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Omaima Salih Alansari
ID# 211410013
ID121, History of Art
Sec: 71
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The Impact of
Photography on Painting
Presentation, Historical

2. ROLE OF
PAINTING
• For centuries, painters served important
practical purposes in giving visual
definition to the structures of society.
• Painting was the domain of artists and
artisans serving a variety of needs. Many of the artist's functions were practical
and served a range of social duties, celebrating and building the prestige of
eminent sitters, spreading information on the physical appearance of the world,
its landscape, its wonders, its cities and architecture, commemorating events of
local interest or of great historical importance, and providing images which
implemented the psychological grip of religions and the hierarchies and
structure of society.

3. THE BIRTH OF
PHOTOGRAPHY AND
PAINTERS’ CONCERNS
• When chemical photography was invented, and became public in in the early
19th Century, painting was the domain of artists and artisans serving a variety
of needs.
• The group of 19th-century artists whose relationship with photography is
perhaps most ambiguous is the Impressionists.
• There is always a fear that the new will totally supplant the old. Painters
were undoubtedly initially concerned that their art would no longer be
needed or wanted, depriving them of a livelihood.
• The "conventional wisdom" was that it heralded the doom of painting.
Example: The French painter Paul Delaroche is credited with having claimed, on
learning of the invention of photography, that "from today painting is dead". His
immediate anxieties were greatly exaggerated.

4. POSITIVE IMPACT
• Sketching from life was the only and inevitable
induction of the artist, painting from nature the only
code. Ideas were developed visually through the
assemblage of facts.
• As a result of the invention of the camera, painting
became the domain for the free expression of the
imagination. The Romantic tradition re-enforced
the concept of painting as Art, freed from illustrative
duties, serving the highest purposes of the human
spirit.
• Art was freed on its path to abstraction.
• Painting moved on in the first half of the 20th century
to the ambitious challenges of abstraction, pure
form and color, leaving to photographers the task
of making visual records.

5. PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE
SERVICE OF PAINTING
• Many artists recognized photography as an invaluable aid, using
the camera directly as a speedy sketching device or using
published or commissioned images as visual reference and
inspiration.
• British philosopher John Ruskin encouraged the minute observation
of nature by artists. The camera facilitated this function.
• The artist in the dark chamber
could trace the projected image
to get more accurate spatial
perspective than previously
possible.

6. Picasso is one of the painters who
took a positive attitude of
photography, and make adventive
of it. He:
• Developed Cubism, and set
free from reality drawing and
recording.
• Used photographs as
reference.
Picture: Picasso with Camera, c. 1930
Photograph. Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
Toklas Papers. Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. Yale Collection of
American Literature.
PABLO PICASSO:
An Example

7. PABLO PICASSO: AN
EXAMPLE
Using photographs as reference
Figure on the left.
Anonymous, Portrait of
Christiansen. Photograph
illustrating Joan Oliva’s
poem “Ode to Phryne”
Joventut, no. 11, April 26,
1900.
Figure on the right. Pablo
Picasso, Illustration for Joan
Oliva Bridgman’s poem,
“The Call of the Virgins”
Joventut, no. 22, July 12,
1900.

8. CONCLUSION
Paintings are far more permanent than most photographs, especially
color. There is a reason why governors and presidents are immortalized
in paintings. They are of course photographed as well, many, many
times, but nothing replaces the Official Painted Portrait, expected to last
for centuries, which nowadays is often painted by the artist from a series
of … photographs.
In the other hand, Photographs have insidiously usurped many of the
functions of painting and have become crucial to the progress of
consumer societies, just as graphic iconographies played an important
role in the social fabric of previous centuries.
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