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Portrait of Jean-Gabriel and Anna Eynard with Madame Charrière

Creator

Swiss Daguerreotypist · 1775–1863

Jean-Gabriel Eynard was a wealthy amateur photographer who made photographs chiefly for his own amusement. He learned the daguerreotype process in Paris in the early 1840s, not long after the invention of the process was announced in 1839. His financial independence afforded him the time and ability to practice photography, which in its infancy was an expensive pastime and difficult to master. Ass

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Date: 1847–1850
Medium: Daguerreotype
Culture: Swiss
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

In Jean-Gabriel Eynard's numerous portraits with his wife, he seems to have directed her to assume a habitual pose. Here, as usual, she sits with her elbow propped on a table, her gaze directed at her husband. Closely framed and intimate, the portrait's formal elegance derives from its tight composition of interlocking triangles, varied patterns, and a severe background. Oddly, Eynard seems not to have made solo portraits of his wife as he did of himself and of Jean Rion. Most of his portraiture was devoted to groupings of sitters, which he took pains to arrange informally.

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