Exhibition
Informal Moments
Portraits from Photography’s First Decade
About
This installation brings together a group of early photographic portraits with Edouard Baldus’s celebrated scene, Group at the Château de la Faloise (1857) as the centerpiece. Early photographers often worked outdoors by necessity, giving up the controlled atmosphere of a studio for abundant sunlight outside. This led them to improvise portrait poses and settings, gradually contributing to changed conventions and subtly influencing developments across the visual arts.
Baldus’s informal group portrait, widely recognized as a proto-Impressionist outdoor scene, will be shown with portraits by other artists including Julia Margaret Cameron, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Jean-Baptiste Frénet, and Charles Nègre, all of which demonstrate the exciting modernity of early photography.
Image Gallery
Mrs. Herbert Fisher
Julia Margaret Cameron, English, 1815 - 1879
Auguste Vacquerie
Charles Hugo, French, 1826 - 1871
Miss Kemp
David Octavius Hill, British, 1802 - 1870
Charlton Park House
Nevil Story-Maskelyne, British, 1823 - 1911
Image Gallery
Father and Daughter in Gardens at the Estate of Charly, Lyon, c. 1850-1855, by Jean-Baptiste Frénet (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Cavalier on Horseback, c. 1855, by Jean-Baptiste Frénet (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Portrait of a Lady and Her Dog, 1860, by Charles Nègre (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Untitled (Woman with Children), c. 1855, by Jean-Baptiste Frénet (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Untitled (Two Sisters), c. 1855, by (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Ann Alexander, c. 1857, by Richard Dykes Alexander (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Promised gift of Robert Yoskowitz and Elissa Young)
Curator
Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center