Painters with a photographic eye

[peterm1]

A lot of painters were influenced by photography. Some were appalled that they would lose all their customers and others saw it as a way of seeing.

Here's a famous one from a long time ago that shocked a lot of people, it's by Degas and was painted in 1873:-
https://www.edgar-degas.net/the-cotton-exchange-new-orleans.jsp

Regards, David

David you are right about the above painting having a distinctly photographic quality about it. Also, as it happens I was watching an episode of "Fake or Fortune" yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6astDk_qv8 which was about a picture that might - or might not, be by Degas. (It was adjudged to be by him, incidentally!).

In the course of the video they mention that he was a fan and adopter of photography - something I had not appreciated until you and they mentioned it. And if my memory is correct I have a vague idea they might have said he bought a camera in the 1890s. Never the less his eye was such that he already composed images as if they were made by photograph.

 

[RichC]

And there's Gerhard Richter's photo-paintings. These paintings that look like photos at first glance deliberately show the technical limitations and failures of photography that don't "belong" naturally to the medium of paintIng...

Confrontation 1:

Toilet paper:

 

[Rob-F]

It always seems to me that Degas was experimenting with imitating photographic composition in his ballerina paintings. The solo ballerina out to the edge of the painting; a picture of several dancers with one of them partially cut off at the right edge of the frame; or dancers all at the right side, with nothing but empty space to the left, all seem to have a snapshot quality.

 

[Out to Lunch]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bechtle

 

[Brian Atherton]

Hockney is one of my favourite modern artists. He has a very interesting book "That's the Way I See It" on how he sees which I can recommend. I love his work "peach blossom highway", where he used pictures of surfaces to create an illusion of space...

A firm favourite of mine, too, Lynn. Like you, I love his experimental work with collages of small photographic prints and Polaroids - have been fortunate to see most of his London exhibitions.

Another artist with photographic influence is Norman Rockwell:

https://www.wikiart.org/en/norman-rockwell

His museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts is a must:

https://www.nrm.org/visit/

 

[Ambro51]

Vilhelm Pacht, the inventor of the 35mm still Camera in 1900 was a prolific landscape/genre painter. His work shows exacting detail and true perspective. His painting is a “capture a moment”, candid and real life. I believe he invented his camera to capture scenes. Of interest is that the top painting size equates exactly to 24x36mm. It looks like Pachts film advance was 8 perfs. from viewing detail shots of the mechanism

 

[David Hughes]

David you are right about the above painting having a distinctly photographic quality about it. Also, as it happens I was watching an episode of "Fake or Fortune" yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6astDk_qv8 which was about a picture that might - or might not, be by Degas. (It was adjudged to be by him, incidentally!).

In the course of the video they mention that he was a fan and adopter of photography - something I had not appreciated until you and they mentioned it. And if my memory is correct I have a vague idea they might have said he bought a camera in the 1890s. Never the less his eye was such that he already composed images as if they were made by photograph.

What I found amazing is that people were shocked by it. If they have eyes in their heads they might just have noticed that the real world looks like that...

But go into any old forum and you'll find people shocked by reality. I often think they are shocked that someone isn't toeing the line and following the latest fashion: trouble is there's even fashions in thought as well as objects.

Regards, David

 

[brothernature]

You might be interested in the film Tim's Vermeer. Fun documentary about a guy going to extraordinary lengths to paint a Vermeer using an invention he thinks Vermeer might have used.