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Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art

Artist Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879)
Title Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art (Nadar Élevant la Photographie à la Hauteur de l'Art)
Series Artists' Recollections
Date 1862
Medium Lithograph on paper
Dimensions Image: 10 11/16 x 8 13/16 in. (27.1 x 22.4 cm)
Sheet: 17 3/8 x 12 3/16 in. (44.1 x 31 cm)
Credit Line Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 76.30.2

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About this Work

Honoré Daumier and Nadar were both pioneers in their respective fields; Daumier in pictorial journalism and Nadar in photography. Both were also active in Parisian society and featured in the city's popular journals. Nadar's portrait of the satirist (possibly from 1856–58) was later used in Galerie contemporaine (as seen in the woodburytype in the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art's collection 76.128.2).

Only a few years after he sat for the portrait, Daumier spoofed the soaring popularity of the young photographic medium and Nadar’s daring aerial shots of Paris in an 1862 cartoon titled “Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art.” The caption also reflects the contemporary debate over the place of the new medium in the fine arts. Interestingly, Galerie contemporaine purported the superiority of photography over drawn portraiture because of its brutal, implacable, and eminently scientific neutrality.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

Publisher Imp. Bertauts (Paris)
Series Title Artists' Recollections
Foreign Language Series Title Souvenirs d'Artistes

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"Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=76.30.2