Barcelona Llibres

This collection of photographs was assembled by the renowned artist Josep Lluís Pellicer over the course of his career, the images serving as a source of inspiration for his drawings and even as models to copy.

The emergence of photography was a transcendental event for 19th century society, changing the way the world was perceived and the way it was portrayed. The desire to discover new countries difficult to visit before then, aesthetic changes towards natural painting and the use of human models for studies of the body all led to a new type of photographic work. This new speciality nourished artists with images and models they could take inspiration from in their studio work.

The artist Josep Lluís Pellicer (1842-1901), illustrator and chronicler in various magazines during this period, collected a considerable quantity of photographs that reflected his world. He used them on several occasions and even traced them to produce his own works. The images showed urban and rural landscapes, ethnographic and military aspects, studies of the human body, vegetation and animal models and more. This body of images covered a wide variety of themes that today show us the work of photographers specialising in so-called “natural photographs” or “photography for artists”. Publishers were tasked with making them commercially available and artists would buy them from bookshops or engraving enterprises as a source of inspiration or as models to work from. Pellicer assembled a collection of over a thousand photographic copies that offer a particular vision of his time. This was a moment when the consolidation of the collodion wet plate process allowed for the widespread dissemination of photographic images. Research carried out using vintage copies has led to the discovery of authors often forgotten, whose work was to photograph “the natural”.

The body of photographs became part of the Archive through the multi-faceted collection of Apel•les Mestres, a friend of the artist. Following Pellicer’s death, Mestres gathered many of his photographs, which would later be donated. The rest also became part of the Archive through a donation, in this case by the family of Anna Martí (Pellicer’s wife). Preservation and research work linked to these period copies has enabled us to broaden our knowledge about the way many artists worked and has added to the history of photography with rich and interesting content.