“All good portraitists were to some degree caricaturists.”

                                                    – Pablo Picasso

The emergence of photography in the mid-nineteenth century profoundly influenced painting. The camera, a revolutionary mechanism, could create instantaneous likenesses. So novel was it that it called into question the meaning of art and sparked doubt in the minds of critics and painters alike about the importance of meticulously painted detail and form. Realists such as Gustave Courbet discovered that the candor they yearned to portray in their art could not be expressed by mere duplication. This revelation, along with financial and social pressure and the necessity for a new creative ideal, impelled realists to begin establishing innovative painting techniques. Gustave Courbet and others like him took their already unorthodox style and created something profound. People of low social status had already inhabited the work of the Realists, enraging the Salons and prompting much criticism. However, photography’s influence propelled these artists further in a new direction. The very form of the art produced by Courbet and other former-realists changed; representation ceased to revolve around flawless line. The sentiment reflected in a painting and the attitude of a portrait model became central. Such work, though not largely successful, served as inspiration for the radical art movements that would soon follow. The invention and widespread popularity of photography as a form of portraiture pushed realists into an anti-photographic movement, which began to focus on a more emotional, naturalist art and allowed for the ground-breaking movements that followed.

Realism, an art movement which began in the 1850s and extended through the late nineteenth century, was often linked with anti-establishment liberalism (Reame 53). It attempted to show only actuality without embellishment while still creating beautiful art. As described by Charles Baudelaire, these artists wanted to capture the world as it appeared in nature— “the Universe without man”— and rejected false perfection (Reame 53; Weiner 2). Theorists highlight realism’s emphasis on individualism and the painters’ desire for truth (Reame 53). Their work was a quest for the convergence of blunt honesty and beauty.
   
Photography, developing in the 1830s and gaining popularity throughout the nineteenth century, challenged art and everything it stood for (Jeffrey 10). Many painters and critics viewed photography as an adversary from its birth; this new technology demeaned art and threatened culture (McPherson 26). Photographers, striving to be taken seriously as artists, created settings for their portraits—much as portraitist painters did—and even sometimes printed on canvas-like material (Polkinhorn 2-3). Their efforts quickly brought photography into high esteem by the general public; people were thrilled by the novelty of a speedy and inexpensive way to acquire portraits.
   
After photography’s rise, many critics claimed that realist painters’ portraits “;;resembled daguerreotypes.” These artists were chastised for “fllowing nature too closely” (McPherson 16). Gustave Flaubert’s 1910 “Dictionary of Received Ideas” mocks French suppositions and ideas from half a century earlier, underlining the mid-nineteenth century assumption about photography’s supposedly inevitable dominance over painting. Under “Photography,” Flaubert writes, “will make painting obsolete.” Although this theory did not last long, it left its mark on painters. Photography seemed at first to take the place of painting by depicting life more realistically than could painters. Despite this conception, the thought that painting could be made obsolete by photography encouraged painters to become more innovative (Crimp 53).
   
Artists of the 1840s saw photography boom, but many were harshly critical, even fearful of what it might do to art. Many worried that photography may impact artistic creativity, as taking a picture necessitates no imagination (McPherson 26). Some were surprised and put off by a photograph’s propensity to magnify blemishes on the model’s face. Observant artists realized that photographic portraitists faced the same problem as painters; it is incredibly difficult to capture the subject’s character, status, and likeness in one single image (McPherson 26-28). A photograph captures a moment in time with physical exactness, but does not capture the effect time has on the moment. In leaving out this vital piece of reality, ultimate truth is still not achieved.
   
While many critics chastised portraitists whose work was not a flawless reproduction, much of the truth in a portrait lies in how the body is morphed by the painter to better reflect the model (McPherson 2). Many painters had such hatred for photography, and therefore for photograph-like paintings, that they began to experiment with their style. This experimentation was further fueled by public’s excitement about the new technology and the resulting economic pressure for artists to create something removed from photography. More importantly, the short-comings photographers faced exemplified what painters could change in their own work to attain unmet goals. Realist Gustave Courbet discovered that photographs also could not capture the essence that he felt many of his works lacked. Creating an exact replica would not give him the truth he longed to find. Courbet came to believe that a drawing or painting, with its transformative tendencies, could depict a person more accurately than could any facsimile (McPherson 28). Portraits he painted began to focus more on the model’s expression and body language instead of exact likeness in form. The goal became to exemplify the sitter’s character (McPherson 20). The invention of photography pushed some realists to make their work more true to life by abandoning certain customs and techniques in search of showing the personality and attitude of their subjects.
   
Courbet painted everyday people. In “Sleep” (1886, Oil on Canvas), he depicts two young women, their bodies entangled, sleeping in the nude. The girls’ messy hair, dirty feet, blotchy red face, and asymmetrical breasts are not enhanced to make a more perfect picture. The women are not idealized, but simply presented, and the beauty lies in the pure reality of Courbet’s paintings. The candor with which he portrayed his commonplace subjects was far from customary, a fact which contributed to the novelty of his work. Portraits of commonplace women, especially those depicted in the nude, often represent the nuances of the Impressionist movement. particularly in Edouard Manet’s “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe,” (1862-63, Oil on Canvas) in which two young women sit nude at a picnic with two fully dressed gentlemen. Recurrently, lovers of Impressionism marvel at the bluntness of the candid pose. Courbet’s efforts propelled painters a in this direction, starting the trend of using ordinary people as models and resisting the bourgeois conventions of the Salon.
   
Painters became obsessed with the individuality and the expression of their art. These artists wanted to experiment with their trade and to test its limits in contrast to those of photography (McPherson 26). Baudelaire, poet, art critic, and friend of Courbet, thought one could classify portraits as one of two things—either “history” or “fiction”—and supported the thought that some fictitious aspects of portraiture actually better represent the true character of a subject (McPherson 28). Those critical of photography became less concerned with how precisely the artist painted the form and more interested in, as Baudelaire described, “what was hidden” (McPherson 26). With the need for deeper meaning and novelty, symbolism and a disregard for tradition worked their way back into art.
   
Photography is used primarily as “nostalgia” or in advertising. It has been seen as a “fine art” for less than 50 years. Painting, too, once demanded little depth or creativity, used primarily to illustrate biblical stories and to flaunt high social status. The low cost and ready commercial use of photography fills the need for portraits as a means of historical documentation, leaving painters free to embrace their craft and test it to its limits. Nineteenth-century painters became unconstrained by reality and set the stage for experimentation and abstraction in paintings (Polkinhorn 3). Courbet’s inventive work was a model to the ground-breaking painters of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Gerondeau 2). Though not largely profitable, the anti-photography sentiments of former-realists in the mid-1800s served as a catalyst for artistic ingenuity.

“Le Sommeil” or “Sleep,” Gustave Courbet, 1886, oil on canvas

Works Cited

Crimp, Douglas, and Hal, ed Foster. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983.

Gerondeau, Marc. “Impressionism History.” Impressionism and Impressionist Painters. 2004.  22 Jan. 2009 .

Jeffrey, Ian. Photography: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1981.

McPherson, Heather. The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the U of Cambridge, 2001.

Polkinhorn, Harry. “Seeing Power.” Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry. 1 Jan. 2009.  14 Jan. 2009 .

Weiner, Philip P. New Dictionary of the History of Modern Ideas (Vol 4). Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973. Science Encyclopedia. 21 Jan. 2009 .

Westlake-Kenny, Barbara. “From Paints to Prints: The Impact of Photography on Potraiture.” UAB Publications. Winter 2002. UAB.  14 Jan. 2009 .