The Modern Portrait in Nineteenth-Century France examines the evolution of portraiture after the advent of photography. Heather McPherson focuses on the portrait as a contested site of representation and the diverse strategies that artists deployed to revitalize the portrait during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the genre was directly threatened with obsolescence by the proliferation of photographic images. In six case studies, McPherson explores the complex interplay between painting and photography, while also addressing the sociocultural, stylistic, and phenomenological complexities of the modern portrait. By considering portraiture within the broader cultural matrix of history, biography, artistic and literary crosscurrents, and shifts in the production and consumption of images, McPherson deftly situates the modern portrait at the epicenter of nineteenth-century visual culture.
