ABSTRACT
The Role of Photography in Canadian Painting
1860-1900: Relationships between the Photographic Image and a Style of Realism in Painting
Ann Thomas
1976
This thesis is concerned with the formative role that
photography played in determining a style of realism in Canadian painting of the latter
half of the nineteenth century. In order to support this thesis it was necessary to
substantiate:
1) That photography was practiced widely in Canada: seen
as a model of visual authenticity and exerted a strong direct and indirect influence on
the painter.
2) That there was a propensity toward realism in Canadian
pain ting and that this realism embraced a literal and factual description of the object
but was not rooted in the ideological or theoretical concerns of French Realism or German
English or American Realism.
3) That photography was instrumental in defining this
style of realism in that it reinforced certain attitudes and provided a visual model of
realism.
In order to situate the Canadian problem within a
universal context, the various uses of the photograph in Europe and the United States are
discussed and a number of individual responses of painters toward photography described.
Return to the Main Listing
of Theses or
use your browser's BACK button to return to the previous page
