Chapter Five
THE MODERN PORTRAIT
in Photography and
Impressionist Painting
CONTENTS
Introduction
5.1
5.2
Early Photographic Portraiture
5.3
Portrait Photography, Art, and Aesthetics
5.4
Félix Nadar: Beyond the Documentary Portrait
5.5
Julia Margaret Cameron: Art Photography and Pictorialism
5.6
Modern Impressionist Portrait Paintings and the Impact of Photographic Techniques
5.7
Edgar Degas and the Influence of Photography
5.8
Impressionist Portraits of Colleagues and Friends
5.9
5.10
Auguste-Pierre Renoir and the Group Portrait
5.11
INTRODUCTION
The invention of photography significantly impacted avant-garde painters who were interested in representing contemporary life. The immediacy and objectivity of the medium attracted Impressionists whose interest was in capturing the ever-changing, everyday experiences of the modern world. The advent of photography radically altered how visual art was both conceived and perceived.
Freed from the burden of mimetic representation, artists shifted their attention to the portrayal of the fleeting and fragmentary events of life. Painters slowly began to appropriate the techno-formal aspects of the still photograph—the shaping power of light, the use of altered perspective, an interest in cropped spaces, and the exploration of increased spatial ambiguities that echoed the moving continuum of lived experience—to paint their images of a world in flux. Initially, paintings that strayed too far from objective representation were deemed unfinished, but in time their arbitrariness became accepted as an aspect of modern art.
The relationship between photography and painting was reciprocal. The photographic portrait did not remain static but evolved as well, moving from a mechanistic recording of likeness with the one-of-a-kind invention of the daguerreotype to the popular multiples of the carte-de-visite to more sophisticated and nuanced studio photography and finally to pictorialism, which engaged with broader art forms as art photography and secured its legitimate place as fine art.
This chapter will consider Impressionist portraiture within its historical context and its relationship to the parallel evolution of photographic images. The work of artists associated with the French avant-garde, such as Degas, Bazille, and Renoir, will be considered in terms of the innovations they implemented within the context of the portrait genre and how their ambitions for painting people in a modern world advanced the conceptualization and creation of late nineteenth-century portraiture.
5.1
| The Invention of Photography
In 1837, Louis Daguerre, a painter, printmaker and proprietor of the Parisian Diorama, invented the daguerreotype camera. It was the first commercially available method of mechanical image reproduction. Each daguerreotype was a finely detailed and permanent unique image recorded on a silvered copper plate. The process involved treating the silver-plated sheets with iodine to make them light sensitive, then devel