Impressionist Portraiture: A Study in Context and Meaning

The dual nature of portraits as both likeness and artwork would seem to render portraiture antithetical to an art of expression. The impressionists, whose artworks affirm their particular and subjective experiences of the modern world, nevertheless painted and exhibited numerous portraits. This suggests that a public presentation of portraiture advanced the painters' position as independents. Through an examination of portraiture from the standpoints of audience, sitter, and artist, this dissertation investigates the social and aesthetic issues raised by this genre of impressionist painting. The dissertation commences with an analysis of the portrait's reformulation in the nineteenth century as a result of shifting ideas about resemblance in painting and photography. I demonstrate that the dissemination and popularization of physiognomical treatises, caricatures and the studies of mores known as the Physiologies provided a shared knowledge of reading codes between artist and audience which affected two key figural traditions of the nineteenth century, generalized types and particularized individuals. Both traditions figure into romantic and realist portraiture, indicating that impressionist portrait practices were embedded in dialogues which spanned the nineteenth century. Since the sitters in impressionist portraits belonged to the bourgeoisie, I discuss the impact of this group on the market and form of portraiture. Starting with a discussion of the changes wrought by the bourgeoisie on painted and photographic portraits, I investigate the configurations and motivations of the sitters in impressionist portraits. Subsequently, I analyze the strategies of specific artists with respect to the portrait--Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot--by considering their choice and presentation of sitters, marketing and exhibition of these works. The dissertation concludes with a semiotic reading which elucidates the central paradox of impressionist portraiture, the depiction of a likeness in a self-expressive mode. I demonstrate the inadequacy of prevailing interpretive strategies by mapping out how manipulations of space, figure-ground relationship, and touch result in the displacement of the traditional positions occupied by viewer, subject, and artist. Finally, I argue that these alterations require a contextualized reading of visual codes in portraiture.