PARIS — Hans P. Kraus Jr. is pleased to present Regard the Camera, featuring exceptional examples of nineteenth-century portraits by William Henry Fox Talbot, Duchenne de Boulogne, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Nègre, Southworth & Hawes, and Louis-Emile Durandelle, among others.
Patroclus, companion of Achilles, was William Henry Fox Talbot's (1800-1877) first and favorite portrait sitter. The plaster cast of him at Lacock Abbey is a copy of the marble in the British Museum. Talbot's chemistry required lengthy exposures and a stationary object, such as this bust, was the ideal subject. The brush strokes around the border of this exceptional salt print, printed from the same negative as Plate V in The Pencil of Nature, indicate that Talbot personally coated the sheet of paper by hand.
A pioneering neurologist and physiologist, Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875) was the first scientist to explain that facial expressions were connected to human emotions through discrete muscle actions. The results of Duchenne’s experiments and collaboration with photographer Adrien Tournachon (1825-1903), illustrated in Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, occupy a distinct place at the intersection of art and science. This old, thin-faced, toothless man had been Duchenne's primary subject. His features lent themselves to the sometimes dramatic, even disturbing, expressions documented in Tournachon's photographs.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) sought to record the qualities of innocence, wisdom, piety, or passion ascribed to great biblical, historical, and legendary figures through the faces of her family and friends. Soft focus and ethereal lighting instill this albumen print of “La Sainte Famille” with a painterly quality reminiscent of works by Renaissance artists. This was Cameron's intention as part of her strategy to elevate photography to the status of high-art. By contrast, Cameron's subjects, the Madonna with infants Jesus and John the Baptist, appear humble in their modest garments and with their tranquil demeanor. Her models were Rosie Prince, Mary Hillier, and Freddy Gould.
“The frame was oval… I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me.” This quotation from Edgar Allan Poe’s 1884 story “The Oval Portrait” might apply directly to this whole plate daguerreotype “Boston Beauty,” circa 1850, a fine example of the vignetted portraits of women by Southworth & Hawes (1811-94 & 1808-1901). Their celebrated nineteen-year Boston partnership produced the finest portrait daguerreotypes in America for a clientele that included leading political, intellectual, and artistic figures. The firm was known for its aesthetic accomplishments and technical finesse.
Louis-Emile Durandelle (1839-1917) was one of the most prominent architectural photographers of the 19th century. His best-known body of work are photographs of the construction of the Paris Opéra and its sculptural decorations in the 1860s and 1870s. Charles Garnier won the commission to design the Opera house in 1861 during France’s Second Empire, a period of rapid urban growth and opulent construction. Durandelle was hired to photograph details of the building before they were fitted into place. While his job was ostensibly simply documentary, his pictures of the Opera’s ornaments and decorations are anything but. Durandelle often isolated the sparkling white marble or rich bronze pieces against a cloth backdrop, according each a distinction and an air of majesty before their installation as part of the carefully orchestrated program on the façade or in the interior. Our display of Durandelle salutes Garnier and his New Opera House which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and coincides with the Musée d’Orsay’s exhibition “Building and Decorating the Opera House.”