Themes and authors

Carlos Relvas and Decorative Art

In 1882, Carlos Relvas was invited to make a photographic record of one of the most important surveys of the nation’s movable heritage, undertaken at the time of the exhibition of Decorative Art in London, and later reorganised and presented in Lisbon, in 1882, under the title of the Retrospective Exhibition of Portuguese and Spanish Decorative Art. The result was the publication in 1883 of a large and important catalogue, printed in phototype, a process to which Carlos Relvas had devoted himself with great commitment, fighting with José Júlio Rodrigues for the right to its introduction and application in Portugal. The phototype is a photomechanical printing process whose first developments were made by the French chemical engineer Louis Alphonse Potevin, in 1855, and subsequently improved by the German photographer Joseph Albert. This is a printing process whose main novelty was the possibility that it offered for the reproduction of images in half-tones without the mark of the printing screen, which afforded images a much greater aesthetic and technical quality. [E.T.]

Alfredo Keil [1850-1907]

Alfredo Keil is the only known documented case of a painter who regularly took photographs as studies for his own paintings, which allows us to assess the influence of the two arts on his artistic career. This is the case with one of the photographs presented here, which shows the poses and the studies of light for his painting Reading of a Letter (1874), from the MNAC-MC collection, on display in the museum’s permanent exhibition. The photographic technique was used by the painter, not only to perfect the relationship between the scales of the figures, but because of the details that the images revealed about the nature of the light. In his self-portrait, Alfredo Keil also staged different scenes and made use of the specific facets of photography as studies of expression and pose. [E.T.]

José Júlio Rodrigues [1843-1893]

A graduate in Mathematics and a student of Chemistry, José Júlio Rodrigues was a prominent 19th-century Portuguese scientist. Between 1872 and 1879, he directed the Photographic Department of the Directorate-General for Geodesic, Topographical and Geological Studies, whose mission was the study and recording of maps. The album that is presented here is the result of the research and development work undertaken by J.J. Rodrigues in his photomechanical applications of photographic printing, which included the most modern processes in this area, such as photolithography, photoengraving, phototypography, and phototypy, among others. We believe that this is the only example of its kind existing in Portugal, and it has never before been published until today. He also produced the first General Map of the Portuguese Kingdom (1876), where he used photography for the first time and studied its scientific application to cartography. In 1874, he presented his studies at the French Photography Society and was duly presented with an award. [E.T.]

Calotype/Salted Paper

The calotype process was the first photographic process that made it possible to fix a negative image (the calotype), subsequently allowing for its positive reproduction through the use of salted paper. Both the negative and the positive process used waxed paper as their support, so that the end result was highly fragile in nature. Unlike the daguerreotype process, which rapidly became the standard procedure used in more commercial applications, the calotype process, invented by Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) was considered to be better suited to artistic practices and was a more elitist process since its patent was never made available for public use, as was the case with the daguerreotype. Landscape was one of the genres that became most associated with the calotype. Frederick William Flower, a Scottish wine merchant who had settled in Porto in the second half of the 19th century, devoted himself to this process on an amateur basis, being responsible for the only collection in Portugal, and one of the few international collections, to have a numerous and coherent record of negatives (calotypes) and positives (salted papers). But other people were also decisive in promoting the use of this process, especially as far as the first surveys of the national heritage were concerned, such as those undertaken by the architect and archaeologist Joaquim Possidónio da Silva (1806-1896), as well as in the recording of the urban landscape, as exemplified by the works of the painter and ceramist Wenceslau Cifka (1811-1883). [E.T.]

Daguerreotype

In Portugal, news about the first photographic processes, the daguerreotype and the calotype, was published in February and March 1839, immediately announcing the works of their respective inventors, Jacques Louis Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) and Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), and pointing out their repercussions “on the art of drawing”. The daguerreotype was of immediate interest to the Portuguese artistic world, which saw in this process what amounted to a great technical advance and a novelty in visual terms. João Baptista Ribeiro (1790-1868), a leading figure in the teaching of the arts and museology, and the painter and ceramist Wenceslau Cifka (1811-1883) were two examples of the application of this process in portraiture and the depiction of landscapes. It was, above all, a process that was developed commercially and studios began to appear for the taking of portraits, which was one of its most important applications. It was rare for landscape pictures to be obtained through the use of this technique, which makes W. Cifka’s photograph of Sintra Castle the only landscape picture to be made using this process that is known about so far. In Portugal, as in the rest of the world, this process brought about a revolution in the representation of a rising bourgeoisie, leading to a mass interest in the portrait and creating the first great photographic industry, with the portraits of the Count of Farrobo and his second wife being examples of this popular fashion. Its scientific application was also seen as a new possibility for increasing knowledge, and in 1842 the university’s Physics Department purchased some photographic equipment (displayed at this exhibition) which was to be used in the making of daguerreotypes, of which eight examples can still be found today in the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra. [E.T.]

Emílio Biel and the survey of railways

Emílio Biel (1838-1915) began working as a photographer in the 1870s, and acquired the photographic studio "Fotografia Fritz", at 122 Rua do Almada in Porto in 1873-1874, which eventually led to the opening of his second establishment “E. Biel & C.ª” (1890), in the Palácio do Bolhão, at 342 Rua Formosa. In his multiple commercial and industrial activities, which had initially started with a buttons factory, Biel also set up some electricity supply networks, as well as promoting the creation of the Vila Real railway and the Lisbon and Porto railway stations. In 1882, with the support of the engineer Cândido Celestino Xavier Cordeiro (1884-1904), the Casa Biel began to document the expansion of the Douro railway, of which we can see the sequence of photographs documenting the construction of the Dom Luís Bridge at this exhibition. [M.M.]

Commemorative photographs

Official events or special dates relating to the royal family were one of the first great stimuli for photography because its testimonial nature made it possible to produce valuable records for posterity. Some of these events, such as the arrival of Dona Maria Pia of Savoy for her wedding to Dom Luís I, the bedecking of Terreiro do Paço for the occasion, or the commemorations of the 300th anniversary of the poet Camões, are just some examples of this close relationship that was formed between event, monument, memory and photography. The Album of this Tricentenary, produced by the photographer Henrique Nunes (1820-1882) is an excellent example of this relationship, as can be seen by the subjects included in it, such as the photographs of the “Float representing War”, the “Float of the Colonies”, or the “Monument to Luís de Camões”. [M.M.]

Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva (1806-1896)

An architect to the royal household and an archaeologist, who studied and  worked in France and Italy between 1821 and 1834, Joaquim Possidónio da Silva undertook an exhaustive survey of the important buildings and monuments of Portugal, as well as of sites of archaeological interest, which he published in the Revista Pittoresca e Descriptiva de Portugal between 1861 and 1862. This survey was distributed in separate instalments beginning in 1861 and was initially published by Ernesto Augusto da Silva, with images printed on salted paper and glued onto cards surrounded by a decorative frame. Joaquim Possidónio da Silva was also one of the founders of the Royal Association of Portuguese Civil Architects and Archaeologists in 1863, which published a newsletter, the Archivo de Arquitectura Civil, including images that he himself had taken. [M.M.]

Wenceslau Cifka (1813-1883)

A painter, drawer, lithographer, ceramist, art collector and photographer, who came to Portugal at the invitation of Dom Fernando of Saxe-Coburg, in 1836, to work as an art consultant. He was one of the first pioneers to set up a studio for the taking of daguerreotype portraits, in Rua das Necessidades, where he also gave photography lessons. His disciples included Carlos Relvas and João Paulo Cordeiro Júnior, a manufacturer of tobacco products. In 1851, at the Philanthropic Exhibition at the Arsenal da Marinha, he exhibited Eleven Daguerreotype Pictures, having also experimented with other techniques and received specialist training in Paris. He later became the photographer to the royal household. After undertaking a journey around Europe in the company of the king, they both developed an even greater taste and fondness for ceramics, and Cifka then began to devote himself almost exclusively to this art. [M.M.]

Stereoscopic Photography

One of the most popular inventions, especially after the industrialisation of the process in the 1850s, was stereoscopic photography. Stereoscopy, a technique invented by Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), in 1838, consists of producing two identical images, slightly offset, so that, when observed through a viewer with appropriate lenses, they provide an image that gives an impression of depth, which today we describe as a “3D effect”. In Portugal, this process was also highly popular, as is borne out by the many public and private collections. Carlos Relvas (1838-1894), Aurélio da Paz dos Reis (1862-1931) and the Azorean naturalist Francisco Afonso Chaves (1857-1926) were some of the Portuguese photographers who were greatly excited by this technique and practised it on a systematic basis. [M.M.]

O Contemporâneo, Sciencias, Letras, Commercio e Industria [1875-1876]

This album was published by the French photographer Alfred Fillon (1825-1881), paying tribute to the figures who, at that time, were considered to be among the most important in 19th-century society, in literary and artistic circles, as well as in the fields of trade and industry. It is therefore an important document about the way in which a period selects its leading figures, as well as about the criteria used in making such a choice. The great novelty of the “Album” was the inclusion of a portrait of the chosen figure, placed in a prominent position and accompanied by an extensive biography and eulogy of the subject. In this way, we can see how the idea of the representation of a person’s identity was indissociable from the representation of their physical appearance, in a century when naturalism and the consequent importance given to observation were widespread throughout the western world. [M.M.]