Photography, the very humble servant of painting

With this lapidary sentence, here is the thankless role that Charles Baudelaire attributed to the practice of photography in 1859. Like a venerated mistress who is kept silent, painters used photography as "a study from nature" to build a catalog of poses, expressions, landscapes to fuel the production of their paintings. Thus hiding the origin of the illustrations of their canvases, this technique allowed them to produce works in the studio reflecting a level of realism and detail that would otherwise have required production with live models or outdoors.

As photographers and by the very nature of their training, painters mastered the art of composition and the use of light. They could spontaneously transpose their pictorial skills to build their collection of reference photos.

According to the author Dominique de Font-Réaulx, "studies from nature" are the basis of the structured apprenticeship of young painters in 19th century Europe. This approach allows to educate the eye, the mind and the hand. The copying of paintings and drawings of the old masters reproduced in the form of engravings was a common practice. The "studies from nature" is therefore the mechanism to confront the rigorous observation of nature.

The author Font-Réaulx in her work "Peinture & Photographie, les enjeux d'une rencontre, 1839 – 1914" refers to several painters who have built up a significant inventory of photographs on paper. She demonstrates that the photographic components are then found in their paintings, in an explicit manner.

As a specific example among many others, the author refers to the Bibliothèque photographique d'Adolphe Giraudon, opened in Paris in 1877, with the aim of offering a very large number of photographic reproductions on paper to artists. This collection of nature offered snapshots of landscapes, peasants at work and offered a valuable resource to painters to fuel their creations. These collections are assembled to meet the needs of artists, both in terms of documentation, poses of live models and teaching materials.

Since the advent of the camera, many painter-photographers have used photographic prints on a personal basis to create catalogues of images documenting reality. This practice allows them to produce their works from photographs. They almost never mentioned their photographic references as a source of inspiration.

Painting by Gustave Moreau, The Argonauts (c 1885), with the main character taken from a photograph attributed to Henri Rupp

Photographers produce repertoires of forms with live models in order to fuel the inspiration of painters. These photos illustrate the suppleness of the lines of the female body, an attention to the gestures and poses of the models, in connection with a contextual landscape.

Oscar Rejlander, Study of female nudes, c. 1865. This type of photographs, which were very abundant at the time, served to fuel the production of paintings by painters of the time, without having to use live models.

More often than not, painters preferred to construct their own repertoires of landscapes, urban structures and live models, while keeping silent about the use of photographs to fuel their production.

A thankless role for photography

For 19th-century artists, to associate photography with the secondary role of fueling the production of painting was to ignore the artistic potential of an emerging new medium.

Fortunately, many photographers quickly understood the opportunity to create a new artistic expression. Forced by the need to be accepted in the world of visual art, photographers were first forced to imitate painting, with varied techniques in terms of production and post-production. Over time, they were able to give themselves the goal of expressing themselves through photography with artistic criteria specific to the new medium.

Among the notable photographers of the 19th century who left behind a significant artistic output are F. Holland Day, Clarence White, Robert Demarchy, Eugene Carrière, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen.

In this respect, Steichen is certainly the one who experienced the emergence of artistic photography with the greatest brilliance. Equally at ease with the handling of the brush and the camera,

Steichen was recognized for both his Impressionist painting and his fine art photography. For twenty years he pursued both activities concurrently, stating that it was easier to earn a living selling his paintings. It was not until the end of the First World War that he decided that his future would be exclusively in photography, recognizing that he could not excel in both art forms. Steichen's masterpiece from this period is certainly his photograph of Balzac's sculpture produced in 1911. Rodin claimed on this occasion that Steichen's photograph of his famous sculpture was in itself a work of art, independent of the object photographed.

Edward Steichen, watercolor, Young Woman in a Flowering Field, 1899

Rodin's fame certainly influenced Steichen to devote himself exclusively to artistic photography. With his unequivocal support, Rodin offered a clear consecration of the value of artistic photography.

The use of photography to fuel the production of painters created an ambiguity as to the very value of photography as a creative tool. The infatuation with the camera's capture of reality could lead one to believe that photography was able to reliably reproduce reality, while the act of creation was the painter's responsibility.

Photograph by Edward Steichen of the Balzac sculpture produced by Auguste Rodin. Long exposure image taken by moonlight in 1911.

Of course, over the years, photographers have been able to occupy their space and make photography an artistic act in itself, with their own aesthetic criteria, independently of the supposed reality captured by their lens.

Reference :

Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Painting & Photography, The stakes of an encounter, 1839-1914, Flammarion, 2012