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RELVAS, CARLOS (1838–1894)
Carlos Augusto de Mascarenhas Relvas e Campos
(1838–1894), was the best know 19th Century Portu-
guese amateur photographer. He was a very rich farmer
and a nobleman from Ribatejo in central Portugal. His
enormous wealth allowed him the time and resources
for an important photography practice, including the
building of the exotic and magnifi cent House of Pho-
tography, entirely dedicated to his photography. He was
initiated in photography, using wet collodium, most
likely by W. CifKa in the early 1860’s. During his life
he experimented with most new photographic processes:
Collotype, Gum, Carbon, and Gelatin.
As an amateur he was not constrained by the limita-
tions of a daily portrait business and embraced most
of the acceptable genres of 19th Century photography:
Portraits of family and friends, including the royal
family, landscapes and folk types. These were many
times performed by his servants and employees, he
photographed in the studio, many times with painted
backdrops. One of the most important parts of his work
consists in art reproductions, being the photographs he
made of the tomb of the King Pedro I and his mistress
Inês, he made in 1868, some of the fi rst of that genre.
He also made the 52 photographs of the decorative arts
exhibition in Lisbon. His photographs where part of the
Fine Arts Academy in Lisbon report on northern Por-
tugal monuments. Carlos Relvas participated in many
exhibitions in Portugal and abroad, including the Paris
Universal Exhibition in 1876, and the Vienna Universal
Exhibition were he won prizes.
In 1884 organizers of the Portuguese fi rst national
photography exhibition invited him has an honorary
president and only after his refusal turned to the king
Ferdinand. He died in 1894, after a horse accident.
Due to family quarrels most of his negatives were
sold after his dead and many were lost. Even so a large
amount of then are in Portuguese national institutions
and a major exhibition was held in 2003 in Lisbon’s
Ancient Art Museum.
Nuno de Avelar Pinheiro
Exhibitions
Carlos Relvas e a Casa da Fotografi a, Museu Nacional
de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, 2003.
Renjø, Shimooka; See Shimooka Renjø.
RETOUCHING
The retouching of photographs was a habitual and ex-
tensive practice. The aesthetics and practices of retouch-
ing can be separated into two broad periods. The fi rst
is from the early 1850s to the early 1860s. The second
is from the 1870s onwards to the end of the century.
Separating the two phases are differences in the practical
process of retouching, and its impact upon perceptions
of photography.
The reworking of photographs was a prominent
concern as early as the 1857 Art Treasures exhibition.
During the 1850s, retouching was a term covering vari-
ous forms of manipulation, including colouring. Of the
240 portraits exhibited in Manchester, a large number
had been altered. A review in the Liverpool and Man-
chester Photographic Journal drew attention to both the
number of touched photographs and the extent of their
alteration. It noted that, in some cases, “no trace of the
original picture is visible, its only use apparently being
to secure identity and truth, the visible picture being laid
over the other in oil and water-colour” (“Exhibition of
Art Treasures at Manchester,” 126). At this stage, most
manipulation would have been carried out on the posi-
tive print rather than on the glass-plate negative.
Coloured photographs were intended to alleviate the
unfl attering and mechanical harshness of the mono-
chrome picture. The practice thereby made the resultant
pictures more akin in appearance and status to miniature
portraits. As such, colouring refl ects photography’s
initial subservience to the dominance of fi ne art aesthet-
ics. In 1862, the London Review claimed that coloured
photographs approached more closely to oil paintings
because they were the result of study and generalisation,
which were qualities lacking in an ordinary photograph.
On a more pragmatic level, miniature painters put out of
business by photography found themselves employed
by photographic studios. In 1857, Elizabeth Eastlake
claimed that there was no photographic establishment
that did not employ artists for fi nishing pictures, at
salaries of up to £1 a day.
In order to counter the hybridity of coloured pic-
tures, there were numerous claims that the realism of
photography was its unique element. Manipulation of
photographs was felt to undermine the most valuable
quality of the medium. Efforts were consequently made
by the Photographic Society of London to prevent any
retouched photographs being shown at their annual ex-
hibition. The rules of entrance for the 1857 exhibition
at South Kensington, for example, included precise in-
structions regarding retouched photographs. They would
be admitted only if accompanied by untouched copies
of the same picture. Positive pictures from touched or
painted negatives also had to be described accordingly.
These instructions continued to be repeated but judging
by the complaints of some reviewers they were far from
being universally followed. In 1864, the Photographic
Society of London debarred from their annual exhibition
any coloured or touched pictures. Although the effect
was a much reduced exhibition, the rules did enforce