Abstract
Théophile Silvestre's Histoire des artistes vivants was the most important large-scale project of contemporary art critical biography of nineteenth-century France. Although it remained unfinished, it broke major new ground in the production of art criticism. It was the first publication to include photographic reproductions of paintings, and corresponding explicitly to the photographic process was an experimental text based on the direct quotation of the artists' own words. As a lawsuit in 1856 showed, this innovative “photographic” approach to image and text raised critical questions about the image and status of the modern artist in this formative period.
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