Images in a world before photography

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A ‘world of competitive endeavour and achievement’ opens up in Stephen Bann’s new book

Distinguished Images: Prints and the Visual Economy in Nineteenth Century France by Stephen Bann

Imagine the world before colour photography; how would we know what a painting that we could nor see directly before us actually looked like? Imagine the immensity of time and skill and judgement expended by an engraver in attempting to reproduce that information by means of a build-up of bold and subtle marks on a copper plate or lithographic stone. 

Stephen Bann opens up to us a world of competitive endeavour and  achievement, which is hardly remembered or recognized today.  It was an established Enlightenment principle that, whilst the owner of a work of art enjoyed the rights of property over it,  its image could be freely secured by anyone else who was able to see it, and the 19th century witnessed an unceasing eagerness to spread the knowledge of art through the reproduction of images. 

Nothing illustrates this better than the rise of the Mona Lisa to its global iconic status during this period, driven largely by the growing incidence of its reproduction in books, magazines and prints. When Romantic writers such as the novelist George Sand enthused over the mysteries of her fleeting smile, their experience was generally derived from a reproduced image rather than acquaintance with the original painting,

The popularity of contemporary fiction from the 1820s onwards increased the demand by publishers for enhancing the reader’s experience through supporting illustrations, and this added greatly to the call on printmakers to develop their techniques.  The emergence of lithography was undoubtedly timely; the process allowed atmospheric, almost painterly effects to be produced but, above all, its speed of execution vastly exceeded that of engraving, so that now images destined for the new illustrated news magazines could be signed off not only to indicate the day but even the hour when they were made. This immediacy particularly matched the demands of reporting the tumultuous events of the 1830 Revolution in the streets of Paris. One of the great debating points that was sparked off by this expanding use of the medium remained ultimately unanswered throughout the decades: is lithography an art?. It was protested that work that was capable of mass production and was essentially concerned with reproducing an image invented by another could not be an art, no matter what level of technical accomplishment was displayed, whereas an image, drawn directly on the stone by the initiating lithographer definitively was an art.

The author focuses on the case of the multiply-talented figure of Nadar. Although principally remembered for his portrait photography (and his ballooning), his original training was as a lithographer and he also maintained a vast output as a critic and commentator on the Paris art scene. It is, however, in connection with his photography that Bann includes an impressive, discursive essay, in the wake of philosopher Roland Barthes (1915–80), on the nature of the photograph, history and fiction.   

Continuing through the 1870s, the place of the print as the most effective vehicle for reproduction remained secure and the haunting image, adopted for the book’s cover, Léopold Flameng’s engraving Alsace: She is Waiting, after the painting by Jean-Jacques Henner, serves as a reminder of the core propensity of the print to function as an agent for popular propaganda.  But by the close of the century, in the face of rapidly improving technical process in photography and printing, this great tradition reached its final expression in the work of artists such as Ferdinand Gaillard, whose mixed techniques of etching  and engraving became so complex and difficult to discern that their accomplishments could scarcely be revealed without the use of a magnifying glass.

Stephen Bann’s book will certainly be warmly received by anyone with an existing knowledge of and appreciation of the history of print making,  particularly in terms of the wider visual culture,  but its array of carefully reproduced images and thoughtful but accessible text might also entice others, less familiar with this material, to engage in the pleasures of connoisseurship enjoyed by earlier generations of print consumers.

Distinguished Images: Prints and the Visual Economy in Nineteenth Century Franceby Stephen Bannis published byYale University Press, 2013. 224pp. 95 mono and 10 colour illus. ISBN 978-0-300- 17727-5