Papers by Emily Talbot
History of Photography, 2017
This article analyses Henry Peach Robinson's method of making composite photographs in the contex... more This article analyses Henry Peach Robinson's method of making composite photographs in the context of widespread belief that the photographer's 'mechanism' was perceptible in the appearance of his prints. By examining Robinson's preparatory and darkroom procedures, as well as the photographer's extensive writing about his photographic practice, I suggest that composite photographs invited viewers to pay attention to process, and to take it into account in their evaluation of an image. This attitude challenged key tenets of academic art theorythe paradigm for nascent concepts of art in photographyby refusing to subordinate manual labour to that of the mind. While many nineteenth-century critics rejected Robinson's approach, the debates engendered by composite techniques reveal a persistent fascination with making that advanced photographic practice as a marker of artistic value.
Documenting Art, Writing Biography
Journal of Family History, 2015
This article concerns six generations of the Silvestre family: a succession of artists, royal dra... more This article concerns six generations of the Silvestre family: a succession of artists, royal drawing masters, and art collectors whose social ascent began in the late seventeenth century in parallel with the Bourbon Monarchy and continued after its fall. In this article, we show how the Silvestres legitimized a path of social mobility from seventeenth-century artisans to nineteenth-century aristocrats by narrating and documenting the family’s history in three texts—two catalogues raisonnés that recorded the Silvestre art collections and a family biography that traced the dynasty through the French Revolution. By establishing and advancing the family’s reputation or crédit, the Silvestres built a narrative bridge that carried them across the revolutionary divide.
Emily Talbot. Review of "The Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France, 1814–1914" by Tamar Garb
caa.reviews, 2008
I am indebted to the libraries, museums, and scholars that enabled my research over the past four... more I am indebted to the libraries, museums, and scholars that enabled my research over the past four years. I would like to thank the librarians, archivists, and staffs of the Fine Arts Library at the University of Michigan and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, my two home bases during the process of writing this dissertation. In France, I am obliged to the librarians and staffs of the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Salle de documentation at the Musée d'Orsay. For providing access to the Delacroix/Durieu album, and for discussing my research at its earliest stages,
This article analyses Henry Peach Robinson’s method of making composite photographs in the contex... more This article analyses Henry Peach Robinson’s method of making composite photographs in the context of widespread belief that the photographer’s ‘mechanism’ was perceptible in the appearance of his prints. By examining Robinson’s preparatory and darkroom procedures, as well as the photographer’s extensive writing about his photographic practice, I suggest that composite photographs invited viewers to pay attention to process, and to take it into account in their evaluation of an image. This attitude challenged key tenets of academic art theory – the paradigm for nascent concepts of art in photography – by refusing to subordinate manual labour to that of the mind. While many nineteenth-century critics rejected Robinson’s approach, the debates engendered by composite techniques reveal a persistent fascination with making that advanced photographic practice as a marker of artistic value.
This article concerns six generations of the Silvestre family: a succession of artists, royal dra... more This article concerns six generations of the Silvestre family: a succession of artists, royal drawing masters, and art collectors whose social ascent began in the late seventeenth century in parallel with the Bourbon Monarchy and continued after its fall. In this article, we show how the Silvestres legitimized a path of social mobility from seventeenth-century artisans to nineteenth-century aristocrats by narrating and documenting the family’s history in three texts—two catalogues raisonnés that recorded the Silvestre art collections and a family biography that traced the dynasty through the French Revolution. By establishing and advancing the family’s reputation or crédit, the Silvestres built a narrative bridge that carried them across the revolutionary divide.
"Bourgeois Ambition and Whist for Wives in John Everett Millais’s 'Hearts are Trumps'," immediations: The Courtauld Institute of Art Journal of Postgraduate Research, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008
Book Reviews by Emily Talbot
"The Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France 1814-1914" by Tamar Garb, caa.reviews, May 27, 2008
Conference Presentations by Emily Talbot
"Pulling Apart the Picture: The Making and Unmaking of Henry Peach Robinson’s 'A Holiday in the Wood.'" College Art Association Conference, Washington, DC, February 4, 2016
"The Perils of Painting Like a Camera: Walter Sickert’s 'Modern Realism in Painting.'" Paul Mellon Centre, London, December 4, 2015
"Secret de Polichinelle of the Studios? Perceiving Photography in Paint, Debating it in Print." Universities Art Association of Canada Conference, Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, October 25, 2014
"A Mediated Encounter with the Artist in the 'Galerie contemporaine, littéraire, artistique.'" Graduate Student Seminar, Art Institute of Chicago, April 13, 2013
"Facture, Fracture, Photography: Fragmenting Degas’s ‘Photographic Eye.’" Midwest Art History Society, Columbus, March 21, 2013
"Book/Shelf: Redefining the Illustrated Book at MoMA," American Printing History Association Conference, Newport, October 17, 2009
"Portrayal and Perception: The Challenge of Collecting at the National Portrait Gallery, London," College Art Association Conference, Los Angeles, February 27, 2009
Talks by Emily Talbot
Beyond the Pale: the Radical Realism of Degas's "Little Dancer"
Norton Simon Museum, March 10, 2018
Beloved by museum visitors today, Degas’s "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen" was deeply divisive when... more Beloved by museum visitors today, Degas’s "Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen" was deeply divisive when it was first exhibited at the sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881. Although some viewers welcomed the tinted wax figurine as an exciting new direction in realist art, many others were disturbed by Degas’s unidealized treatment of the dancer’s body and facial features, which he reinforced by outfitting the statuette in a cotton tutu and linen slippers and a wig made from human hair. Emily Talbot explores the controversial reception of the Little Dancer in relation to other 19th-century sculptures that were seen to be excessively lifelike. She situates Degas’s mixed-media techniques within a history of challenging the classical ideal in sculpture and the legacy of these practices in 20th-century art.
"Painting Like a Camera: Jules Bastien-Lepage as Photo-Realist." Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, March 30, 2016
In 1891, English artist and art critic Walter Sickert coined the term “photo-realist” to describe... more In 1891, English artist and art critic Walter Sickert coined the term “photo-realist” to describe French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage. Unlike the more familiar, mid-twentieth century definition of photorealism, Sickert made no claims that Bastien-Lepage painted directly from photographs. Instead, he employed this photographic analogy to characterize Bastien-Lepage’s conceptual and material approach to painting, an essentially documentary process that, in Sickert’s estimation, paralleled the function of a camera. Complaints about the “photographic” qualities of contemporary painting had become commonplace by the early 1890s, following a period of abrupt transformation in the critical assessment of realism and the standards by which “truthful” pictures could be made. This paper analyzes the shifting responses to Bastien-Lepage’s work over the course of the 1870s and 80s to show how photography came to characterize the production and interpretation of realist painting. I suggest that Sickert and his contemporaries wielded photography as a rhetorical tool to communicate the perceived moral failings of artistic practice at the end of the nineteenth century.
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Papers by Emily Talbot
Book Reviews by Emily Talbot
Conference Presentations by Emily Talbot
Talks by Emily Talbot