Portrait photographique en médaillon de Victor Hugo

Medallion photographic portrait of Victor Hugo


Paris [1861] | photograph: 5.3 x 7.2 cm / mount: 6.1 x 9.7 cm | photograph mounted on card
Original medallion photograph, contemporary albumin print mounted on card.
A few tiny wormtracks to card, not touching photograph.
The very first photograph of Victor Hugo with a beard.
It was in January 1861, after a terrible sore throat, that the writer decided to grow a beard: «I am growing a beard to see if it will protect me against throat-ache.» There are several references to the famous beard in Hugo's correspondence. «Conclusion: a man's head must be handsome, well-touched with intelligence and illumined by thought, in order to look well without a beard; a human face has to be very ugly, indeed irredeemably deformed and degraded by the extreme thoughts of the vulgar life in order to be unattractive with a beard. Therefore, let your beards grow, you who are ugly and would be handsome instead!» (Letter to an unknown correspondent, 1845).
As well as the aesthetic impact of this transformation, there was a real thumbing of the nose at the Imperial state, which had banned beards for teachers and professors.