Inspiration and the pose - preparatory photographs by Jacques de Lalaing, circa 1884-1914

 

Jacques de Lalaing was a painter and, even more, a sculptor. These preparatory photographs, all now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, were taken during different sessions but using the same model. I have no idea what works the studies may have contributed to; perhaps a scholar of de Lalaing's work could match photographs with finished pieces. And, unsurprisingly, I have no idea who the model was. But he's graceful and beautifully proportioned, and it's easy to see why he would be a favorite of the artist.

But to me the real "art" here, the real artist, is time and decay. Along with the original careless printing, the spots and smudges, the rough and skewed edges, are all the random and exquisite changes that time has wrought on the fragile paper. The subtle and shifting variations of color and tone, shadow and light. And then the images that have faded to almost nothing, the vivid figure, the flesh and blood man gone to ghost. But isn't it somehow become more, now, become the beauty of ruin, of time and impermanence.