Portrait of Paul Chenavard, from the series "Histoire des Artistes Vivants"

Discussion

FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

Édouard Baldus, best known as an architectural photographer, took this portrait as an illustration for the entry on painter Paul Chenavard in Théophile Silvestre’s History of Living Artists French and Foreign: Studies after Nature . This ambitious and innovative project featured lengthy biographies of contemporary artists illustrated with photographic portraits. Some entries also had photographic reproductions of the artist’s paintings—possibly the first time that occurred in a publication. The books attest to the importance and interconnectedness of contemporary art and photography in the mid-1800s.

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