Between Studio and Snapshot: Belle Époque Picture Postcards of Urban Statues

Abstract

This article focuses on the photographs of public sculptures used on belle époque picture postcards of Brussels. The subject is approached from two perspectives. Firstly, we analyse the conventions of in situ photography of public sculpture in light of the genre’s reliance on painterly and photographic traditions, as well as its adoption of visual strategies derived from amateur and snapshot photography. Secondly, we explore the role of the photographic mise-en-scène of picture postcards in constructing an ideological as well as visual perspective on public monuments and the cityscape. The in situ photography of urban statues for picture postcards can be regarded as a photographic genre at the intersection of documentary art reproduction practices and amateur photography of the city. Moreover, the picture postcards discussed in this essay confirm and propagate dominant discourses on the monument and the cityscape, even if at the same time such visions were challenged. In the case of Brussels, the postcards demonstrate a preference for a monumental, impressive cityscape, worthy of representing the Belgian nation and capable of legitimising it through views of sculpture as a grand art, serving the worship of grands hommes.

Keywords:

• Eugène Simonis (1810–82)
• picture postcard
• monument
• in situ photography
• snapshot
• amateur
• belle époque
• Brussels
• cityscapes
• art reproduction

Notes

1 Geraldine Johnson and Joel Snyder mention in situ photography of public sculpture, but do not delve further into the subject. See Geraldine A. Johnson, ‘“All Concrete Shapes Dissolve in Light”: Photographing Sculpture from Rodin to Brancusi’, The Sculpture Journal, 15:2 (2006), 199–222; Joel Snyder, ‘Nineteenth-Century Photography of Sculpture and the Rhetoric of Substitution’, in Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension, ed. Geraldine A. Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006, 21–34; and Geraldine A. Johnson, The Very Impress of the Object: Photographing Sculpture from Fox Talbot to the Present Day, Leeds: Henry Moore Institute 1995.

2 The Parisian Fonds Debuisson is a private collection of picture postcards of public statues in France. See Philip Ward-Jackson, ‘Review of Roxane and France Debuisson’s “À nos grands hommes”’, The Sculpture Journal, 15:2 (2006), 301–3; and Marjan Sterckx, ‘“À nos grands hommes”: een imaginair museum van publieke beeldhouwkunst’, FotoMuseum Magazine, 34 (2006), 42–5. The present article is based on the private collections of the authors, as well as the large Belfius (former Dexia) Bank collection in Brussels, which contains approximately eighty thousand postcards covering all of the Belgian communes.

3 Ellen Handy discusses photographic reproductions on museum postcards as a visible sign of canon formation, but does not fully discuss their formal features. See Ellen Handy, ‘Outward and Visible Signs: Postcards and the Art–Historical Canon’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, ed. David Prochaska and Jordana Mendelson, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 2010, 120–32.

4 See also J. O. Ostman, ‘The Postcard as Media’, Text, 24:3 (2004), 423–42; Anne Nishimura Morse, J. Thomas Rimer and Kendall H. Brown, Art of the Japanese Postcard: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston: MFA Publications 2004; Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard, ed. Jeff L. Rosenheim, Göttingen: Steidl and New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2009; Lynda Klich and Benjamin Weiss, The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, London: Thames and Hudson 2012.

5 On the photography of sculpture, see also The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today, ed. Roxana Marcoci, New York: Museum of Modern Art 2010; Dominique de Font-Réaulx and Joëlle Bolloch, L'oeuvre d’art et sa reproduction, Paris: Musée d’Orsay 2006; Martina Droth, ‘Sculpture in the Age of Photography’, Sculpture Review, 54:4 (2005), 34–6; Skulptur im Licht der Fotografie: Von Bayard bis Mapplethorpe, ed. Erika Billeter and Christoph Brockhaus, Bern: Benteli 1997; and Mattie Boom, ‘Kunstreproductie’, in Een nieuwe kunst: fotografie in de 19de eeuw, ed. Mattie Boom and Hans Rooseboom, Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum 1996, 85–96.

6 See Standbeeld-Standpunt, ed. Christoph Ruys, Louvain: Uitgeverij P 2002, 2–3.

7 Heinrich Wölfflin, ‘Wie man Skulpturen aufnehmen soll’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, new series 1:7 (1896), 224–8; 2:8 (1897), 294–7; and 3:25 (1915), 237–44; translated by Geraldine A. Johnson as ‘How One Should Photograph Sculpture’, Art History, 36:1 (2013), 52–71.

8 No writings have been found attesting to Simonis’s own view on a possible ideal viewpoint for his statue. Simonis photographed the clay model of his Godfrey of Bouillon in 1845, before it was sent to be moulded; however, this shows a mirror image of horse and horseman, with the head of the horse on the left of the picture but looking to the right. The daguerreotype is reproduced in Jacques van Lennep, ‘Standbeelden en Monumenten van Brussel vóór 1914’, in De Beelden van Brussel, ed. Patrick Derom and Gilles Marquenie, Brussels and Antwerp: Pandora, Patrick Derom Gallery 2000, 37.

9 See Johnson, ‘Introduction’, in Sculpture and Photography, 1–19; and Tobia Bezzola, ‘From Sculpture in Photography to Photography as Plastic Art’, in The Original Copy, ed. Marcoci, 28–35.

10 Diana Schulze, Der Photograph in Garten und Park: Aspekte historischer Photographien öffentlicher Gärten in Deutschland von 1880 bis 1930, Berlin: Königshausen & Neumann 2004, 154–5.

11 A recently published photography manual still recommends photographing sculptures in situ against a monotonal and uncluttered background, such as a green lawn or a blue sky. See Inspired Photography: 189 Sources of Inspiration for Better Photos, ed. Photopreneur, Washington, DC: New Media Entertainment 2010, 106.

12 On retouching unwanted backgrounds or using portable backgrounds, see also Magnus Bremmer and Patrizia Di Bello in this issue.

13 On the evolution from graphic to photographic art reproduction, see Robert Verhoogt, Art in Reproduction: Nineteenth-Century Prints after Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Jozef Israëls and Ary Scheffer, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2007; and Snyder, ‘Nineteenth-Century Photography of Sculpture’.

14 Marcel Natkin, Pour réussir vos photos: Guide pratique de l'amateur photographe, Paris: Éditions Tiranty 1935, 24–5.

15 Dirk Lauwaert, ‘Stadsfotografie: De Stad, de Fotografie en de Negentiende Eeuw’, Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen, 50:4 (2012), 1–40.

16 See Lut Pil, ‘Pour le plaisir des yeux’: Het Pittoreske Landschap in de Belgische Kunst, Leuven and Apeldoorn: Garant 1993; and Christine De Naeyer, ‘Belgian Landscape through the Eyes of Photographic Commissions’, in Darkness and Light: The Proceedings of the Oslo Symposium, ed. Roger Erlandsen and Vegard S. Halvorsen, Oslo: National Institute for Historical Photography 1995, 59–66.

17 See Gustave Pessard, Statuomanie parisienne: Étude critique sur l’abus des statues, Paris: H. Daragon 1912; Maurice Agulhon, ‘La statuomanie et l’histoire’, Ethnologie française, VIII (1978), 145–72; and Pierre-Paul Dupont, ‘“Statuomanie” et “Bustomanie” en Belgique au XIXe siècle’, Fabrique d’art: La compagnie des bronzes de Bruxelles, ed. Guy Lemaire, Brussels: La Fonderie 2003, 120–30.

18 See, for example, the monuments to Margaretha of Austria (1849) in Mechelen, to princess Louise-Marie (1879) in Philippeville, and to Gabrielle Petit and Edith Cavell erected after the First World War in Brussels, to name but a few Belgian examples.

19 Nevertheless, as contemporary picture postcards illustrate, Rodin’s group of Burghers was at that time still presented on a pedestal in Calais.

20 See, for example, Natkin, Pour réussir vos photos, 68.

21 Leen Engelen and Marjan Sterckx, ‘Remembering Edith and Gabrielle: Picture Postcards of Monuments as Portable lieux de mémoire’, in Imaging History: Photography after the Fact, ed. Bruno Vandermeulen and Danny Veys, Brussels: ASP Éditions 2011, 87–103.

22 In 1903 Kodak introduced the A3 Folding Pocket Kodak, the first postcard camera. See Todd Gustavson, ‘Innovative Devices: George Eastman and the Handheld Camera’ and Clément Chéroux, ‘A Sense of Context: Amateur Photography in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard, ed. Elizabeth W. Easton, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2011, 12–21 and 37–45; and Rachel Snow, ‘Correspondence Here: Real Photo Postcards and the Snapshot Aesthetic’, in Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity, ed. Prochaska and Mendelson, 42–53.

23 Chéroux, ‘A Sense of Context’; Snow, ‘Correspondence Here’; and Mark Jarzombek, ‘Joseph August Lux: Theorizing Early Amateur Photography – In Search of a “Catholic Something”’, Centropa, 4:1 (2004), 80–7.

24 Joseph August Lux and Mark Jarzombek, ‘Artistic Secrets of the Kodak (1908) by Joseph August Lux’, Centropa, 4:1 (2004), 85–6.

25 Marcel Vanderkindere, ‘L’art de bâtir les villes: Rôle de l’amateur photographe’, Bulletin de l'Association belge de photographie, 36:1 (1909), 16–22. He mainly refers to architectural monuments here.

26 On the crucial role of location in this matter, see Naomi Schor, ‘“Cartes Postales”: Representing Paris 1900’, Critical Inquiry, 18:2 (1992), 188–244.

27 In Brussels these include statues of Augustin-Daniel Belliard (1838) by Guillaume Geefs, Karel Van Lotharingen (1848) by Louis Jéhotte, Nicholas Rouppe (1850), Egmont and Horne (1864) by Charles-Auguste Fraikin, Frans Anneessens (1889) by Thomas Vinçotte, Charles Rogier (1897) by Guillaume de Groot, and Frédéric de Mérode (1897) by Paul du Bois and Henry van de Velde, who can all be considered founding fathers of the nation. See van Lennep, ‘Standbeelden en Monumenten van Brussel vóór 1914’.

28 Leopold II, King of the Belgians, controlled the Congo Free State in this period, from 1885 to 1908. On the colonial history of Belgium, see David van Reybrouck, Congo: Een Geschiedenis, Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2010; also published as Congo: une histoire, trans. Isabelle Rosselin, Paris: Actes Sud 2012. This postcard series also included postcards of monuments to Anneessens, de Brouckère, de Jenneval, Verhaegen, and T’Serclaes.

29 Edward John Wall, The Photographic Picture Post-card for Personal Use and for Profit, London: Dawbarn & Ward 1906, 98–9.

30 See also Engelen and Sterckx, ‘Remembering Edith and Gabrielle’.

31 See Schor, ‘“Cartes Postales”’, 188–244.

32 Charles Buls, Esthétique des villes, Brussels: Bruylant 1893.