The Artists- From a French-American Parallel Universe

I have been an artist for all of my life- professionally for over 50 years. After a great deal of time, I finally earned an art degree. They required me to study Art History in all three colleges I attended, so I got a healthy dose of Art History which was about to come in very handy. As I discovered these tintypes around ten years ago, all sold by one seller, it was like stepping back into history... or a parallel universe. That's what it will have to be for now. If you can manage to suspend your BELIEF! One of the most funny things which happened in this adventure was my very first Dop. I came upon a lovely face (above) which appeared to me to be a dead-ringer of Adah Isaacs Menken, the most scandalous actress of the Civil War era. SO SURE of this acquisition, I eagerly dug deeper. In the end, according to my Q-5 analysis, she turned out to be just a Dop! I HATE being wrong. But I love research and discovery, so I did not give up.

Two of the earliest tintypes I bought from this dealer were of Americans who represented Victorian culture. Martha Maxwell, (above on left) a Colorado hunter, artist and taxidermist who displayed her taxidermy at the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876, and Joaquin Miller (above on right), a popular California poet and storyteller, and his wife. THIS WAS THE FORTUITOUS AND ESSENTIAL CLUE: The Ebay seller had unidentified images representing a broad spectrum of cultural personalities, SOME WHICH MIGHT BE WORTH SOME MONEY. Or, even more bizarre, a HUGE collection of their look-alikes! Once I knew which universe I was flying in, I began to hallucinate! Seriously, knowing that the collection might be of artists, writers and poets, etc, told me to THINK ARTISTS, WRITERS AND POETS. Once I knew, then the Internet would help to identify many more images of persons outside of my knowledge base! Their faces would be streaminng by as I searched in Google for the person whom I recognized. I had to learn too slow down and pay attention. If I was correct in my presumptions, I could expect to find (perhaps) Mark Twain, or Winslow Homer, or any number of persons who literally shaped our American culture!

This is Julie Manet in the middle (daughter of the French Impressionist Berthe Morisot), about eighteen years old, who sometimes modeled for Pierre Auguste Renoir, seated next to her close friend Genevieve Mallarme, (Julie lived in the Mallarme home after both of her parents died) and two noted American artists. The one on the left is a dead-ringer for Edward Darley Boit, a watercolorist then living in Paris, and on the right is Childe Hassam, the leader of the American Impressionist movement. It was Boit who commissioned another artist friend, John Singer Sargent to paint his children, in what became one of Sargent's greatest masterpieces, entitled The Daughters of Edward Doiley Boit, which has a cryptic legend of its own. It appears the two young women were showing the emerging American artist and his friend around Paris, and stepped into a studio to have the memento made.

A second find of Childe Hassam from the same collection- sitting proud in what looks like Paris. He was there several times, this photograph was probably made in 1896. I call this kind of "catch" a Grand Slam Dop. And they defy all odds. What are the odds of finding an antique tintype, featuring two obscure artists and two young artist's models from two continents, all persons who MIGHT have actually known each other, all associated with the French Impressionists??? And all of them match beautifully with at least 95% alignment according to Q-5. And mind you, finding doppelgangers of these individuals in one photograph would be much more unlikely. You see what I mean about suspending your belief! Its hard to remember that technically, they are only "doppelgangers," from a parallel universe.

I could hardly imagine what I was beginning: a decade long project, where I would find many more such look-alikes, and eventually acquire a collection of over one thousand images. (Many for aesthetic or educational reasons) After the dust settled, I estimate that around one hundred are rare, early photographs of famous historical persons.

While researching Ada Menken, (who turned out to be a Dop!) very soon I came upon Google’s brilliant offerings of her associates in Image Search, providing ironically precious clues to my successful search; A Lotta Crabtree look-alike, a Joaquin Miller, advertised as “well-dressed couple, man with brimmed hat,” then some of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), and members of the Clemens family and other American actresses, often just entitled “woman in nice dress.” How could this be? What was this collection, originally? How was it accumulated? What wealth of totally unidentified photographic history was floating around for sale on Ebay? I poured over this seller’s site like a diamond digger! Most of them turned out to be very close matches for the persons they resembled. Katherine Kelso Cassatt (above) was the mother of Mary Cassatt, perhaps the most famous American woman artist. The title of the book she holds, The Practical Painter, seems to be a subtle message to her daughter... who had leaped, devil may care, into the new art movement in France considered by many to be a fruitless rebellion. Below is American artist Herbert Draper with his wife and the French portraitist Eva Gonzales.

This tintype of Renoir with his former model/now too plump wife Aline, is unusual because very few photographs exist of artists posing with their models. The very young women seen here, (school girls!) look very much like two famous artist's models, but before they were known as such. The Renoirs always had unrelated girls and young women about their home and studio... and even their vacation homes. House guests, nannys, their own chilldren... were all convenient and cheap models. The Renoirs were known to entertain groups of girls, and they even built a barn to house all of the extra house guests. Julie Manet, her cousins Paule and Jeannie Gobillard, and the Reviere sisters were some of the more notable. Suzanne Valadon not only posed for Renoir, but for also for Lautrec and Manet, and remained a friend of Lili Grenier, and while Grenier became a very popular artist's model, Suzanne became ... an artist! For suspicious reasons, Valadon became a sort of popular mascot of the Impressionists and other more avant-garde artists, who often provided her financial support, and sometiimes heavy-handed promotion of her art. From my discovery of the tintype of Julie Manet with the other art personalities, most of them probably made in France, I knew to be on the look-out for Julie's mother, one of the most venerated female artists in the world- Berthe Morisot. And then one night there she was, the love of my art soul, the one woman who could have given my wife a run for the money; Berthe Morisot!

There she was, tense and square-jawed as usual, in a late 1860’s get up, sitting with what turned out to be her "sculpture mentor," Aime Millet, (only lasted a few months) when she was in her early twenties. The couple sat quite close appearing to be something more than master and apprentice... Regardless, they are the very image of the Royal Couple of French Art! She wears what appears to be an engagement ring… which causes some pause. Was she engaged to Aime Millet, a man twenty years her senior? Did her very proper parents break it up? We shall never know, but she was not married when she appeared later in Paris social circles. My guess is that IF there was some kind of engagement, the relationship only lasted long enough to pose for this picture. Peculiarly, Millet was never mentioned much in her biographies, and perhaps by design. But all was not lost. Berthe did learn to sculpt, and made a very respectable bust of her daughter Julie. Then again, on a positive note, this might be the engagement photo of a couple of love-struck doppelgangers who lived happily ever after!

The face or Dop of Berthe was such an excellent match, I did not care if it was her, but soon other tintypes came along, same seller, several group pictures with her in them. I could not believe it. This research occupied me for some time, trying to know her, trying to be able to identify the others in the photographs. At the time, I was unable to do so, and moved on. A decade later the Internet had a great deal more imagery in it to help my research, and the answers eventually came. When I developed the Q-5 technique, my doubts vanished. These were the most precious photographic "doppelgangers" in Art History; Images and details of the heroes of France, never seen in 140 years, revealing much that we had never imagined. Or they were a staggeringly uncanny stream of coincidences.

Berthe Morisot posing with Jeanne Gonzales, a favorite model of the accomplished French portraitist, (and her sister) Eva Gonzales. The tintype below posed a special challenge. Berthe Morisot was easily recognized, but the others not so much. I have never identified the man, but believe it might be her brother Tiburce. On her left is Berthe's cousin and one of her first repeated models, Marguerite Carre. Recently excellent photographs were sold on Ebay which gave me the affirmation that the older woman is Cornelie, her mother. But the Morisot epiphanies were not over!

This double portrait also took a decade to figure out. I was, and am still convinced the lady on the left is Berthe Morisot, but the angle of her head makes my Q-5 process useless, with no exisiting photographs of her from that angle. For comparison, above in the same illustration there is a self-portrait Morisot did which certainly adds credence to my proposal. [NOTE: Berthe had a thing about chins, and in the famous double portrait from which this was extracted, supposedly of her and her sister Edma, I think it may be cousin Marguerite sitting in for Edma! She gave them both mammoth chins, far larger than reality. I have digitally corrected her chin here for comparison purposes.] There were however, portraits of Berthe by her sister Edma and her close friend, Edouard Manet, which aid in the identification as well. It was not until recently that I learned about the Carre sisters and their having modeled for Berthe Morisot very early in her painting career. Berthe would often set up and paint them as they socialized in the Carre home. Again, without any photographs to compare, all I can offer are the many portraits Morisot painted, mysteriously titled "Madmoiselle M," perhaps suggesting her cousin Marguerite, who compares very favorably to the young woman sitting with her in this tintype.

ARE YOU GETTING EXCITED YET? Go ahead, it's either a wonderful unveiling of Art History, or the most incredible aggregation of uncanny coincidences in history! And there are many more. Importantly, we are seeing the social fabric of the French artists, their famillies, even some of their secrets, and especially their muses and models, as celebrated persons in the art process. If these images could be authenticated, they would inspire volumes. AND EVENTUALLY, MOST OF THE EAGLES OF THE IMPRESSIONIST MOVEMENT CAME IN TO ROOST!

Perhaps the most significant tintype to emerge from this collection was this one of Edouard Manet, a short man with giant ambitions and an equal legacy in the French art scene. Here he stands with two of the closest persons to him, his younger brother on the right and his best friend, the equally famous composer, Emmanuel Chabrier. Edouard and Emmanuel were the vanguards of modern culture, at least according to their peers. No less than Henri Fantin-Latour, the impeccable portraitist, portrayed them surrounded by adoring friends, all important in their own right to French culture. Each is placed as the epicenter of his sphere of influence. For a critical time in history, they were the commanders of the avant garde.