Jules Janin

Nadar

ca. 1856 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

Jules Janin (1804–1874) was a theater critic who amused himself and his regular Monday readers with his vagabond imagination, capricious humor, and remarkably mobile opinions. Unsure, impressionable, and unfaithful in his passions, this patronizing man made enemies as easily as Nadar made friends. Still, his bubbly informal observations sometimes captured the ephemeral essence of the metropolis. Nadar's opinion of the critic is plain. The wellpadded, proud, expansive little man rises in the picture space like a hot-air balloon-a dreamy inflated self with a hollow interior.

Artist

Nadar

Date

ca. 1856

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005