Théophile Gautier
Nadar French
Not on view
Ringmaster, publicist, and performer in a highly theatrical life, the legendary Nadar wore many hats–those of journalist, bohemian, left-wing agitator, playwright, caricaturist, and aeronaut. He had success in all these roles, but what he did best was collect a pantheon of friends whom he honored with his generous and perceptive photographic portraits.
The subject of this portrait, Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), was a poet, novelist, and engaging critic of art and literature who also defined the theory of art for art's sake-art pursued for its own intrinsic perfection. In this portrait by his intimate friend, the hirsute and disheveled writer appears in his working clothes, an apt embodiment of Gautier's self-description as "the terror of the bald and beardless bourgeois."
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