Nadar

Gaspard-Felix Tournachon , known as Nadar , was born the April 6th 1820 with Paris and died the March 21st 1910 in the same city. He was a caricaturist, Aérostier and photographer French.

He published starting from 1854 a series of photographic portraits of the contemporary celebrities among whom Franz Liszt, Charles Baudelaire, Hector Berlioz, Gioacchino Rossini, Sarah Bernhardt, Jacques Offenbach, George Sand, Gerard de Nerval, Guy of Maupassant, Edouard Manet, Gustave Doré, Gustave Courbet, Loïe Fuller, Hector de Sastres, the brothers Elisee Reclus and Élie Reclus of which he was the friend and Jean-Baptiste Corot.

Biography

Its youth

Large, the russet-red, frightened eyes, odd hair (its currency is Nevertheless ) with wandering youth. He is defined itself as “ a true breakage-neck, touch-with-all, badly high until calling the things by their name, and people also ”.

His/her parents were of Lyons origin. His/her father, Victor Tournachon, were printer and bookseller and had settled in the capital. The Gaspard-Felix young person attends various boarding schools of the Paris region, whereas his/her father knows reverses of fortune. He studies then with the Lycée Condorcet.

In 1837, with died of his/her father, Gaspard-Felix begins studies of medicine to Lyon; however without financial support he sees himself obliged to give up it for gaining the daily bread his family, of which he has from now on the load and who includes/understands his mother and his young younger brother, Adrien Tournachon, younger five years.

He works in various draftings of Lyons newspapers, before returning to settle with Paris, where he carries out various work in small sheets . Burning the stages, it founds, in collaboration with Polydore Millaud, a newspaper legal, entitled the Audience and attends the medium of artistic youth, popularized by the novel of Murger: Scenes of the bohemian life . It begins with there côtoyer characters like Gerard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire and Theodore de Banville. His/her friends artists, call it Tournadar because of its practice to add at the end of each word of its sentences the termination dar , in a completely whimsical way, then an abbreviation transforms this tic into Pseudonyme Nadar . The life is very hard and there remains by using various expédients; he writes novels, draws caricatures. Thanks to the financial aid of a friend, it launches out, at nineteen years, in the adventure of the creation of a prestigious review, the book of gold , of which he becomes editor association. Thanks to its knowledge, it makes sure collaboration of characters like Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, Gerard de Nerval, Gavarni and Daumier. Unfortunately the adventure is obliged to stop with the ninth number, in spite of a success of regard.

The caricaturist

After this failure, Gaspard-Felix takes again service in the gazettes as caricaturist. It is at the time of a training course of drawing to the satirical newspaper the Corsair-Satan that he discovers the litho and gives up the feather. The day before the revolution of 1848, it obtains the dedication with its first drawing-load published in the newspaper the Hullabaloo .

The March 30th 1848, it engages with his/her brother in the Polish legion, to carry help to the Poland. Its passport is in the name of Nadarsky . It is made prisoner and put at the labor in a mine, then it refuses free repatriation and returns to foot. Two months later, it will be of return to Paris, capped of a Chapka of color currant, after a long voyage at the time which it was stopped in Saxony by representatives of the Prussian government.

Quickly after its return, it is contacted to be put at the service of the provisional government, and it is engaged like secret agent by the editor Jules Hetzel, then chief of the cabinet of the Foreign Minister. Its unsatiated thirst for adventures, in spite of its Polish experiment, it leaves to get information about the Russian troop movements at the Prussian border.

Of return to Paris, it takes again its activities of caricaturist near small newspapers , however its fame is established little by little, and starting from 1851, it harnesses with a great project of Musée of contemporary glories , for which, with the assistance of several collaborators, it meets the great men of the moment in order to draw them. The whole of this work, concerns more than three hundred great men of the time on a total of more than 1 000 labels and constitutes the Pantheon which will bring notoriety to him, under the name of the Pantheon de Nadar in four layers.

The photographer

Its new ease enables him to move in on the last floor of a building of the Rue Saint-Lazare, where it can have a workshop profiting from the natural light. It is in this studio that its masterpieces will be carried out, continuing the work of the portraits, undertaken with the caricature, but now continued with a novel method: the Photography.

As from this time, the technique of carried is controlled and work is of quality. The prices evolve/move with the fall. Many studios open and the personalities - elites of the world of arts, the letters but also of the policy, the theater and even of the Church - perhaps attracted by their narcissistic side, do not hesitate “to be made draw the portrait”. These are these works that one finds in the paper makers in the form of prints and of photographs.

In 1854, it Marie with Ernestine, young woman resulting from a rich person Protestant family, but in spite of the marriage, it continues to offer hospitality to his/her many friends, as at the time of the Bohème. At that time, Nadar scrambles themselves with his/her younger brother, who was him also launched, with his support, in the trade of photographer-portraitist, but wanted to also use the name of “ Nadar ”. It followed a lawsuit.

Nadar wishes that the apparatus of photography be able from now on to be carried outside and travels from there, as easily as the rest of the painter, it will also start to try out the photography embarked in a balloon, it was thus also, as of 1858 the pioneer of air photography, with its sights of the Petit Bicêtre. Daumier represented operative Nadar with difficulty during an air rise, with this premonitory legend: Nadar, raising photography with the height of Art .

In 1860, lack place, Nadar moves Rue Saint-Lazare with the Boulevard of the Nasturtiums. It makes install with the pediment of its building an immense sign, drawn by Antoine Lumière and lit with gas. This year, impassioned for all the new techniques, it starts to try out the various possibilities which photography can offer to him, in particular the photograph with the artificial light of which he will be the pioneer.

In April 1874, the first exposure of the impressionist painters occurs in its studio. One often allotted the organization of it to him; in fact, it was about its old studio which he rented. It is also possible, but not proven, that it asked its tenant to shelter the impressionists, but he was not in any case the organizer of the exposure.

After the destruction of her red workshop, his wife finances and manages, with 20 people, aristocratic the , Rue of the Suburb-Saint-Honore.

Nadar fustigated the guns of representation and, nauseated by the evolution of the production scoffs its competitors, which are satisfied “with an about single format, singularly practical for space at our middle-class residences. Without dealing differently with the provision of the lines according to the point of view most favorable to the model, nor of the expression of its face, either that way in which the light lights all that. One installed the customer in an invariable place, and one obtained from him a single stereotype, tern and gray with go-like-I-you-pushes”.

Ballooning

Very curious about the technical innovations of its time, it launched out with passion in the world of the balloons.

In 1858, it carries out the first air Photographie of Paris, since a Tethered balloon with 80 meters of altitude, with the top of the Small-Bicêtre . It is obliged to reduce to the maximum and its horizontal guillotine cannot embark.

The adventures of Nadar will inspire Jules Verne for Five weeks in balloon writes in 1862. One of the heroes of Of the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon - Romance appeared in 1865 and 1869 - and is called besides Michel Ardan, Anagramme of Nadar.

Here like Jules Verne describes it: It is a 42 year old man, large, but arched a little already, as these caryatids which carry balconies on their shoulders. Its head strong, true head of lion, shook per moments a burning hair, which made him a true mane. A short, broad face with the temples, decorated of a roughcast moustache as the barbs of a cat and small a little mislaid bouquets, a short-sighted glance, complémentaient this eminently cat-like aspect.

In 1863, it founds the Société of encouragement of the aerial navigation by means of heaviest that the air . It makes build an immense balloon, “the Giant”, high of 40 meters and container 6 000 m ³ of gas. October 4th, the first flight of the Giant takes place in Paris with 13 people on board. The balloon loses height quickly and lands in Meaux, with less than 100 kilometers of Paris. It sets out again on October 18th with his wife. In the surroundings of Hanover, the balloon lands hard and is involved on 16 kilometers. Nadar and his wife are seriously wounded. She remains hemiplegic. Other attempts will take place but without discounted public success, the passengers were to allow him the profitability of the business. Nadar must thus stop the adventure of the Géant for lack of money.

It founds in 1867 with others impassioned like him, the review the aeronaut .

In 1870 - 1871, at the time of the head office of Paris by the Germans, it constitutes of his own boss the “Company of Balloon pilots” with Camille Dartois and Jules Duruof of which the goal is the construction of military balloons to place them at the disposal of the government. They establish a camping on the Saint-Pierre place, with the foot of the hillock Montmartre, where is born the airmail from the seat. The balloons made it possible to supervise the enemy, to establish cartographic statements and also to convey mail. Nadar baptizes its ballons : George-Sand , the Armand-Barbs and the Louis-White . It is on board the Armand-Barbs that Leon Gambetta, Minister of Interior Department, leaves Paris the October 7th 1870 to regain Tours in order to organize resistance to the enemy there.

On the whole, 66 balloons will be built between the September 23rd 1870 and the January 28th 1871 which will transport 11 tons of mail, is 2,5 million letters. Five of the balloons will be captured by the enemy. This first mass production of Aircraft S, marks officially the birth of the Aircraft industry. Two “factories” had been installed in the requisitioned stations of railroad: the Godard brothers at the station of Lyon and Dartois and Yon at the station of North.

With the fall of the mode of Napoleon III, it revolutionarily installs “ ” its company in the district of Montmartre on the place Saint-Pierre even. With two machines, the “ Neptune ” and the “ Strasbourg ”, it will be charged to study displacements of the enemy.

End of its life

After the episode of the Commune, Nadar is found completely ruined and starts again an activity in photography, but to realize above all work which ensures its subsistence to him.

In 1886, it accompanies his/her son Paul Tournachon who must carry out an interview of the chemist Eugene Chevreul, and benefits from it to take photographs. This double work, published the September 5th in the illustrated Newspaper can certainly be regarded as the first illustrated report carried out at the same time as the journalistic maintenance of which it ensures the illustration.

In 1887, it settles with the manor of the Hermitage of the Forêt of Sénart where it accommodates his friends in the need, until in 1894. It is then ruined and sick, but wandering and peaceful. This same year, at the 77 years age, Nadar decides to try its chance again. It leaves with his son the management of his business in Paris, and founds with Marseilles a photographic workshop. Nadar, “ senior of the French photographers ” becomes in the area of Marseilles a true glory and binds friendship with the writer Frederic Mistral.

In 1900, it triumphs, with the World Fair of Paris, with a retrospective of its work, organized by his/her son.

In 1904, Nadar returns to Paris to die there the March 21st 1910 at a few days of its 90 years.

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