568
indifférente” [This is why this book will be consulted
later, with profi t, because the drawn portrait, always
suspect, even by painters of genius, has been replaced
by photography, brutal, implacable, eminently scientifi c
because it is neutral].
Galerie Contemporaine appeared weekly over a
period of eight years from 1876 to 1884, under the
imprint of Ludovic Baschet in Paris. Each issue com-
prised a biographical essay and accompanying portrait,
reproduced in Woodburytype printed by Goupil (and
the successor fi rm Boussod, Valadon & Cie for the fi nal
volume). The cover price per issue was a relatively high
1franc 25 centimes. Published in two concurrent sec-
tions or series—a fi rst series “Littérateurs, Musiciens,
Etc.” and a second series “Peintres et Sculpteurs,”
probably appearing on alternate weeks, the work was
subsequently bound up and re-issued in six monthly
volumes comprising 26 issues, each volume contain-
ing separate title pages for the fi rst and second series.
Some biographies in the second series were spread over
two or more issues, explaining the irregular number of
portraits in some volumes. The full run amounted to a
total of 241 portraits issued in 13 volumes. While the
letterpress biography was essentially similar across both
series, the illustrations differed, inasmuch as the sub-
jects in the fi rst series were each represented by a large
format portrait hors texte, generally 24 × 18 cm, within
an ornamental border, while the subjects in the second
series were represented by a smaller portrait, on average
12 × 8 cm, mounted in with the text, as well an example
of the artist’s output, in a larger format print hors texte.
Almost all these images of paintings and sculpture are
reproduced directly from the original work, rather than
after intermediate engravings or lithographs.
Since the letterpress matter was unpaginated, and the
only table of contents was a cursory list of the celebri-
ties featured on the title page to each series, collation is
diffi cult and no standard bibliographical tool yet exists.
Furthermore, individual part wrappers are undated.
Much of the print run of the fi rst edition must have re-
mained unsold, since a second undated edition appeared
as Galerie contemporaine des illustrations françaises
under the imprint of Paul de Lacroix, in eight volumes
containing between 126 and 141 portraits. Larger por-
traits from this edition can be identifi ed as mounted on
undecorated cardstock.
Steven F. Joseph
See also: Baudelaire, Charles; Carjat, Etienne; Nadar;
Woodburytype, Woodburygravure; and Goupil & Cie.
GALTON, SIR FRANCIS (1822–1911)
Francis Galton, one of the most prolifi c and controver-
sial polymaths in an age that had more than its share,
was born on February 16, 1822, in Sparkbrook, near
Birmingham, England, the youngest child of a pros-
perous banker and his boldly intellectual wife. After a
suitably pampered upbringing, Galton began his formal
education in earnest in schools in France and in Eng-
land where he demonstrated his precociousness with
measurement by tabulating the number and intensity of
fl oggings administered by dour schoolmasters to unruly
pupils. Following a brief tour of the Continent, a period
of medical study commenced, fi rst in Birmingham and
then in the far more dynamic center of London, a pursuit
which brought him into the orbit of a cosmopolitan and
innovative scientifi c community. Restless, Galton moved
for a time to Cambridge, where he studied mathemat-
ics with great diffi culty. On his father’s death in 1844,
Galton, always somewhat uneasy in the academic envi-
ronment, was left a fortune that obviated the need for a
professional career and which would facilitate a series of
adventures and inquiries, culminating six years later in a
journey to map the interior of the African continent. He
proved to be adept enough a topographer to record with
accuracy the features of a large swath of southwestern
Africa, as well as the dimensions of a number of native
women, whose voluptuous forms the fascinated Euro-
pean measured with precision.
Upon his return to London, Galton’s achievements
were lauded by the Royal Geographical Society, to
whose fellowship he was enthusiastically elected.
Increasingly immersed in the scientifi c milieu of the
metropolis, Galton married Louisa Butler, the member
of a distinguished academic family, in 1853. Situated
as he was in the midst of scientifi c activity, Galton was
deeply infl uenced by the publication in 1859 of The
Origin of Species, written by his cousin Charles Darwin,
with whom Galton renewed his youthful friendship. The
impact of Darwin’s account on both science and social
thought can hardly be overstated, and Galton was so
intrigued by the prominence accorded to heredity in the
success or failure of creatures that he began to ponder an
entirely new type of experimental inquiry. Extrapolat-
ing from the agricultural breeding Darwin had used to
demonstrate the integral relationship between natural
selection and the forms of organisms, Galton asserted
that such rationalized mating might be usefully applied
to another group. Furthermore, Galton claimed, if physi-
cal prowess was dictated by hereditary processes, then
mental abilities must equally be inborn: “[i]f a twentieth
part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for
the improvement of the human race that is spent on the
improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a
galaxy of genius might we not create!” (Brookes, 2004,
144). These were not merely idle theoretical observa-
tions, but a concrete program by which Galton imagined
his nation could expedite the glacial pace of evolution.
Galton continued to refi ne what he termed “eugenics”