DAGNAN Une Noce Chez un Photographe 1880 Gravure

P.A.J. DAGNAN. Une Noce Chez un Photographe, 1878-1879. 10.8x15.5" photogravure on 13x16.8" paper. Printed 1880. Printed on print recto: Peint par P. Dagnan / Entered according to act of congress in the year 1880 by M. Knoedler & Co in the office of the Librarian of congress at Washington / Photogravure Goupil & Cie / Une Noce Chez un Photographe.

A wonderful scene of a newly married couple posing for photographer in his studio as the wedding party helps with the posing and waits for the photographic session to finish.

It is difficult to pinpoint with accuracy, with the evidence now available, the moment when Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929) first became involved with photography. During his Parisian student days (in the 1870s) Dagnan had come into contact with a number of young painters, including Jules Bastien Lepage, who may have utilized photographs as sources for their paintings. When Dagnan visited Bastien-Lepage's rural village of Damvilliers in the late 1870s, in the company of the American realist painter Julian Alden Weir, he may have had an opportunity to see photographs of Bastien's grandfather, a figure of considerable importance in his grandson's early canvases. Similarly, when Dagnan painted several early portraits of his own grandfather, Gabriel Bouveret, he instilled a striking naturalness into the pose and an accuracy into the facial features that was suggestive of a growing awareness of the facility offered by photography in the creation of lifelike images. Dagnan's involvement with photography may have blossomed through contact with his teacher, Jean-Leon Gerome, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Teacher and pupil remained close friends near Vesoul in the Franche-Comte, so that he could be near his former professor who occasionally visited the region.

Whatever the source of his introduction to photography, it is apparent from such canvases as Une Noce chez le Photographe (exhibited at the 1879 Paris Salon) that the medium strongly kindled the artist's imagination. This painting was widely discussed in the daily press. Some critics found it too anecdotal while others applauded Dagnan's originality. The work was photo-engraved by Goupil in April 1880 and circulated in Paris, London, and the Hague. Dagnan's career was now successfully established. Une Noce also intimates that at the moment of his own marriage to Anne-Marie Walter, Dagnan regarded photographs as accurate recordings of a personal event. He was now fully cognizant of the importance of the medium to people at all levels of society and, as an artist, he found its application to his own work inevitable.

Credit: https://www.artrenewal.org/Article/Title/the-illusion-of-photographic-naturalism
Condition Report: Good. Moderate edge wear; lower left and upper left corners missing, upper right corner torn and creased. Foxing and other stains in margins.