Two Early Responses to Photo Reference

My great artists had wildly different views of the technology facing artists in the 19th century

Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) knew a lot about photography. His brother Richard ran a photo studio starting in 1864, and Menzel was keenly interested in the new invention.

He owned a collection of photographs of armor and weapons from the history museum in Dresden. Nevertheless he drew the historical props he needed for a given picture using direct observation, partly to understand them from different angles. 

He had significant concerns about the use of photography as a reference tool for artists.

He believed that relying on photography “is diametrically opposed to my belief in the responsibility of the artist to art and his self-confidence; and even the continuation of such a method must necessarily lead to the loss of discipline in certain important powers of the eyes, the hand, the memory, and the imagination concerning animated nature.”

He emphasized the importance of understanding the subjects he depicted through direct observation rather than solely relying on photographic reference.

Menzel rejected the use of reference photography unless it was absolutely necessary. In the early 1860s, when he was preparing the gigantic painting of the Coronation of Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, he had to paint 132 portrait likenesses. He could have used photography for reference, but he chose to work from life studies instead.

Such attitudes may have seemed old fashioned to many of Menzel’s contemporary artists, who by the late nineteenth century were beginning to rely on photography’s documentary powers.

Emilie und Richard [Emilie and Richard]. 1865. Pencil on paper.  

After his brother Richard’s death, Menzel advised his sister-in-law in the running of the photography business. According to Max Liebermann, who knew his artistic sensibilities well, “His visual sense, naturally inclined towards the observation and reproduction of the tiniest details, received fresh stimulus from photography.”

Ivan Shishkin’s View of Photography

Ivan Shishkin had a much different view of using photography as a reference tool for artists.