Durieu was a lawyer and early advocate and practitioner of photography in France. In 1853-54 he made a series of photographic studies of nude and costumed figures as models for artists. The French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix helped him pose the figures and later praised the results, from which he and other artists sketched. Often photographers posed their models in attitudes based on sanctioned works of classical statuary or Old Master paintings, ostensibly providing artists with photographic académies as an alternative to live models. The mantle of high art also served to cloak (albeit somewhat transparently) the nakedness of such images and thereby protect the photographer from the actions of the censor and the viewer from the scorn of society.
Credit: Gilman Collection, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Henry R. Kravis Gift, 2005