"This interdisciplinary study examines the evolution of French portraiture after the advent of photography, focusing on the portrait as a contested site of representation and on the diverse strategies that artists deployed to revitalize and modernize the portrait during the second half of the nineteenth century. In six case studies of French artists, ranging from Sarah Bernhardt to Paul Cezanne, McPherson explores the complex interplay between painting and photography and the sociocultural, stylistic, and phenomenological complexities of the modern portrait. By considering portraiture within the broader cultural matrix of history, biography, and artistic and literary cross-currents, together with shifts in the production and consumption of images, McPherson deftly situates the modern portrait at the epicenter of nineteenth-century visual culture."--Jacket.