What Was the Effect of Photography on Painting in the Nineteenth Century

Photography, meaning “drawing with lights” in Greek, is an art as well as a science of capturing light and storing it on a medium with unprecedented accuracy. Yet, up until the late 18th century, history was mainly recorded through the techniques of painting and the press. These mediums unarguably contained a certain degree of a truth, though, it was not uncommon for events, such as war to be composed with glorified details, or an unfavorable bias from the artist at hand. Beginning in the 1830’s, cameras provided a revolutionary solution by combining the advancements in optics and chemistry. Consequently, the new medium of photography was established and forever changed how history would be visually captured. Unlike other methods, photography

Until the 19th century most artwork was created in a two or three-dimensional media. In England, William Fox discovered a technique that allowed camera images to be captured on paper. This medium has evolved since Fox’s discovery in 1839 to a serious and viable form of art today. Photography allows the artist to capture what he sees. The image produced is reality to the artists eye, it can only be manipulated with light and angles.

There were many obstacles in Monet’s lifetime that may have encouraged him to quit painting entirely. One specific obstacle that killed many painters’ careers in his time was the invention of photography. “Just as the introduction of the mechanical loom affected the work of the weaver, the invention of photography in 1839 took over much of the painter’s documentary work, portraits, illustrations and plates for books and journals”, (Ventura 128). In an historic effort Monet managed to bypass all of those obstacles. As a result to his efforts, Monet has become one of the most famous artists to this

At the 19th century, the invention of camera has provided an easier and faster way to keep records. The function of realistic painting had been replaced.

There are not many artists in the world of sculptors that can compare or surpass the work of these two artists. The comparison that I will make is between two different artists who happened to create a marble statue of the biblical David but did it differently and during different eras of art. Michelangelo created his seventeen feet, standing nude male statue of David first during the renaissance era between the year 1501 and 1504 in the 16th century while Gian Lorenzo Bernini did it later in 1624 using the baroque style which was the artistic style of the 17th century (Coughlan, 18). The artwork of these two artists goes a long way in defining the state of art culturally and stylistically its significance during the particular periods they created their respective statues of David.

As the new invention of photography was rapidly replacing the traditional print as the sole means for reproductions in the late 19th century, artistic quality in prints became increasingly important and printmaking flourished as an independent art form. Parisian print publishers and dealers soon began to produce albums of prints published regularly in limited editions that were purchased by a rapidly growing group of

The Daguerreotype process was a good process that created a very clear portrait with great detail. However, disadvantages to the Daguerreotype include long exposure times as well as not being able to produce multiple copies. This process was popular at the time because people who weren’t wealthy could pay to get their picture taken. The reason this was possible was because it was not patented unlike the other processes. However the Calotype process produced paper negatives, which allowed it to be reproduced to make multiple copies. The downfall with using this process is that produced an un-clear picture, compared to the Daguerreotype. This process was not very popular because the pictures were fuzzy and the process was patented making it less popular, unlike the Daguerreotype. Finally the Wet Plate process toped them all. The Wet Plate process, or the Collodian process created a very clear image with the capability of reproducing the image to make multiple copies. The only downfall with this process is that it makes for long exposure times and it had to be developed while it was still wet. Resultantly, this process was the most popular at the time to create portraits. Due to the capability of the Wet Plate process being able to take clear pictures unlike the Calotype and make multiple copies unlike the Daguerreotype, it

At the beginning of 1862, an article published in the Photographic Journal, by an unknown author, summed up the discussions over photography as art, stating: "the question is not whether photography is fine art per se - neither painting nor sculpture can make that claim - but whether it is capable of artistic expression; whether in the hands of a true artists its productions become works of art." A French naturalist, Louis Figuier, also made an accurate observation in regards to photography and fine arts: "Until now, the artist has had the brush, the pencil and the burin; now, in addition, he has the photographic lens. The lens is an instrument like

Painting is a workmanship that has existed since 16th century. Different spots leads by Philadelphia have the accumulations of craftsmanship painting that reflects occasions that have occurred, individuals and society. All work of art shows impact from the general public in which the specialists live, the materials accessible to them, and also the innovation of their times. Ancient man utilized cavern dividers as ground and shades produced using ocher, and his topic was impacted by superstition and nature. Throughout the history of Philadelphia, painting as an art has advanced and there are plenty of collections of gallery artistic pictures belonging to most peculiar artists such as Charles Willson Peale and Benjamin West.

Art critic Robert Hughes once said, “People inscribe their histories, beliefs, attitudes, desires and dreams in the images they make.” When discussing the mediums of photography and cinema, this belief of Hughes is not very hard to process and understand. Images, whether they be still or moving, can transform their audiences to places they have either never been before or which they long to return to. Images have been transporting audiences for centuries thanks to both the mediums of photography and cinema and together they gone through many changes and developments. When careful consideration is given to these two mediums, it is acceptable to say that they will forever be intertwined, and that they have been interrelated forms of

Following the invention in 1800 by Thomas Wedgwood and the first attempts of photoetching in the 1820s, photography soon became a vastly known scopic regime in its peak of popularity

Everyone has been created unique and there is no other that is the like anyone else. People think different, dress different and like and dislike certain things. This is similar to the artists of the nineteenth century including Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau and Joseph Mallord William Turner. They are both artists during the nineteenth century and were painted at the same time; however, there is a difference between their styles, their point of view, and the scenery. However there are similarities between the two paintings. The paintings that will be compared and contrasted are “Under the Birches, Evening” and “The Campo Santo, Venice.”

Art and popular culture were important parts of the 19th century. It was a time of change among three main topics. The three main topics were impressionism, ragtime, and American realism. Impressionism is a style of art which is known by using short brush strokes containing bright colors to represent effects of light on objects. Ragtime is a style of music known for its syncopated melodic line and often being played on the piano. Lastly American realism was a movement which concerned itself with how life was structured socially, economically, politically, and culturally during the mid-nineteenth century.

Rewind roughly back to the 1860’s. Several apprentice painters, namely Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille learned that they did not share the same views of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Academy believed that mythological and historical scenes for painting was vastly superior to that of still life and landscape scenes. The Académie des Beaux-Arts would run an art show, the Salon de Paris, which was the only way for an artist during that time to gain prestige, commissions, and of course money. The Salon would only accept paintings which were in their approved style, which was based on the art of the old masters. Since the art of these young painters did not conform to the standards put forth by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, their art was mostly rejected until Emperor Napoleon III settled to allow the public to judge the submitted art themselves. The Salon des Refusés was created just for this purpose. The results of the new Salon were such; “While many viewers came only to laugh, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to the existence of a new tendency in art and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon.” (Denvir, pg. 194). Louis Leroy wrote a disparaging review on Monet’s work, “Impression, Sunrise”. He suggested that Monet’s painting was a sketch, and it could not be called a finished work. This was where the Impressionists acquired their name. Yet even though their

During the Modern Era of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, many artists were turning away from the idea of painting realistic images. Photography, having just been developed for public use a few decades earlier, made artists of the day focus less on painting as an precise copy of what is seen, as had been done for centuries. Since the Middle Ages, most artists painted exact representations of life. Starting in the late 1800s, though, many artists were starting to embrace the theory of art as an impression of what is seen. Impressionism, the art movement that began in the 1870s in France, was the first real development of this new concept of painting. Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, sought to put on canvas how they