Origins of the Nude Photo Uncovered in Paris Exhibit

PARIS -- The Paris art world was understandably disturbed by the arrival of photography 150 or so years ago. It saw the new technology as a threat to every portraitist, perhaps even to every painter. It also derided the new image as machine made and bereft of human sensibility. In 1862, a group of French painters signed a manifesto formally rejecting "any assimilation of photography with art." The octogenarian Ingres was among them.


Yet, while sniffing at photography in public, a good many painters and sculptors -- though certainly not Ingres -- were soon making use of it in the privacy of their studios. And not only because photographs of models were cheaper than live models. Photography also captured light and shadow in a surprising way. It even enabled painters to stage tableaux vivants before they turned to their canvases.


It was with the naked human figure, however, that photography proved most helpful to artists, giving them a new tool for anatomical research and enabling them to freeze bodies in uncomfortable, or embarrassing, positions that no model could tolerate for more than a few minutes. A few photographers grabbed the chance of selling off some of these images as erotica.


Appropriately, then, an unusual exhibition here about photography's early relationship with painting, drawing and sculpture focuses on the nude. "The Art of the Nude in the 19th Century: The Photographer and His Model," which comprises some 350 photographs, drawings, lithographs, paintings and sculptures, is at the new French National Library through Jan. 18.


Paris is the right place for such a show, because artists first learned of the new technology here in 1839 when a Frenchman, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, invented what became known as the daguerreotype, a primitive photograph created on a plate inside a camera. Often hand colored, the tiny image resembled a highly realistic miniature.


Barely a decade later, however, photography using a negative and light-sensitive paper brought about a revolution, enabling photographs to be enlarged and endlessly reproduced. From the early 1850s, photographers began opening studios, family portraits became the fad, and artists promptly took note. A handful of photographers were quick to recognize the artistic potential of nude photography. Taking their inspiration from Greek and Roman sculptures and Renaissance paintings and drawings, they recreated familiar figures, gestures or scenes in a disturbingly realistic -- albeit black-and-white -- form. Gaudenzio Marconi's photograph of a naked man echoing Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" was among the first. But others in the show stand out, among them Marconi's picture of a naked model in the position of Mantegna's "Dead Christ."


Soon there were photographs galore of men and women posing as Venus, Diana, Hercules, Samson, Mary Magdalene, Moses and the crucified Jesus (yes, including naked female models hanging somewhat bemused from wooden crosses).


Louis Igout was more experimental, photographing a naked man and a naked woman separately in 16 different poses: The man's positions vaguely resemble those of a late 20th-century bodybuilder; the woman's are more coy but fall short of being erotic. They were sold to art students attending the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts.


The women posing for what were known euphemistically as etudes d'apres nature were generally rounder than today's fashion magazine stereotypes, suggesting that the artist's ideal woman had changed little since Rubens. In contrast, Greek statues remained the role model for men in these "etudes."


As French officialdom debated whether photographs were appropriate for use in art schools, prominent artists were discovering their value. Gustave Courbet, a leader of the School of Realism, was among them, working with Julien Vallou de Villeneuve, whose "Nude Study" of 1853 is mirrored in the painter's "Bathers" of the same year.


Many experts presume, but have been unable to prove, that Courbet also used a photograph as the model for "L'Origine du Monde," his infamous painting of an unidentified woman's genitalia. Causing an immense scandal for its realism when it was first presented in public in 1866, the painting was then long kept from public view.


The detail provided by photographs proved particularly helpful. Rodin was among sculptors who collected photographs of body parts like hands, elbows and knees. Many images in this exhibition focus on how a model is reflected in a mirror or how her hair tumbles into different positions. Crossed lines marked on some photographs identify sections to be enlarged for copying onto canvas.