Nineteenth Century Portraiture

19th century portrait photography. Portraiture involves depicting a human subject through the art of painting. The artist's function, though it was once open for debate, was both to capture the personality of the subject and to "improve upon nature." While this was so, the significance or prestige of the individual being depicted determined the level of exactness that was expected in the rendering of that individual's portrait. The search for an exact representation of the subject led Louis Daguerre to invent a mechanical method of capturing light on a flat surface. At that point, the photograph quickly became the medium of choice among those seeking and creating portraits. Included herein are links related specifically to 19th Century Portraiture.