HF The History of Photography 600pág

160 The early years of photography
-a National Gallery of Photographic Portraits. For this reason he travelled to Frankfurt
in 1848 to photograph Archduke Johann, who had been appointed Adminis­
Pl 64 trator of the Empire, and the members of the National Assembly. One hundred and
twenty-six of these portraits were published in Frankfurt the following year as
lithographs.14
CARL FERDINAND STELZNER, who had studied under lsabey and other well-known
artists in Paris, was originally a miniature painter. His photographs of the Hamburg
fire and his first studio in partnership with Biow have already been mentioned.
Stelzner's art training comes out unmistakably in his photographs. They are ex-
Pl 65
quisite miniatures in photography and were frequently tinted by his wife, who as a
professional miniature painter often used her husband's photographs to copy from.
Stelzner's portraits cannot help impressing one by their high artistic quality. His skill
Pl 66 in arranging a group of fifteen artists is quite remarkable.
Many miniature painters turned to photography when their own art was ousted
by the daguerreotype, and their portraits are still steeped in the traditions of the older
art. Newcomers, on the other hand, brought a new outlook to photography, a freedom
of pose and snapshot-like casualness which is truly photographic.
In Leipzig the first to take portraits professionally was JOSEPH WENINGER, an
artist who came from Vienna and was active in Leipzig from January to May 1842,
before going on to Copenhagen and Stockholm. In the summer of that year CARL
DAUTHENDEY took portraits in Leipzig in his garden-house, before moving on to
Dessau and St Petersburg where he became the first professional daguerreotypist in
the autumn of 1843 . The first permanent public studio in Leipzig was opened by the
instrument-maker WEHNERT about August 1842.15
A special niche in the history of early daguerreotypists must be given to JOHANN
BAPTIST ISENRING of St Gallen, Switzerland, a well-known copperplate engraver of
topographical views. He ordered a daguerreotype outfit from Giroux in October
1839 and, undaunted by Arago's opinion, immediately set to work to solve the
problem of portraiture. Finding it impossible to arrive at shorter exposures than about
20 minutes in full sunshine-particularly as he used plates up to IO in. x 8 in.-lsenring
over-painted the image and scratched in on the silvered plate the pupils of the eyes to
correct the unsharpness caused by the sitter's blinking. Whatever the merit of these
portraits may have been-and they were far from pure photography-lsenring deserves
at least to be remembered as the first person to retouch photographs, and to
attempt to give daguerreotypes a more lifelike appearance by colouring them with
dry powders. lsenring also held the first public exhibition of portrait photographs in
Fig i 6 Europe. This was at his house in St Gallen in August 1840, and his four-page catalogue
listing thirty-nine portraits, besides eight still-lifes, architecture, etc., was only
preceded by Gouraud's in New York, December 1839.
Up to that time Isenring had only practised on relations and friends-the only
victims willing to endure the long exposure-but after learning of Kratochwila's
chemical acceleration he accepted orders from the public. In July 1841 he was in
Munich, where for a short time he operated in a room in the Maximiliansplatz,16 the
exposure being one minute and the price of the portrait 2 Kronenthaler (1 Kr.T.=
4·60 Marks). At the Munich fair the same summer lsenring's portrait booth proved
a great attraction : 'By the time you have said three paternosters-if you are still
capable-your face is printed, however ugly it may be.' From a published aquatint
of the Wittelsbacher Platz 'photographiert van J. B. lsenring in St Gallen' it is clear
that he also daguerreotyped views in Munich, which served him as subjects for
copperplate engravings.