4. Anna Atkins, Cystoceira granulata, from
British Algae, 1843-44.
Detroit Institute of Arts.
Anna Atkins, who was trained as a botanist, used
photography as a means of recording botanical
specimens for a scientific reference book, British
Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.
The illustration in this publication the were
created by the cyanotype method. With this
book, Atkins established photography as an
accurate medium for scientific illustration.
5. Nadar was a writer, a caricaturist, a balloonist, a photographer, and a
friend of the painters, writers, and intellectuals in Paris.
At the 1867 Paris Worldâs fair he floated over Paris. Edouard Manet
captured the moment in his painting, View of the Worldâs Fair 1867. It
was clearly influenced by photography.
Civil War photographers used glass plates to capture very sharp
images. The cameras, which looked like wooden boxes, were very
heavy. The photographers installed the cameras on wooden legs to
keep them steady.
A negative image was created when light hit the glass plate prepared
with light-sensitive chemicals. On the glass negative, the light and
dark areas of an image were reversed. Photographers then made
multiple positive paper prints from the glass negatives.
6. The glass plates had to be treated immediately after exposure. The
treatment of the glass negatives and transferring the images to paper
required dark rooms. The Civil War photographers had to bring their
dark rooms in horse-drawn wagons to battlefields.
Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, George Barnard, and photographers
that worked for their studios, stand out for influencing how generations
of Americans formed their understanding of the Civil War.
Mathew Brady was the first photographer to travel to the front lines.
Although Brady secured the permissions necessary to document the
Civil War early on, photographers working for his studio actually
brought him success by photographing iconic images.
7. Mathew Brady, Dead Soldier,
Civil War, c. 1863.
Gelatin-silver print.
Library of Congress, D.C.
Brady recognized the talent and
expertise of Alexander Gardner
and hired him in 1856 to work for
his studio in New York. Two years
later, Gardner was managing
Bradyâs Gallery in Washington
D.C. Gardner was an expert in wet-
plate collodion photography, and
in the "Imperial Print", a 17 by 21
inch enlargement, which made
Brady famous.
8. While Brady, Gardner, and other photographers set to objectively
capture the realities of war, they could not escape the complex political
role photography played in shaping public opinion.
By 1863, Alexander Gardner and his brother opened their own studio in
Washington D.C., taking with them many of Mathew Brady's staff. The
split was caused by Bradyâs lack of business acumen and failure to
regularly meet his payroll.
After the war, Alexander Gardner published his Photographic Sketch
Book of the Civil War, which included images by other photographers,
such Timothy O'Sullivan, James Gibson, George Barnard, James
Gardner, and William Pywell, who followed the armies and recorded the
American Civil War.
The technical limitations of photography to capture epic scenes of
battle in color and in real time, created a big demand for lithographs.
9. Unknown Photographer,
Frederick Douglass, 1847
Daguerreotype. Collection
William Rubel.
Frederick Douglass like
photography for its objectivity.
He preferred appearing in front of
dark, single-color backgrounds,
unlike the elaborate designs
traditionally favored by 19th-
century portraiture.
12. Gustave Courbet, The
Source of Loue, 1864.
Oil on Canvas.
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York.
This paintingâs close
cropping of the landscape, is
clearly influenced by
photography. Courbet used
the opportunity to
emphasize the texture of the
rocks through the rough
appearance of the paint.
14. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, later known as the Pre-Raphaelites,
was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848
by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti.
The meaning of this painting continues to be debated.
ENGALND
William Holman Hunt, The
Hireling Shepherd, 1851
Oil on canvas.
Manchester Art Gallery,
Manchester, England.
18. Mary Cassatt, Woman
Bathing, 1890â91,
Drypoint and aquatint,
printed in color from three
plates.
Metropolitan Museum, NY.
Cassattâs work has a clear
connection to Manetâs depiction
of the mundane. She also shows
influences by Degasâ bathing
women.
19. FROM REALISM TO
IMPRESSIONISM
Corot often visited the Forest
of Fontainebleau but never
resided there.
Initially, he included a woman
and child in the center of the
image, but he removed the
child to make it more
ambiguous.
When it was shown at the
Salon of 1870, the critics
praised its quiet lyricism.
Camille Corot , Ville dâAvray, 1870. oil
on canvas. The metropolitan Museum
of Art, NY.
21. Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876.
Oil on canvas. Musee d'Orsay, Paris
The Moulin de la Galette was
one of 21 works shown by
Renoir at the third
Impressionist exhibition in
1877. The painting depicts
Moulin de la Galette, a place
near the top of Montmartre
known for entertainment, on a
Sunday afternoon when young
people from the north of Paris
would meet in the dance-hall
and in the courtyard behind it,
in fine weather. The scene in
this work is not an authentic
representation of the clientele
of the Moulin, but rather a
scrupulously organized series
of portraits.
24. Edgar Degas, The Jockey,
1889. Pastel on paper.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Eadweard Muybrige, Horse
in Motion, 1878. wet-plate
photograph.
Edgar Degas used Muybridgeâs photographs to understand how
to image bodies in motion. Muybridge expanded the field of
photography and even began the concept of âmotion pictureâ,
before filmmaking had been invented.
25. When he exhibited this sculpture at the
sixth Impressionist exhibition of 1881,
viewers were shocked by its realism.
It was highly unusual to incorporate
other materials in a bronze sculpture.
This one had a miniature gauze skirt,
silk bodice and fabric slippers. Dagas
prefigures the introduction of real
objects into sculpture in the 20th
century.
Edgar Degas, Little
Dancer Fourteen Years
Old. 1878-81. Bronze with
cloth accessories National
Gallery of Art, D.C.
26. Berthe Morisot, Woman at Her Toilette, c.
1875. The Art Institute of Chicago.
Berthe Morisot was
associated with French
Impressionism and actively
participated in seven out of
eight groupâs exhibitions.
She maintained an interest in
subjects derived from
everyday life and in
capturing the effects of light.
27. John Singleton Copley is considered to be the foremost artist of
colonial America. Copley was born on July 3, 1738, in Boston, and
was trained by his stepfather, a mezzotint engraver.
By 1760 Copley's distinctive style had crystallized, characterized by
meticulous technique, clear verisimilitude, and a vivid, balanced
palette. Copley sent his painting The Boy with a Squirrel to London,
where it was exhibited. Impressed by the painting, the English
portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds and the expatriate American painter
Benjamin West urged Copley to immigrate to Europe.
He moved to London in 1775. He was elected an associate of the
Royal Academy in the following year and a full member in 1779.
Under West's influence, Copley turned to history painting.
Copley died on September 9, 1815, in London.
NINETEEN -CENTURY ART IN THE UNITED STATES
28. LATER NINETEENTH-
CENTURY AMERICAN ART
One of the first American artists to
win a wide reputation in Europe,
Benjamin West exerted
considerable influence on the
development of art in the United
States through such young
American painters as Gilbert
Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, and
John Singleton Copley.
Benjamin West, Agrippina
Landing at Brundisium with the
Ashes of Germanicus, 1768.
Yale University Art Gallery, New
Haven
30. Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front,
1866. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
In 1866, one year after
the Civil War ended,
Homer completed this
painting that established
his reputation. It depicts
the scene from the war in
which Union Brigadier
General Francis
Channing Barlow (1834â
1896) captured several
Confederate officers on
June 21, 1864.
32. Thomas Eakins, The Champion Single
Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull),
1871. Oil on canvas;
In 1870, Eakins began a
series of paintings
depicting the sport of
sculling, a subject for
which he is best known.
This is work
commemorates the
victory of Max Schmitt
(1843â1900), in an
important race on the
Schuylkill River in
October 1870.
33. Eakins, Thomas
The Gross Clinic, 1875.
Oil on canvas.
Jefferson Medical College of
Thomas Jefferson University,
Philadelphia
Gross was an innovative
surgeon and champion of
surgical intervention.
34. Henry Ossawa Tanner, The
Banjo Lesson, 1893.
Oil on canvas. Hampton
University Museum, Hampton,
VA
The painting shows an elderly
black man teaching a boy,
assumed to be his grandson,
how to play the banjo.
The portraits are skillfully
painted.