For a glimpse of 19th century American cultural history, one could do well to visit The Eye of the Sun, a display of rare photographs from the collection of the National Gallery of Art which children will find fascinating, too.
The label copy for Portrait, above, says that although many women were employed in the photographic industry as hand painters, Ms. Guillot-Saguez made and painted pictures at the same time. She was one of the earliest to own her own studio which she opened in 1844, just five years past photography's debut. In 1849 Ms. Guillot-Saguez won a Bronze Medal at the Exhibition of Products of French Industry.
The label notes that abolitionists, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, used the means of photography to depict themselves with "dignity and grace" in their campaigns to rid the nation of slavery and uplift African Americans. Mr. Douglass may have been the most photographed man in the 19th century.
Rather than the photographer owning the copyright, Ms. Truth was the first to copyright the subject, herself, leading to her control and distribution of the its image and distribution. (You go, girl!)
Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901) was so taken with the medium that she had her picture taken with her children in 1852, but, displeased with her appearance, she obscured her face by scratching it out, not unlike some subjects today who may object to their own likenesses. (In another photograph made two days later by William Edward Kilburn, the queen turns her face and hides it with a bonnet. You can see it in the show.)
The exhibition is mounted on the occasion of the 180th anniversary of the founding of photography, and the addition of 80 new works to the Gallery's collection, many, on public display for the first time. It's one of the finest collections in American, the National Gallery touts on its website, and rightfully so!
Thomas H. Johnson, Waymart, c. 1863-1865, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund. Here the photographer shows the scarred landscape resulting from America's rapid industrialization as housing goes up to accommodate laborers working to deliver coal on the Northeast route.
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Alexander Gardner, A Sharpshooter's Last Sleep, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon and Patrons' Permanent Fund. This photograph was included in Mr. Gardner's Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866). Unannounced but discovered by a sharp eye, according to the label copy, the photographer moved bodies around from one place to another for greater effect and mistakenly positioned this dead soldier with a musket rather than a sharpshooter's rifle.
American 19th Century, Portrait of a Girl Postmortem, c. 1850, daguerreotype image, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund
The first 50 years of photography when "profound change" embraced the world are covered. (Prithee, when does "profound change" not embrace the world? Is there ever an "unprofound time"? Maybe, the 1950s? But women were beginning to see the light of a new day then. )
Except for the first Sun gallery (there are five), the layout is thematic (unlike that found in this post where the photos are mixed from several galleries).
Included are works by William Henry Fox Talbot, who was one of photography's inventors, Anna Atkins, Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray, Charles Marville, George Barnard, Roger Fenton, Hill and Adamson, John Moran, Eadweard Muybridge, Charles Nègre, Andrew Russell, Augustus Washington, and Carleton Watkins, among others.
What: The Eye of the Sun: Nineteenth-Century Photographs from the National Gallery of Art
When: Now through December 8, 2019, The National Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and on Sunday, 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.
Where: The West Building at the National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.
How much: Admission to the National Gallery of Art is always free.
Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza
For more information: 202-737-4215
patricialesli@gmail.com
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