Roger Fenton
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Roger Fenton PASHA AND BAYADERE Roger Fenton PASHA AND BAYADERE Gordon Baldwin GETTY MUSEUM STUDIES ON ART Los ANGELES Christopher Hudson, Publisher Cover: Mark Greenberg, Managing Editor Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869). Pasha and Bayadere, 1858 [detail]. William Peterson, Editor Albumen print, 45 x 36.3 cm (17 "Ae x 14 V4 in.). Eileen Delson, Designer Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (84.XP.219.32). Jeffrey Cohen, Series Designer Stacy Miyagawa, Production Coordinator Frontispiece: Ellen Rosenbery Photographer Roger Fenton. Self-Portrait in Zouave Uniform, 1855. © 1996 The J. Paul Getty Museum Albumen print, 17.3 x 15.3 cm (6I3/i6 x 6 in.). 17985 Pacific Coast Highway Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (84.XM.io28.i7). Malibu, California 90265-5799 Mailing address: All works of art are reproduced (and photographs P.O. Box 2112 provided) courtesy of the owners unless otherwise Santa Monica, California 90407-2112 indicated. Library of Congress Typography by G 8i S Typesetters, Inc., Cataloging-in-Publications Data Austin, Texas Printed by C & C Offset Printing Co., Ltd., Baldwin, Gordon. Hong Kong Roger Fenton : Pasha and Bayadere / [Gordon Baldwin]. p. cm. (Getty Museum studies on art) ISBN 0-89236-367-3 i. Photography, Artistic. 2. Portrait photog- raphy. 3. Fenton, Roger, 1819-1869. I. Fenton, Roger, 1819-1869. II. Title. III. Series. TR652.B35 1996 77o'.092-DC20 96-1755 CIP CONTENTS Through Victorian Eyes: An Inventory of a Photograph i Etudes: Fenton and French Orientalism 22 Travelers' Notes and Poet's License: British Pictorial Orientalism 36 Eastern Photographs and Artistic Applications 53 Tableaux and Exotic Soldiery: Fenton's Earlier Photographs 72 The Orientalist Suite and Its Critical Reception 83 Notes 102 Acknowledgments 116 Final page folds out, providing a reference color plate of Pasha and Bayadere THROUGH VICTORIAN EYES: AN INVENTORY OF A PHOTOGRAPH If an average viewer had closely examined the picture on the facing page [FIGURE i and FOLDOUT] when it was first exhibited to the London public in January of 1859 at the sixth annual exhibition of the Photographic Society, and had both time and patience to make a detailed narrative description of its contents, perhaps as part of that Victorian compulsion to categorize and classify, the survey might have read something like that which follows here. (We will assume that our imaginary viewer had an education, a keen eye or a pocket glass, a certain knowledge of the contemporary world, an unrestrained freedom of expression, and few distractions from other people in the gallery, which in typical nineteenth-century fashion was crowded with pictures, hung at least three deep, and more likely five.1 We must also assume that the picture was hung at something like eye level.) Perhaps it's a rainy Tuesday morning and there is no one else on the premises but a ticket taker. As our viewer has chosen to come in the morning, he or she has a certain leisure and can afford both the somewhat higher price that is charged during the day, when visibility is usually better than during the gaslit evenings, and a program list- ing the titles of the pictures and their makers. On fishing a pencil from reticule or pocket, and if a woman, pushing her voluminous skirts to the side so that she can get as close to the glass as possible, our viewer begins: "The picture, obviously a photograph, is an upright rectangle of the usual reddish browns and creams. At first glance it shows three figures closely grouped together in an interior. In the center there is a bearded fellow sitting on a low divan and gazing alertly and appreciatively upward to the right, toward an exotically dressed woman, who is evidently dancing, as her hands are held high over her head and there are finger cymbals dangling from their tips. No lady Figure 1 Roger Fenton. should ever be seen with her elbows above her shoulders. This woman must be Pasha and Bayadere, common. She is seen from the side, illumined by a great diagonal torrent of light 1858. Albumen print, 45 X 36.3 cm (17"Ae X that slashes down from a simple skylight at the upper left corner of the frame. Her 14V* in.). Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum. figure undulates, her midsection is canted forward and half-turned toward me, I while her head and upper body twist back toward the seated man, though her eyes are modestly downcast, seemingly directed at the floor, perhaps toward the foot of the other man, who sits cross-legged on the carpet. From the odd-looking stringed instrument he bows, he is clearly a musician playing an accompaniment to her dance. This is all very charming: something like Scheherazade entertaining her sul- tan, though perhaps not quite so splendid as I had imagined. Still, there is a quality of reality here that one doesn't get in a painting. What does the catalogue say? 2 Here it is, number 43, Pasha and Bayadere by Roger Fenton. Ah yes, Fenton; he's the one who went out to the Crimea a few years ago and made pictures of that terrible war. Can this be a scene he photographed there? Did he go among the Turks? How curious and informative. I must look more closely "This dancing girl, this bayadere, is the center of it all. She commands the scene, from the forcefulness of her standing position and from the energy of her apparent motion. Among such people a woman covers her hair. Her earlobe peeps from beneath her patterned head scarf and is decorated with an elaborate earring that looks like a cascade of tiny balls depending from a bell. Across her fore- head dangles a row of coins. Whatever for? Although it's rather pretty, bride's price or some such? The tiny buttons along the close-fitting sleeves of her finely striped and simply embroidered jacket are undone, so that with the upward thrust of her arms, the sleeves slip back, dragging with them the sleeves of her white cotton blouse and exposing her naked forearms. The minuscule buttons running down the front edges of her jacket are also unfastened, revealing the line of her throat and the swelling of her bosom beneath the thin cotton of her blouse, which is held close to her body by a low-cut bodice closed by a single clasp. Around her hips is slung a dark colored shawl, tied up at her waist.3 What a temptress she is! The stripes of her heavy, divided skirt, swirling up from the floor, emphasize the energy of her dance. Her feet are hidden, perhaps even bare on the strongly patterned rug. She's dancing for the delectation of this pasha whose eyes so eagerly follow her. And what sort of person is he? Is he her master? Does he own her? I suppose she must be a concubine or some sort of harem girl. I wonder how she likes that? "Although he sits firmly upright, he sits cross-legged like the musician, so his garments are hard to distinguish clearly, but they appear to be composed of three layers. He has an outer robe of dark color with what seem like shawl-shaped 2 lapels, a faintly striped inner robe, perhaps of polished cotton, but lined in a lighter-colored fabric, and .beneath it an innermost shirt or robe, white with a legion of tightly spaced tiny buttons down the front. Not all of these are fastened—it must require great patience to do them all up. And what's this? In an unbuttoned gap a patch of pale skin on his stomach is visible. Most unseemly! Obviously these are a rather loose and indolent people. His hands rest lightly in his lap, one lying along a sash tied over his inner robe. The fringe of the sash falls into his lap, and out of it protrudes what appears to be the hilt of a jeweled dagger. His other hand touches the mouthpiece at the end of the long flexible stem that snakes up from the water pipe sitting on the floor next to his pointed slippers. I suppose that pipe is for tobacco, or worse. On his head a turban of lightly checked material is wrapped around a dark center. His dark beard and moustache are so wavy and luxuriant that his mouth is wholly obscured save for a fragment of his lower lip, leaving only the intense concentration of his upturned eyes to give an idea of his mood. He clearly relishes this dancing girl. "By comparison to him the musician is more simply dressed. On his head, which is lightly bent to his instrument, is a plain white turban, again wound around a dark center. A slight man, he wears a loose, lightly figured robe with its sleeves folded back, perhaps for ease in playing. As he is seated, its length is bunched about his waist, but it gapes below the neck, exposing a corner of white undershirt and—shocking indeed—a somewhat hirsute chest! Loose white trousers do not completely cover his shins, and he has pointed shoes on his feet. He is bearded and wears a band on the ring finger of his left hand. He does not interact with the other two but is apparently intent on his music. What must that music sound like? Some sort of gypsy air? "Besides the fabrics of their clothing, the space they inhabit is fur- nished with a variety of other stuffs. The cushions of the divan are covered in what seems damask with piped, striped edges, and it has an underskirt of wide stripes.