In the Artist's Studio with L'Illustration

This article explores the two series of visits to the artist's studio that appeared in the famed French illustrated magazine L'Illustration in the 1850s and in 1886. An in-depth examination of both the texts and images reveals the verbal and visual tropes used to characterize the artists and their spaces, linking these to broader notions of "the artist" – his moral characteristics, behaviors, and artistic practice – as well as to the politics of the art world and the (bourgeois) ideology of L'Illustration. The aim is to uncover not only the language but also the mechanics of the "mediatization" of the image of the artist in this crucial period.