A Russian Lady

Dallemagne, who trained as a painter under Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, pioneered the use of trompe l’oeil stucco frames when photographing portrait subjects. In 1866 he published a series of such images devoted to painters and sculptors, sometimes with their various attributes (the tools of their trades) spilling out of the decorative enclosures. By comparison, this portrait of an unknown woman is a model of elegant restraint. After the artist’s death, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (known as Nadar), who usually abhorred photographic frippery, acquired Dallemagne’s archive and integrated it into his own commercial catalogue. Nadar’s son, Paul, continued to reprint the work into the twentieth century.