Italian Street Musician, With Cart At 21 Quai De Bourbon, Paris

Artist Charles Nègre (French, 1820-1880)

CultureFrench

Dateca. 1854

MediumSalted paper print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 10 × 13 in. (25.4 × 33 cm)
Overall, Mat: 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, gift of Paul and Susan Hirschbiel, Jack and Suzanne Jacobson, Gerald Sprayregen, Drs. Lea and Nancy Wilds, and the Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. Photography Fund

Object number99.17

On View

Not on view

DescriptionTwo musicians lean against a wicker cart on a Paris street.

Label TextCharles Nègre French (1820-1880) Italian Street Musician with Cart at 21 Quai de Bourbon, Paris, ca. 1854 Salted paper print Purchase, gift of Paul and Susan Hirschbiel, Gerald Sprayregen, Drs. Lea and Nancy Wilds, and the Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., Photography Fund 99.17 ~ As a respected painter in the classical tradition of Paul Delaroche and Ingres, Charles Nègre was the first photographer to turn his camera at every day life in the Parisian streets. Thus moving close to the quintessential modern subject that is the city, Nègre's most remarkable images are genre studies that fuse documentation with the picturesque to indicate the texture of human life. He was intrigued by the spontaneity and motion of metropolitan life unfolding in Paris and invented a camera lens fast enough to capture street activities. The sensitive observer of urbanity, Nègre photographed street types: lower class people, peasants, musicians, and vendors. Nègre was active in the field for only about a decade. He lost interest in photography after his patented printing process, a perfection of heliography, did not win the Duc de Luynes prize for photographic processes. However, the few images existing from Nègre demonstrate a distinctive skill in using light and composition suggestively to create a soft tonality of atmospheric effect. Italian Street Musicians with Cart is a beautiful example of his work, subtle in subject and detail. Enshrouded in mist on a silent back street, the musicians are centered in the middle of the image while the background is left indistinct. This painterly suppression of detail results in a sensuous and vaporous style that overcomes the literalness of photography in an effort to emulate the imaginary beauty of high art. However, in its unfinished texture, emphasis on light and surface mass, rather than line, Nègre's airy photographs foreshadow Impressionism. Many Impressionists, in fact, were inspired by photography and used it as aids for their paintings. The Chrysler collection also includes one of Nègre's landscapes from the south of France. Edited By: GLY Edited Date: 11/07/2003Exhibition History"History of Photography," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photo Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va, June 15, 1999 - January 2, 2000 "Silver Images: The Photography Collection at 25," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photo Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., November 5, 2003 - August 2004. Published ReferencesDaniel Wildenstein, Director. GAZETTE DES BEAUX-ARTS. Paris: Les Beaux-Arts. 03/2000: p. 60, no. 234.