894
in 1885. The albums of Marion and Company even
attracted the attention of Punch in its edition of 24
December 1881:
In acknowledgement of having produced the handsom-
est, most decorative, and most original Album for Pho-
tographs, we hereby decorate Mr Marion (of Marion &
Co.) with his own patent clasp, and create him Duke of
St Albums. The public will send him their orders.Punch’s comic praise testifi es to the prominence and
repute and of the fi rm. Marion and Co. reaped the ben-
efi ts of being one of the fi rst fi rms to treat photography
as an industry.
John Plunkett
See also: Cartes-de-Visite; Mayall, John Jabez
Edwin; Silvy, Camille; Southworth, Albert Sands,
and Josiah Johnson Hawes; British Journal of
Photography; and Dallmeyer, John Henry & Thomas
Ross.
Further Reading
Marion, Auguste, Pratique De La Photographie sur Papier
simplifi ee par l’emploi de l’apparaeil conservateur des pa-
piers sensibilisés et des préservateurs-Marion, Paris: Chez
Lauteur, 1860.
——, Procédé négatif sur papier térébenthino-ciré-albuminé-
ioduré pour vues, groups, portraits, Paris: Marion and Cie,
1858.
Marion, Auguste, Instruction provisoire pour le tirage des
épreuves positives au charbon par le procédé Marion, Paris:
A Chaix, 1868.
Marion, Auguste, Procédés nouveaux de photographie, ou: Notes
Photographiques, Paris: A Marion, 1865.
Marion, Auguste, Le Mariotype, ou Art des impressions par la
lumière. Initiateur pour tous, Paris, Marion, Fils and Gèry:
n.d.
Marion & Co., Catalogue of Photographic Apparatus and Materi-
als, London: Marion & Co., 1896.
——, Marion’s Practical Guide to Photography, London: Marion
& Co, 1884.
“Our Editorial Table. Messrs Marion and Co.’s Novelties,” British
Journal of Photography, 22 December 1882: 735.
Wynter, Andrew, Subtle Brains and Lissom Fingers, London:
Robert Hardwick, 1863.
MARISSIAUX, GUSTAVE (1872–1929)
Belgian photographer
Born in Marles-les Mines (Pas-de-Calais, France) in
1872, Gustave Marissiaux was the youngest of three
brothers and son of Gustave Léopold Marissiaux, a
mining architect. In 1883, the family left France for
Liège, Belgium, the region of origin of Marie Therese
Micha, Marissiaux’s wife. Once of age, each child of
the family became a Belgian national.
In the beginning of the 1890s, Gustave Marissiaux
chose to study law, but photography soon turned him
away from it. In 1894, he became interested in pho-
tography, and was elected as a member of the Asso-
ciation Belge de Photographie [Belgian Association of
Photography] (A.B.P.), the spearhead of Pictorialism
in Belgium. A lecture Marissiaux gave in 1899 to the
Liège section of the A.B.P., which was published the
following year in the bulletin of the association, directly
showed the photographer’s interests. With the title “Art
and photography it clearly defi ned the issues of artistic
photography, like how to express, through the plasticity
of the image, the personality of its author, or to reveal
the “temperament” of the subject. To meet this criterion,
Marissiaux drew on painting more than inspiration, as a
method. Frequenting museums in Belgium and France
led him to elect Corot, Delacroix, and Rembrandt as
models. The study of their works guided Marissiaux to
a deep understanding of composition and the relations
between colours and work on shadows determined his
approach of photography. Contemporary painters like
Le Sidaner or his friends Auguste Donnay and Armand
Rassenfosse, supported his look. It was therefore not
surprising to fi nd in his early works the infl uence of
British Pictorialism, and particularly of Peter Henry
Emerson. The country views that showed an isolated
fi gure going about its duties (“Le Bûcheron” [“The
Woodcutter”], 1896) recall the motives dear to the Brit-
ish photographer. The naturalism of the subjects evoked
the open air painters and their will to fi nd their sources
of inspiration in outdoor sceneries, in opposition to
academic staged imagery. But Marissiaux did not only
share with Emerson this common reference to painting.
His visual processing also related to the British master,
through the attention given to the graduated shading,
to light variations and to atmosphere rendering. One
could read this in the numerous landscapes and forest
interiors, with a hint of symbolism (“Coup de vent sur
les hauts plateaux” [“Blowing wind on the Highland’s”],
1901). By his platinum printings, Marissiaux gave these
landscapes a dimension of mystery, which expressed
a part of hidden, of unutterable, characteristic of the
symbolist aesthetic.
Beyond these landscapes, Marissiaux also made
portraits, both as a professional and as an artist. Al-
though it might seem contradictory for a member of
Pictorialism—that assumes the status of the “amateur,”
in the noble meaning of the term—Marissiaux opened
a portrait studio in 1899. This professional activity
that he apparently dissociated from his personal work,
remained unrecognised, with most of the studio nega-
tives being lost.
Nevertheless, portrait occupied a key position in
Marissiaux’s work. In the room of his studio, he de-
voted himself to “Studies,” staging young girls whose
attitudes denote an activity or a state of mind (“Liseuse”
[“Reader”], 1899, “Mélancolie” [“Melancholy”], 1899).