Impression Sunrise from the 1874 Impressionist Show
Introduction to PhotographyPre-Photographic InventionsCamera obscura• A box (in earlier times a room)
with a hole and a lens at one end• An image is projected onto the
opposite end• The image is traceable with pen
and paperPhotogram• A flat object is placed on photo-
sensitive paper• The paper is exposed to light and a
silhouette is rendered
Early PhotographsDaguerreotype• A unique item of very high clarity• Has a mirror surface• Three-dimensional effects are
striking• Highly vulnerable to physical
damage and scratching• Placed in an individualized frame
with a top• Very expensive procedure• No negativesCalotype• Makes a positive and a negative
image• Negatives were not clear• Has a grainy texture
Questions about the Nature of Photography
• Photography has become accepted as a fact. How can we question the facts that photographs present?
• How can the vantage point change our impression of a subject in a photograph?
• How is time the subject of all photographs?• Is photography a mirror of the world, or a window onto the
world?
Photography
From 1826
Louis Daguerre
• 1787 – 1851• Produced his first photo in 1939• Inventor of the Daguerreotype• This used a copper plate with a finely polished silver layer on its surface. It was made
light-sensitive by reaction with iodine (and later bromine) vapour which produced a coating of silver iodide. Following an exposure - perhaps 10 minutes using a camera in bright sunlight - the almost invisible image was made visible by suspending the plate above a heated mercury bath. The mercury did not alter the silver iodide, but where an image had been formed this consisted of small particles of silver. This combined with the mercury to form a light gray silver amalgam in the lighter parts of the image. The darker parts of the scene were unchanged silver iodide and this was dissolved using a strong salt (sodium chloride) solution, revealing the polished silver surface. Later hypo (sodium thiosulphate) was found to be better for this 'fixing' process.
Early Photography
Daguerre, Still Life in a Studio• First photographs imitate painted
still lives• Long shutter speeds meant that
inanimate objects were a natural choice
• Variety of textures in this photography to reveal its capabilities” cloth, flask, sculpted cherub heads, framed painting, relief sculpture, etc.
• Reference to the vanitas of Dutch still life painting
Atelier of the Artist, 1837
Henry Fox Talbot
• 1800 –1877• Invented the Calotype
Henry Fox Talbot, 1844
3 daughters, c. 1846
Nadar
Ever open to new ideas and discoveries, Nadar was the first in France to make photographs underground with artificial light and the first to photograph Paris from the basket of an ascendant balloon. Even though a proponent of heavier-than-air traveling devices, he financed the construction of Le Giant, a balloon that met with an unfortunate accident on its second trip. Nonetheless, he was instrumental in setting up the balloon postal service that made it possible for the French government to communicate with those in Paris during the German blockade in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
Ruined financially by this brief but devastating conflict, Nadar continued to write and photograph, running an establishment with his son Paul that turned out slick commercial work. Always a rebel, at one point he lent the photo studio to a group of painters who wished to bypass the Salon in order to exhibit their work, thus making possible the first exhibition of the Impressionists in April, 1874. Although he was to operate still another studio in Marseilles during the 1880s and '90s Nadar's last photographic idea of significance was a series of exposures made by his son in 1886 as he interviewed chemist Eugene Chevreul on his 100th birthday, thus foreshadowing the direction that picture journalism was to take. During his last years he continued to think of himself as "a daredevil, always on the lookout for currents to swim against." At his death, just before the age of ninety, he had outlived all those he had satirized in the famous Pantheon, which had started him in photography
1863
1855
Nadar and Photography from balloon
By Daumier
Manet Delacroix
• Portrait photography becomes popular with shorter shutter speeds
• Deeper richer black and white tones in more modern photography
• Figures still had to hold a pose for a long time
• Stern, severe, commanding presence
• Artistic genius at the summit of his career
• Autocratic looking
Muybridge, Horse Galloping• Muybridge settled a
debate about whether or not a horse, in full gallop, would naturally have all four hoofs off the ground at the same time
• Successive camera shots at paced intervals revealed the answer
• Multiple-camera motion studies with a zoopraxiscope
• The transitional figure between still photography and motion pictures
1878
Theodore Gericault, 1821
Pre-Raphaelites
• The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everret Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt.
• Against the what they perceived as the mechanistic approach to art from the Mannerists on. Felt raphael’s classical influence to be bad.
• Often considered the first avant-garde movement in art
• The Brotherhood's early doctrines were expressed in four declarations:
1. To have genuine ideas to express; 2. To study Nature attentively, so as
to know how to express them; 3. To sympathise with what is direct
and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote;
4. And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures
and statues.
Christ In the House of His Parents, John Everett Millais, 1850
The Barbizon School
• Name derived from a village in Northern France• Rejected Classical Landscape style and insisted on
Direct Observation• Inspired by Constable (Salon of 1824)• Closely allied with Realists, pre-cursors to the
Impressionists• Artists included Millet and Courbet as well as Jean-
Baptiste-Camille Corot and Theodore Rousseau
Ville d’Avray, 1867
Impressionism Timeline
• 1863 – Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe & the Salon des Refuses (50 women artists, 13%)
• 100 or more women at the official salon yearly• 1865 – Olympia accepted and jeered. American Civil War ends• 1866- Baudelaire dies, Monet at the Salon• 1867 - Maximillian is executed. “Salon of Newcomers” (Renoir,
Monet, Pissaro, Degas)
• 1870 – Franco-Prussian War• 1871 – France defeated
Napolean III unseated, Adolphe Theirs becomes President of the Third Republic
Kaiser Wilhelm crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles• 1874 – The First “Impressionist Exhibtion”
Impressionist Artists of Note
• Eduoard Manet• Claude Monet• Berthe Morisot• Auguste Renoir• Camille Pissaro• Edgar Degas• James McNeil Whistler• Mary Cassatt• August Rodin
Eduoard Manet
• 1832 – 1883• Considered the Godfather of the Impressionists• Never Showed in an Impressionist Exhibition• Well educated, close friends with Baudelaire and
Zola• Achieved both Notoriety and some recognition
through the official Salon• Became Friends with Monet and painted some “au
plein air”• Influenced other Impressionists through his
unique technique
Realism
Manet, Luncheon on the Grass• A modern response to Giorgione and Raphael• Rejected by the official salon and exhibited in the Salon of the Refuses• Models are obviously posing, no unity of figures and landscape• She is undressed rather than nude• Two men dressed in contemporary clothes contrasts with the nudity of
the foreground female• Nude figure directly engages us• Still life very unrealistic• Sketchy broad brushstrokes• Triangular composition• Flattening of perspective
The Judgement of ParisEngraving after RaphaelMarcantonio Raimondi
c. 1516
Giorgione, Pastoral Concert, 1508-09
Olympia, 1863 (Victorine Meurent)
Manet, Olympia• Based on Giorgione and Titian• Unashamed of nudity; direct confrontational stare• Absence of modeling• Doubtful morals suggested; prostitute receiving flowers from an
admirer• Created a scandal at the Salon of 1865• Black cat: an exclamation point at her feet• Bouquet from a customer• Cold and practical look, no curiosity, no joy• Realistic nude, contemporary setting• Contrast of black and white tones• Black servant caused concern: references to animal behavior and the
lower classes
Ingres, The Grand Odalisque
1814
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538
Realism
Manet, Bar at the Folies-Bergere• Melancholy and absent gaze at
customer ordering a drink• Mirrors reflect the world around
her• Artificiality of perspective• Strong verticals down center• Impressionist brushwork• Fruit and flowers defined by a few
brushstrokes• Is the woman in the back a
reflection of the main figure in a mirror?
Influence of Japanese prints
1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris introduced Japanese culture to Europe. European artists were inspired by the following characteristics of Japanese woodblock prints:
• 1 Flat quality that lacked perspective• 2 Flat areas of color• 3 Odd angles of composition• 4 Curving lines• 5 Charm, without sentimentality• 6 Lack of shadow
Hokusai is generally more appreciated in the West than in Japan. His prints, as well as those by other Japanese printmakers, were imported to Paris in the mid-19th century. They were enthusiastically collected, especially by such impressionist artists as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, whose work was profoundly influenced by them
Sanno Festival Procession at Kojimachi I-chome 1857 (130 Kb); From "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo"; Woodblock print, 13 1/4 x 8 5/8 in; The Brooklyn
Museum
Hiroshige (1797-1858), Japanese painter and printmaker, known especially for his landscape prints. The last great figure of the Ukiyo-e, or popular, school of printmaking, he transmuted everyday landscapes into intimate, lyrical scenes that made him even more successful than his contemporary, Hokusai.
Ushimachi, Takanawa 1857 (130 Kb); From "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo"; Woodblock print,
13 1/4 x 8 5/8 in; The Brooklyn Museum
Mary Cassatt, 1890,The bath
1876, Camille Monet in Japanese Costume
Monet
Claude Monet• 1840 - 1926• The archetypal
Impressionist• Interested in in the transient
nature of light and effects of color
• Spent time in England with Pissaro during Franco-Prussian War and studied Constable and Turner
Impression Sunrise from the 1874 Impressionist Show
Monet, Impression: Sunrise• Painting inadvertently founded the name of
Impressionism• Form and substance vanish• Light transforms objects and surfaces into
atmospheric spaces• Color was not the property of an object, but the light
controls color intensity• Color affected by time or day and movement of the
sun• Monet worked outdoors, plein-air
Monet, Rouen Cathedral• One of Monet’s paintings in a series• Cf. Muybridge• Fixed composition and view in most of
the series• Subtle gradations of tone and color• Limited palette, subtle handling of paint• Gothic cathedral, religious and cultural
significance• Stone work of cathedral dissolves in
light
Berthe Morisot
• 1841-1895• First Woman to Join the
Impressionist Painters• Friend and Model for Manet
who influenced her highly
Morisot, Villa at the Seaside
• Shaded verandah at a summer resort
• Figures are informally grouped
• Private balcony
• Discreetly fashionably dressed women
• Woman sits elegantly covered to avoid a tan
• Brisk broad brushstrokes
• Women neither spectacles nor on parade
• Plein-air
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