10441044
PAINTERS AND PHOTOGRAPHY
his miniatures which he sold for between $100–$250 to
wealthy patrons in Philadelphia. This was signifi cantly
more that the three to six dollars charged for painted
daguerreotypes.
While some artists stopped painting portraits as a
result of the competition of daguerreotypes, most art-
ists painting life-sized portraits quickly found ways to
use the new technology as a tool to assist them in the
creation of their work. Photography was recognized as
an aid to the making of portraits by both Itinerant por-
trait painters in New England capturing the likeness of
local inhabitants, and the Academically trained artists
in Europe painting portraits of world leaders. Paint-
ers such as Horace Bundy (1814–1883), who found
their clientele by traveling from town to town in New
England, frequently advertised portraits painted from
both photographs and daguerreotypes (Horace Bundy
Broadside, March 1851, Dodge & Noyes Printers, New
Hampshire Historical Society, Concord). Advertise-
ments show that portrait artists made use of photographs
in a numerous ways. They used daguerreotypes to paint
portraits of deceased family members, or as a visual
aid that eliminated long sittings for the subjects of the
painting. Some artists, such as the Itinerant artist Erastus
Salisbury Field (1805–1900) created group portraits of
large families from several photographic images of both
living and deceased family members (Ruben Gilbert
Puffer Family, c. 1857–650, courtesy Stephen P. Putter
Family on loan to Historic Deerfi eld, Inc.). This type of
photo-montage, painted in oil by Field or watercolors by
other anonymous painters, often had the sitters appear
much too small for the room they inhabited (Unidenti-
fi ed Photographer, Campbell Family, ca. 1870 albumen
print photomontage with watercolor, George Eastman
House, museum purchase).
Photographers and academic and self taught artists
began to paint over enlarged photographs in the 1850s.
In 1856 Mathew Brady was advertising “large portrait
photographs printed on canvas and colored with oil
paint.” David Acheson Woodward (1823–1909), a por-
trait painter and art instructor, patented a solar camera
in 1857 that used light from the sun and copying lenses
to enlarge a small negative onto large photographically
sensitized paper or canvas. Many artists did not simply
paint the photograph, but would use the photograph as
a starting point, changing the background of the room,
the pattern of fabric, style of the clothing, or expres-
sion of the face of the sitter. Erastus Salisbury Field
who was experimenting with a variety of ways to use
photographs in his work must have been familiar with
D. A. Woodward’s solar camera. Field, in his portrait
of an Unknown Woman c. 1855, (formerly titled Clar-
risa Field, oil on paper adhered to canvas, Museum of
Fine Arts, Springfi eld, Massachusetts) took an enlarged
photographic image on paper (photograph on fi le at the
Museum of Fine Arts Springfi eld) and pasted it onto
his canvas and then painted directly over the paper.
Woodward brought his technique to Europe in 1859
where he infl uenced many painters including the French
artist Leon Cogniet (1794–1880) who he met in Eng-
land. Cogniet used Woodward’s invention to paint the
full length portrait of M. Magne over a photograph by
Andre-Aldolphe–Eugene Disderi. Phot-pientre was the
term used by Disderi to describe his process of print-
ing enlarged images on canvas. Cogniet also created
several preliminary sketches of the subject—so the
photographic image was only one step used to com-
plete the portrait. Almost a decade after Woodward’s
trip to Europe, Isaac Rehn’s method of creating solar
photographs was described in the Philadelphia Photog-
rapher, June 1868. The article reports that he prepared
the canvas by brushing on a mixture of zinc white, egg
albumen, ammonium chloride and silver nitrate. Most
painters did not own a solar camera, but could obtain
canvases with photographic images by sending nega-
tives through the mail to photographers such as Albert
Moore of Philadelphia who would enlarge the negative
onto paper or canvas.
Political portrait paintings were more widely avail-
able as a result of photography. Portraits of American
leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay, General
Grant, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster were in
great demand for display in public buildings and in
private parlors. Mathew Brady’s Studio was a source
for many of these photographs. Artists such Chester
Harding (1792–1866), George P. A. Healy (1813–1894),
George Henry Story (1835—1923), and Thomas Sully
(1783–1872) all used photographs to paint political
portraits. George Healy’s The Peacemakers (White
House Collection) painted in 1868 shows a meeting
that took place three years earlier. Healy used life
sketches he made of Lincoln in 1862 and Brady’s studio
photographs of Lincoln, General Grant (1864, Library
of Congress), General Sherman and Admiral Porter to
paint this scene.Landscape Painting
By the late 1840s, landscape artists began to alter the
way they painted as a direct result of their exposure to
landscape photographs. The ways that landscape paint-
ers were infl uenced by photography is wide-ranging.
Calotypes and Collodion prints that blurred leaves on
trees and placed areas of light and shadow into fl at plans
infl uenced Jean Baptiste Camille Corot’s (1796–1875)
paintings. Corot was part of a group of painters and
photographers working in the forest near Arras, France.
This group tended to prefer romantic naturalism which
presented the spirit of nature in vague forms and soft
focus. The photographer Adalbert Cuvelier and the