the same features, the same hair, the same moustache, the same neck-tie. If itisnecessary to go further and look for more links, they exist.'About 1884, in his studio in the ruedesBeaux-Arts, Fantin-Latour and agroup of friends conducted experiments in photography using artificial light.One of them was most enthusiastic about everything concerning photography,he `tried to take us in the evening by magnesium flash and only succeeded,most times, in getting pictures where almost everyone had abruptly shut theireyes'.Those evenings at Fantin's coincided with the execution of his paintingAutourdupiano(Salon of 1885), in which at least two of these friends appear. The kindof lighting reproduced in the painting corresponds very closely to the strongtonal contrasts to be found in portrait photographs taken by magnesium light,and its overall appearance may be said to be photographic (27). Reviewing theSalon of 1885, thejournalamusantdescribed itThe audience are grouped around a piano. Intimate scene. Very powerful interpre-tation of nature. But one flaw: they all appear fixed in that pose caused by the`hold it a second' command of the photographer.It is not known when Fantin first interested himself in photography, but hisearlier portraits - the self-portrait 0f 1858, theHommaged Delacroix (c.1864),theAtelierauxBatignolles(c.1870) - are all strongly photographic in character.Fantin's portrait ofManet,painted in 1867, might easily be taken for a photo-graph (28) ; his late portrait entitledSonia(18go)is hardly distinguishable fromone. There can be little doubt that Fantin owed something to the camera. Inboth his portraits and studies of still-life he-scrupulously eschews all obviouspersonal or conventional manipulation of the paint, as though to emulate theanonymous surface uniformity of the photograph. Similarly his colour isfrequently modulated within a narrow range of greytonalities.17MANETTo what extent the sharp tonal style in Manet's painting can be attributed tophotography is a matter for speculation. There were, of course, other sourcestoo from which the artist may have drawn some inspiration, corroborating atleast what was already a stylistic propensity in his work. The most obvious oneis in seventeenth-century Spanish painting; interest in that period was muchrevived by the middle of the nineteenth century. Baudelaire's comparison of hisrelation to Poe with Manet's to Goya does not exclude the possibility that hegot something from Poe and Manet from Goya, even though their initialattractions to those figures depended on ideas already germinating in theminds and works of both poet and painter.26 (pelota).Daninirr:Don(yixoteandSanrhoPanza.t.1860.(()ilonpanv1,grisaille)27 (bottom). Fantin-Latour:Autourdupiano.188428 (right). Fantin-Latour: PortraitofÉdouardManet. 186764Manet's teacher, Thomas Couture, employed the same tonal juxtapositionsas his pupil, and Japanese prints with their flat areas of colour, solid blacks andcomplete absence of tonal modelling, may also have conditioned Manet's style.One will probably never know what exactly produced the initial impulsetowards this characteristic in Manet's work but photography's role must be ofsome significance.It has been mentioned that photographs by artificial light were not the onlyones in which such a tonal characteristic appeared. Many of those taken instrong sunlight with ordinary plates, before the development of ortho- or pan-chromatic emulsions especially, also contained this feature. Several of Talbot'searly views of outdoor subjects are good cases in point, and similar examples inFrance are easily found. Manet, without doubt, knew of such photographs, andof Nadar's experiments with artificial light. By about î86o he was acquaintedwith artists who used photographs. One of Manet's etched portraits ofBaudelaire was made from a Nadar photograph of the writer taken by artificiallight in 1859 (29,30).Here, Manet intensified the already considerable darkand light contrasts of the photograph, with little attempt to model the structural30.Mane1:29.Nadar:PortraitofCharlesBaudelaire.1859Portrait o/ Charles Baudelaire.1865(etching)forms still visible in the shadowed side of the head in the photograph. Contem-porary artists, it has been said, called Nadar's artificially lighted portraits`plaster heads', because the highlights in the face and hands appeared asbrilliant as the shirts and cuffs.Manetis known to have used photographs on other occasions. His portraitetching of Edgar Allan Poe was done from an American daguerreotype. It wasprobably intended to illustrate Baudelaire's translation of theHistoiresextra-ordinairesd'EdgarPoe, first published in 1856.Manet'snote toIsabelleLemonnier in 188o asking for her photographs sothat ` I can catch you more surely when I want to do a sketch' suggests thatsome of his water-colour portraits of her, executed that summer, were madedirectly from photographs. The tonal characteristics of his portraits at the time,in his small painting of the actressJeannede Marsy entitledSpring(1881), forexample, and in the pastels of MmeJules Guillemetmade that same year, arephotographic in essence. There, the characteristics of the non-panchromaticemulsion occur. Lady Eastlake's juxtaposition of such photographs with thepaintings of the `Spanish school' was made with good reason. In Manet'sportraits, too, the darkest and lightest areas predominate and within them onlythe slightest modulations of tone are perceptible. In the brightest partscspe-31.Manel:Portraito.1.ilirvLaurent.1982(pastel)cially, the physiognomic structures are only implied by notations of delicate,evanescent tints high up in the tonal scale. This peripheral means of suggestingthe solidity of forms is a common feature in portrait photographs for which nospecial lightingeffectswere employed to render the volumes of the face morecomprehensible. It is clearly apparent, for example, in photographic portraitstaken of Manet and his friends. By utilizing this peculiarity intrinsic in thephotograph, by eliminating the whole range of middle tones, thus tending toflatten the forms, a very effective pictorial reconciliation could be brought aboutbetween the subtly articulated photographic image and the planar patterns ofJapanese prints.Manet's portraits ofWryLaurent, executed in 1881 and 1882, convey thesame tonality (31) and it is not surprising to learn that MiryLaurent accoudéewas made directly from a photograph, the picture in turn used as a