Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Encyclopedia
Oscar Gustave Rejlander (Sweden
, 1813 – Clapham
, London
, 18 January 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer
and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin
on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
has assured him a position in the history of behavioural science and psychiatry.
, England. He abandoned his original profession as a painter
and portrait miniaturist, apparently after seeing how well a photograph captured the fold of a sleeve. Other accounts say he was inspired by one of Fox Talbot's assistants.
He set up as a portraitist in the industrial Midlands
town of Wolverhampton
, probably around 1846. Around 1850 he learned the wet-collodion and waxed-paper processes at great speed with Nicholas Henneman in London, and then changed his business to that of a photography
studio. He undertook genre
work and portraiture. He also created erotic work, using as models the circus girls of Mme Wharton, street children and child prostitutes - his Charlotte Baker series remains notorious.
Rejlander undertook many experiments to perfect his photography, including combination printing
from around 1853, which it is possible he may have invented. He had articles feature in the Wolverhampton Chronicle, on the 15th November 1854 an article called "Improvement in Calotypes, by Mr. O.G. Rejlander, of Wolverhampton" it suggests that by 1854 he was experimenting with combination printing from several negatives. He was a friend of photographer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better know by the nom de plume Lewis Carroll), who collected Rejlander's early child work and corresponded with him on technical matters. Rejlander later created one of the best known & most revealing portraits of Dodgson.
His early work only slightly sullied his later reputation, and he participated in the Paris Exhibition
of 1855. In 1857 he made his best-known allegorical work, The Two Ways of Life. This was a seamlessly montage
d combination print made of thirty-two images (akin to the use of Photoshop today, but then far more difficult to achieve) in about six weeks. First exhibited at the Manchester
Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, the work shows two youths being offered guidance by a patriarch
. Each youth looks toward a section of a stage-like tableaux vivant - one youth is shown the virtuous pleasures and the other the sinful pleasures. The image's partial nudity was deemed 'indecent' by some - and those familiar with Rejlander's more commercial work might also suspect that prostitutes had been used as cheap models. But the 'indecency' faded when Queen Victoria
ordered a 10-guinea copy to give to Prince Albert.
Despite this royal patronage, controversy about The Two Ways of Life in strait-laced Scotland
in 1858 led to a secession of a large group from the Photographic Society of Scotland, the secessionists founding the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1861. They objected to the picture being shown with one half of it concealed by drapes. The picture was later shown at the Birmingham
Photographic Society with no such furore or censorship. However the Photographic Society of Scotland later made amends and invited Rejlander to a grand dinner in his honour in 1866, held to open an exhibition that included many of his pictures.
The success of The Two Ways of Life, and membership of the Royal Photographic Society
of London
, gave him an entree into London respectability. He moved his studio to Malden Road, London around 1862 and further experimented with double exposure
, photomontage
, photographic manipulation and retouching. He became a leading expert in photographic techniques, lecturing and publishing widely, and sold portfolios of work through bookshops and art dealers. He also found subject-matter in London, photographing homeless London street children to produce popular 'social-protest' pictures such as "Poor Joe" and "Homeless".
He married Mary Bull in 1862, who was twenty-four years his junior. Mary had been his photographic model in Wolverhampton since she was aged 14.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson visited Rejlander's Malden Road studio in 1863 and was inspired to set up his own studio. Around 1863 Rejlander visited the Isle of Wight
and collaborated with Julia Margaret Cameron
.
Some of Rejlander's images were purchased as drawing-aids to Victorian painters of repute, such as Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema. In 1872 his photography illustrated Darwin
's classic treatise on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
and this association with Darwin lifted Rejlander out of the common run of Victorian photographers - his work became known by prominent scientists and intellectuals of the day, including Sir James Crichton-Browne
and Dr Hugh Diamond.
Rejlander became seriously ill from about 1874. He died in 1875 with several claims on his estate, and costly funeral expenses. The Edinburgh Photographic Society raised money for his widow on Rejlander's death, and helped set up the Rejlander Memorial Fund.
Rejlander's ideas and techniques were taken up by other photographers and this, to some extent, justifies labelling him as the father of art photography.
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, 1813 – Clapham
Clapham
Clapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, 18 January 1875) was a pioneering Victorian art photographer
Fine art photography
Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides a visual account for news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to...
and an expert in photomontage. His collaboration with Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration...
has assured him a position in the history of behavioural science and psychiatry.
Biography
His exact date of birth is uncertain, but was probably 1813. He was the son of Carl Gustaf Rejlander, a stonemason and Swedish Army Officer. He studied art in Rome where he saw photographs of the sights, and then initially settled in LincolnLincoln, Lincolnshire
Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England.The non-metropolitan district of Lincoln has a population of 85,595; the 2001 census gave the entire area of Lincoln a population of 120,779....
, England. He abandoned his original profession as a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and portrait miniaturist, apparently after seeing how well a photograph captured the fold of a sleeve. Other accounts say he was inspired by one of Fox Talbot's assistants.
He set up as a portraitist in the industrial Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
town of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
, probably around 1846. Around 1850 he learned the wet-collodion and waxed-paper processes at great speed with Nicholas Henneman in London, and then changed his business to that of a photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
studio. He undertook genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
work and portraiture. He also created erotic work, using as models the circus girls of Mme Wharton, street children and child prostitutes - his Charlotte Baker series remains notorious.
Rejlander undertook many experiments to perfect his photography, including combination printing
Combination printing
Combination printing is the technique of using two or more photographic images in conjunction with one another to create a single image.Combination printing was popular in the mid-19th century due to the limitations of the negative's light sensitivity and camera technology...
from around 1853, which it is possible he may have invented. He had articles feature in the Wolverhampton Chronicle, on the 15th November 1854 an article called "Improvement in Calotypes, by Mr. O.G. Rejlander, of Wolverhampton" it suggests that by 1854 he was experimenting with combination printing from several negatives. He was a friend of photographer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better know by the nom de plume Lewis Carroll), who collected Rejlander's early child work and corresponded with him on technical matters. Rejlander later created one of the best known & most revealing portraits of Dodgson.
His early work only slightly sullied his later reputation, and he participated in the Paris Exhibition
Exposition Universelle (1855)
The Exposition Universelle of 1855 was an International Exhibition held on the Champs-Elysées in Paris from May 15 to November 15, 1855. Its full official title was the Exposition Universelle des produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855.The exposition was a major...
of 1855. In 1857 he made his best-known allegorical work, The Two Ways of Life. This was a seamlessly montage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
d combination print made of thirty-two images (akin to the use of Photoshop today, but then far more difficult to achieve) in about six weeks. First exhibited at the Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, the work shows two youths being offered guidance by a patriarch
Patriarch
Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...
. Each youth looks toward a section of a stage-like tableaux vivant - one youth is shown the virtuous pleasures and the other the sinful pleasures. The image's partial nudity was deemed 'indecent' by some - and those familiar with Rejlander's more commercial work might also suspect that prostitutes had been used as cheap models. But the 'indecency' faded when Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
ordered a 10-guinea copy to give to Prince Albert.
Despite this royal patronage, controversy about The Two Ways of Life in strait-laced Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in 1858 led to a secession of a large group from the Photographic Society of Scotland, the secessionists founding the Edinburgh Photographic Society in 1861. They objected to the picture being shown with one half of it concealed by drapes. The picture was later shown at the Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
Photographic Society with no such furore or censorship. However the Photographic Society of Scotland later made amends and invited Rejlander to a grand dinner in his honour in 1866, held to open an exhibition that included many of his pictures.
The success of The Two Ways of Life, and membership of the Royal Photographic Society
Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society is the world's oldest national photographic society. It was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the Art and Science of Photography...
of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, gave him an entree into London respectability. He moved his studio to Malden Road, London around 1862 and further experimented with double exposure
Double Exposure
Double exposure is a photographic technique in which two images are captured and combined into a single image.Double exposure may also refer to:* Double patterning, a technique for improving the resolution of patterning semiconductors...
, photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
, photographic manipulation and retouching. He became a leading expert in photographic techniques, lecturing and publishing widely, and sold portfolios of work through bookshops and art dealers. He also found subject-matter in London, photographing homeless London street children to produce popular 'social-protest' pictures such as "Poor Joe" and "Homeless".
He married Mary Bull in 1862, who was twenty-four years his junior. Mary had been his photographic model in Wolverhampton since she was aged 14.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson visited Rejlander's Malden Road studio in 1863 and was inspired to set up his own studio. Around 1863 Rejlander visited the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
and collaborated with Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
.
Some of Rejlander's images were purchased as drawing-aids to Victorian painters of repute, such as Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema. In 1872 his photography illustrated Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's classic treatise on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a book by Charles Darwin, published in 1872, concerning genetically determined aspects of behaviour. It was published thirteen years after On The Origin of Species and is, along with his 1871 book The Descent of Man, Darwin's main consideration...
and this association with Darwin lifted Rejlander out of the common run of Victorian photographers - his work became known by prominent scientists and intellectuals of the day, including Sir James Crichton-Browne
James Crichton-Browne
Sir James Crichton-Browne MD FRS was a leading British psychiatrist famous for studies on the relationship of mental illness to neurological damage and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health...
and Dr Hugh Diamond.
Rejlander became seriously ill from about 1874. He died in 1875 with several claims on his estate, and costly funeral expenses. The Edinburgh Photographic Society raised money for his widow on Rejlander's death, and helped set up the Rejlander Memorial Fund.
Rejlander's ideas and techniques were taken up by other photographers and this, to some extent, justifies labelling him as the father of art photography.
Further reading
- David Elliott (Ed.) Oscar Gustave Rejlander. 1813(?)-1875.. Modern Museum / Royal Photographic Society, Sweden, 1998. (A major exhibition catalogue, superbly printed)
- E.Y. Jones. Father of Art Photography: O.G. Rejlander 1813-75 (David & CharlesDavid & CharlesDavid & Charles is a publisher. The company was founded - and is still based - in the market town of Newton Abbot, in Devon, UK, on 1 April 1960 by David St John Thomas and Charles Hadfield. It first made its name publishing titles on Britain's canals and railways...
, 1973)
- Graham OvendenGraham OvendenGraham Ovenden is an English painter, fine art photographer, writer and architect. His estranged wife is the artist Annie Ovenden. Their daughter, Emily, is a writer and is a singer with the Mediaeval Baebes...
and Robert Melville. Victorian Children (Academy Editions, 1972)
External links
- Image Collection at George Eastman House
- Works of Rejlander at zeno.org
- Photohistory