideal
'
come
finally
to
admire the landscape realism of the Barbizon
genre subjects of artists like Isabey,
made his The sacred
trivial subjects
artistic decline.
which had
it
later,
detractors shudder in anticipation of edifices erected to 'Beauty'
w eathered the vagaries of time and
so \\ell
threatened by the so-called cult of ugliness. Realism was the
and
Bonvin and,
Gautier. His extension of that realism to include unpleasant
was believed that
it
style
and 'the were now-
new enemy
of art
had been nurtured and sustained by photography.
The to
taste for naturalism [complained Delecluze], is harmful to serious art. ... It ought be said, that the constantly increasing pressure exerted during approximately
the last ten years,
on imitation
fatal in action, that
with which
The
artists
intellect
is
in the arts,
to say the
is
due
to
two
scientific forces
daguerreotype and the photograph
[i.e.
which are on paper],
are already obliged to reckon.
and the eye of the
naturalist painter, he continued,
are transformed into a kind of daguerreotype which, withoiu will, without taste,
without consciousness
may
lets itself
be subjugated by the appearance of things, whatever
and mechanically records their images. The artist, the man, renounces himself; he makes of himself an instrument, he flattens himself into a mirror, and his they
be,
principal distinction, finish.
is
to
be perfectly uniform and
to
have received a good
silver
the critic warned, results in a debased
and
That savage
sort of painting,
degraded
and has been proposed, with a temerity bordering on cynicism, of" nature is the aim of art
art
by M. Courbet. The principle that the exact imitation and that the choice of subject has little importance reproduced
is
so long as
it
faithfully
is
exaggerated by the daguerreotype and the photograph, he
concluded, added to which the indifference of the public to an elevated art has
aim of the
to the simple imitation of natural appearances, the sole
reduced art
genre painter.
Increasing in intensity, criticisms of that kind erupted with each subsequent Salon. year,
Edmond and Jules
felt it
- against le
beau
artists like
c'est le laid.
Courbet who professed,
Even the public do not
really
and
demand
literature.
the time of the 1853 Salon
from the Realists per
image into
all
se
so they said, the ridiculous belief that
do not search exclusively
Realists
fa\ourites in painting
By
de Goncourt, reviewing the exhibition the following
necessary to defend the idea of realism - to which they were partial
it
the
'slice
of
for ugliness, they insisted. life'
Look
in art.
at their
These were Realists and not mere copyists.
was apparent that the threat
came not
to art
but from the general insinuation of the photographic
schools of painting.
With remarkable
perspicacity the critic
Frederic Henriet observed that though superficially there appeared to be a great diversity of styles in that exhibition, there was in fact a fundamental similarity in the mechanical
manner
('/c
procedP) with
which
different kinds
of subjects were rendered. For fifteen years, he complained, the idea of a
mechanistic technique had gained favour with techniques tain,
is
judgement
that they lead one's
he asked, that
this
mentality
is
artists
astray.
;
the greatest danger of
Who
not 'intimately in
facile,
would dare
harmony with
to
main-
the spirit
of an age that discovered photography'? Because of photography and its seduction of the public, Henriet believed, Courbet and the school of Realism
triumph without any serious opposition. Whichever way cried, I see nothing to threaten Realism.
but only for
as a rival school.
Their
I
own work,
that
of Gerome,
example, though in the 'neo-Greek' or 'exotic
little
in
idealist' style,
and
it
is
common
represent an ideal world in their paintings but they render
as
might have been found
it
it,
Picou,
equally
lacks the
with their subjects. These
may it
he
eyes,
imagination to be found in the work of their master, Ingres.
form of these pictures has
With
my
Hamon and
concerned with illusion, with figures painted like sculpture, liveliness or
turn
There are those who protest against
The
artists
more or
less
in real nature.
the 1853 Salon Courbet's reputation as a purveyor of ugliness
had
become firmly established. Artists apparently aspiring to nothing beyond the camera's capacities were inevitably to be compared with
its
most abominable
products. For notwithstanding the lofty aims and the superb products of
129
1
30
talented photographers, the photograph had become a symbol of vulgarity, a weapon with which to slander the advocates of Realism, in literature as in art. The hilarious buffoonery and the vengeful recriminations which accompanied each exhibition of Courbet's work are well known. And behind every accusation
of ugliness, with each reference to varicose veins and nudes as hefty as Perchcrons, lurked the irrepressible association with the photographic image.
Rather than producing a truthful image, wrote Henri Delaborde in 1856,
photography gives us a brutal sentiment and of the ideal. style
and
many
It
reality.
is
people. Its application to art
photography absolute
character of
effigies
it is
human
the negation of beings, \\ithout
called Realism. Its vulgar images seduce
becoming more widespread and though
is
of service to painters
is
own
its
produces sad
what today
resulting in
By
its
images must never be considered
types. ^^
NUDES AND OBSCENITIES Often
in
the literature of the nineteenth centurv references can be found
criticizing
some subject or model,
ugly as a daguerreotype'. Cllesinger's
Femme
piqiice
It
is
as did
Holnian Hunt
in
1
854,' for
being 'as
recorded that a duel was considered
when
par un serpent (Salon of 1847) was derided as being a
daguerreotype in sculpture
(see
note 34). Even a daguerreotype of a group of
people drinking in a restaurant was said to have invited public protest because of the
commonplace realism of the
subject.
The
greatest obscenities, to be sure,
were photographs of nudes. These outraged public notions of rectitude
an extent that tive
in 1861, in England, a court case
and too
such
photographs had been displayed in public places.
real'
instructive reference
Japanese art were
was
to
initiated because 'provoca-
was made
in 1864 in which,
easily surpassed
circulating in Paris,
was
it
An
said, the erotica of
by that of the West \shere photographs
London and other
places
would
easily take the
infrequently, notices of 'immoral' photography appeared in both art
palm. Not
and photo-
graphic joinnals about i860. 'Obscene photographs' in Britain were denied the
open
privilege of the
post. In France, Disderi, in 1862,
facture of obscene photographs.
with a desperate truth the session
.
.
.
that
all
He
the physical
and moral
last
ugliness of the models paid by
unwholesome industry which occupies the courts of law'
rather than being dismissed simply as bad art.
public in the
complained of the manu-
described 'those sad nudities which display
And
yet,
it
seems, the art-lo\ ing
two or three decades of the nineteenth century was not parti-
cularly distressed by the substantial yearly quota of erotica
walls of the Salon. For
which crowded the
however suggestively disposed, however inventively ex-
posed, propriety was satisfied so long as pornography was
made
palatable by the
convenient remoteness of the antique, of history or some other exotic setting.
Despite the protests of the virtuous, photographs of nude subjects prohfcrated
from the early 1850s (though examples are known
and pleasure
equally, information for artists
as early as 1841), providing,
for voluptuaries. Discreetly, they
were called Academies, Etudes Photographiqucs, fitudes Academiqucs and Services
des
filcves
de I'Ecole des Beaux-Arts. They could be purchased
cheaply, thus reducing models'
They became permanent and
fees.
accessible reference material in the painters' studios. Like Delacroix,
always with
his pertinent reservations,
many
other
artists
readily
though not
were served by them.
In his instructive book on photography in 1856 Ernest Lacan suggested that by utilizing such
gi\ing
all
Among the
ateliers
grapher
photographs the
artist 'is
able to amass in his
the photographers
Academies
who were occupied
in
producing nude studies
for
of Paris was Julien Vallou de Villeneuve. As a painter and litho-
in the
1820s and 1830s he enjoyed an international reputation through
his large lithographic
productions of Les jeunes femmes, a series of anaemic,
erotic scenes of feminine intrigue
and
despair, of would-be lovers hidden in
boudoirs and other piquant episodes in the daily
life
about 1842 Villeneuve took up the camera, more or ge?ve his subjects in is
made because
83.
Courbet: L' Atelier.
costume or
it is
in the
of the young female. less
From
continuing in the same
nude. This special reference to Villeneuve
quite likely that Courbet
knew and used
84. VillfiicuM';
1855 (detail)
files
the positions, all the characteristics, all the diversities of nature'.
Nude
his
study. Photograpli.
Biblioiheque Nalioiiale, Paris. Aefiuisitit'ii (lair,
ir!-,
photographs
).,
'3'
132
35- Clouibel:
Hf).
Nudf
La femnif au
perrotjuii.
iBfit
study. Phototfraph. anon, n.d.
in the
1
850s. Introduced to these,
it
appears, in 1854 ^Y ^'^ friend and patron artist, in November that year, asked
from MonlpclHcr, Alfred Bruyas, the Bruyas to send him
'
that
photograph of the nude
woman which I my
have men-
tioned to you. She will stand behind the chair in the middle of
picture' he
explained, referring to his large painting, the so-called Atelier of 1855. This
photograph
The
is
probably one of a
taken by Villencuve
scries
pose, with the drapery held to the breast,
and the
features of the head, the hair style
of the body
in
is
close to that of the painting
and the
characteristic proportions
both painting and photograph arc with
same model (83, 84). Other documents and
1853 and 1854.
in
little
doubt those of the
visual evidence point to Courbet's use of photographs.
In Frankfurt (1858-9) the
artist
showed
his
work
to
Otto Scholderer who then
wrote to Fantin-Latour describing Courbet's small Venus as a 'nude reclining
on a kind of bed, with a view through a window on it
a Parrot, for
example
to
landscape
his
IVonwn with
from a photograph'. Other nudes by Courbet,
he painted
(85),
and the notorious Bather of 1853
photographs which are very
much
woman
to a
(87),
can be related
like the paintings in composition, in the
naturalism of even the somewhat aflfected poses and in the impersonal tonal
rendering of the figures (86, 88). Though, admittedly, the possibility of finding
87.
Courbet:
Les Baigneuifs. 1853 (detail).
88. \'illeneu\e:
Nude
study.
Photograph. Aquisition date, 1853
'33
fortuitous similarities here
is
high, the photographic appearance of
Courbct's paintings and the frequency with which he
known
is
many
of
to
have employed
first
comprehensive
photographs cannot be overlooked. In
its
rendering of pose and gesture photography offered the
alternative to forms fixed by antique tradition. Despite the fact that in posing their subjects as
photographers were as
much governed by
were painters, the inevitable vulgarities of
real
conventional criteria
- the inelegances, the
life
misproportions, the coarse blemishes - ludicrously asserted themselves on the sensitive plates.
The
crudities of actuality in photographs of nudes especially did
not blend very elegantly with the antique, and photographs of
an effrontery
To less
to
men and women
artists like
of good
this
kind were
taste.
Delacroix and Courbet, photographs of nudes were neverthe-
invaluable for discovering some of the essential virtues of naturalism, and
probably in the case of Courbet they produced a ready-made means of confounding the widespread preoccupation with Classical Antiquity. For notwithstanding his bombastic proclamations in the antiquity, despite
the poses
name
of Realism, a kind of obtuse
capacious buttocks and dimpled thighs,
its
and gestures of
the rather crass intrusion of photographic naturalism
annoying its
presence.
to Courbct's critics
When
apparent in
Aphrodites. As in Delacroix's Odalisque,
his colossal
conception of Courbet's paintings
is still
on
quite apparent.
is
was not the
the underlying lyrical
What,
I
think,
absence of the Ideal in his
Louis Napoleon thumped the Bather on the rump,
was so
work, but it
may
not
have been done because she was nude, nor even because her gigantic posterior
and other proletarian the outraged
a
attributes
were visually
Emperor because, nude and
nymph. Almost always, Courbet's nudes assume
antique conventions
;
She was spanked by
distressing.
proletarian, she
was masquerading
from
attitudes derived
though they are never garnished with the obvious archaeo-
logy of his Nco-Classical contemporaries, their settings are no
The degradation
as
of the Ideal was guaranteed by coupling
it
vulgar photographic naturalism.
One
corrupting a sacred tradition, the
awkward miscegenation
less traditional.
with the real
suspects that this irreverent
:
with
means of
of the synthetic and
the real, was quite deliberate on the part of the artist. In nineteenth-century terms, Courbet's sacrilege
Mono
was tantamount
painting a moustache on the
to
Lisa.^''
OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS USED BY COURBET Photographs also served the
artist for
some of his
case of landscape, one example at least can be
a photograph. In a
letter to the critic Jules
requested photographs of Pierre-Joseph
portrait paintings and, in the
shown
to
have been based on
Antoine Castagnary the
Proudhon,
after
the
artist
philosopher's
death, to family
;
assist in the
Courbet
completion of that abortive painting of Proudhon and his
later
intended utilizing another photograph of Proudhon to
illustrate the frontispiece of a special edition of the Socialist
journal La
rue,
but
the issue was suppressed by the government. In the artist's last years, during his
one of his canvases (dated 1874) of the Chateau of Chillon was undoubtedly painted from a photograph taken earlier, in 1867, by Adolphc exile in Switzerland,
Braun.
A
comparison shows the painting
tonality of the photograph,
to
much
the
It describes
the
be executed with very
from exactly the same viewpoint.
embankment as they were in 1867, in the Braun photograph, arc later shown to be in Courbet's other paintings of the same
forms of trees and
and not
as they
subject executed probably
in situ
(89, 90).
Apparently Courbet had no mis-
89.
Adolphc Braun
Le {hatean de Chillon.
Photograph. 1867
90.
Courbet:
Le Chilean de Chillon. Signed and dated 1874.
'35
C)i.
Gusta\'c Lc Gra\
Sky and Sea. 1860 (phiito^raph
•
92. Coiirbel
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