The extent to which Gottfried Lindauer used photography for his portraits was thought to be limited to an aid for sketching, but recent examination of two Pākehā portraits has revealed that the artist also painted directly over photographic images.
Lindauer's painting technique did not alter significantly during
his career in New Zealand. To a large extent he appears to
have continued to follow the practices he had learnt while a
student at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna. This involved
sketching out the image in pencil on a white ground and then
applying transparent glazes over the surface to create an illusion
of depth. Lindauer was particularly skilled in this process,
producing portraits that are strikingly life-like. The
infrared images taken of works in the Partridge Collection clearly
reveal the pencil under-drawing, and show a confident style with an
accuracy that might have been difficult to achieve if he had not
also been working from photographs. It also appears that he
projected the images onto the canvas using an epidiascope
as forms are outlined, rather than drawn in.
The idea that Lindauer might also have painted directly onto
photographs is not new and in 1965, Auckland Art Gallery restorer,
Mr Les Lloyd, was reported to have found a photograph under one of
the artist's oil paintings on board from a private collection.1 Unfortunately the details of
this discovery have been lost and it was only this year that we
have had the opportunity to examine two paintings by the artist
that appeared to have a photographic base.
Gottfried
Lindauer, The Very Rev. De Berdt Hovell, 1896, private
collection
The portraits of The Very Rev. De Berdt Hovell 1896 and
Mrs Emily Hovell 1897 (both from a private collection) are
painted directly on thin cardboard rather than primed canvas, and
the paint application is uneven compared to other paintings by
Lindauer. In raking light, it appears as if only the highlights
have been painted and there are tiny traction cracks and voids in
the surrounding paint. These are also unusual as Lindauer's
painting are generally fairly stable. In addition, under
infrared, the paintings were found to be grainy and photographic in
appearance, with no pencil lines. This is not to say that
there was any doubt that these paintings were authentic, but that
the artist had used a different technique and taken advantage of a
new technology.
Raking
light detail (Rev. Hovell)
Painters started to use photography to aid accuracy, which was
particularly important for portraits, and to speed up the painting
process. In conjunction with the camera lucida and other
optical devices with a lens and a mirror, it was possible to
project an image onto another surface. An image by Louis John
Steele on loan to the Sarjeant Gallery appears to be painted using
a photographic image so Lindauer was not alone in using this type
of technology in New Zealand.2
We had reason to believe that the photographs used for these
Lindauer paintings are albumen prints, as this was the dominant
medium for commercial portraiture from the 1860s to the 1890s.
Infrared detail
(Rev. Hovell)
Commercially available albumen papers came in various sizes and
could be cut down by the photographer for special use. Cabinet
prints in the size of 5 ½ x 4 inches to 6 ½ x 4 ¾ inches were most
commonly used for larger portraits, but are not quite big enough
for the Lindauer paintings under discussion. It is possible that a
larger paper size usually reserved for landscape photography was
used for the portraits. The pre-coated papers had to be sensitised
by the photographer with a silver nitrate solution reasonably close
to being used, as sensitivity diminished after the coating was
applied. Albumen papers were extremely thin and delicate and had to
be pasted down onto card or a heavy backing to protect them, as
most commonly seen in cartes-de-visite.
Microscopic examination of the portraits of Rev. and Mrs Hovell
reveals that in unpainted areas such as the left ear, paper fibres
of the photograph below are visible, a known characteristic for
identifying albumen prints. We assume that Lindauer cut out the
face from a photograph that was provided to him and adhered it to
the cardboard (faced backing board) that was used for each portrait
of the Hovells. The close association of Lindauer with the
photographic studio of the Foy Brothers in Thames has been explored
by Ken Hall in Early New Zealand Photography.
However, at the time this portrait was painted, The Very Rev. De
Berdt Hovell was Dean of Napier Cathedral, which geographically
links him to the studio of photographer Samuel Carnell. Lindauer
also used Carnell's studio portraits of Māori sitters for his
paintings.3
But how were we to confirm whether the painting was on a
photograph or not? We were reluctant to take samples from
such a thinly painted work in such good condition.
Fortunately, we had access to a hand-held X-ray fluorescent unit
supplied by Bruker AXS from the United States.4 The use of this instrument
allowed us to do non-destructive elemental analysis of the paint
layers. If silver was found, this would prove that a
photographic image was beneath the oil paint, as it is not used in
paintings. Just to be sure, we tested another Lindauer
painting on canvas from the Gallery collection painted in 1896, the
same year as the portrait of Rev. Hovell. The portrait of
Whetoi Pomare had clear pencil lines under the paint when
viewed by infrared and as predicted, had a negative result for
silver. In comparison, silver was clearly identified in the
shadows of the faces of The Very Rev. De Berdt Hovell and
Mrs Emily Hovell, which is where the photographic image
would have been particularly dense. This confirmed our theory
that the portraits had indeed been painted on photographs.
Sarah Hillary, Principal Conservator, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o
Tāmaki and Ute Larsen, Works on Paper Conservator, Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
References
'Foy Brothers' portrait of Ana Reupene Whetuki and child' by Ken
Hall in Early New Zealand Photography, Edited by Angela
Wanhalla and Erika Wolf, Otago University Press, 2011
Acknowledgements
Bruce Kaiser, Bruker AXS Inc, USA
Heike Winkelbauer, Conservator, Auckland Museum
The owners of the Lindauer portraits The Very Rev. De Berdt
Hovell and Mrs Emily Hovell