What was the relationship that developed between early photography and painting?

Answer 1

The relationship between painting and early Photography was complex and soon led to development of a proto-agricultural photography fairly early on after the invention of cameras and photography in the mid-19thy century. Adrien Tournachon's Paris studio photographs of farm animals as much as William Henry Fox Talbot's Pencil of Nature photographs of a haystack and door to a farmhouse in Britain heralded the coming of agricultural photography by two countries.

Many early photographers were also painters and painting suggested artistic conventions of recording and depicting animals, landscapes and farm scenes to photographers - photography became the new pre-eminent mode of the visual agricultural record of agricultural subjects, themes and elements.

Answer 2

Photography and cameras have had a profound affect on painting, starting at least as early as the 15th Century. As a tool, a very ancient device called the Camera Obscura (Latin for dark chamber or room) was used by artists to project an image of a scene outside onto the opposite wall (either a pinhole or a simple convex lens could be used). The artist in the dark chamber could trace the projected image to get more accurate spatial perspective than previously possible.

Whenever any new technology is developed there is always a fear that the new will totally supplant the old. Painters were undoubtedly initially concerned that their art would no longer be needed or wanted, depriving them of a livelihood. For example, when television was invented, it was immediately announced that it would utterly replace both radio and movies. It has done neither. When chemical photography was invented in the early 19th Century, the "conventional wisdom" was that it heralded the doom of painting. It has never done so, nor do I believe it ever will. But many painters were, and continue to be quick to utilize photography as a tool. One of my favorite examples is the great American realist painter Thomas Eakins. Eakins was not only a gifted painter, but he often started a work with a photograph or series of photographs that he would make to conceptualize his idea. He was also influenced in his own work by Edweard Muybridge, who pioneered motion studies in photography. Muybridge's photographs of running horses had a profound influence on painters and sculptors who could render more realistic horses than ever before.

But why paint when you can point? If for only one reason, paintings are far more permanent than most photographs, especially color. There is a reason why governors and presidents are immortalized in paintings. They are of course photographed as well, many, many times, but nothing replaces the Official Painted Portrait, expected to last for centuries, which nowadays is often painted by the artist from a series of … photographs.

Answer 3

When photography started, many painters took advantage of photos for portraits, facial detail, etc. Helping to eliminate the need for the persn in the protrait to spend hours sitting and poseing. Later also lanscape artists would find it much easier to just take a camera, and tke some photos, then useing the photos to do the painting in a study, rather then carriying a easle,canvas,paints etc. to some remote place off in the country, or where ever.

Included in the related links are some painings, all which were done useing photos for reference, and another I found right here on this site, via Google.