On the cover, a rumpled Rossini looks vulnerable, wig slightly askew, weary but warmly benign. Inside, Baudelaire stares down the viewer with frank appraisal, hands in pockets and Victor Hugo lies on his deathbed, white beard haloed with light. These photographs – legends made intimately human – are the work of the photographer Nadar, celebrated by the Observer Magazine in 1976.
Nadar (real name Félix Tournachon) worked as a cartoonist and illustrator before finding his calling as the portraitist of an illustrious slice of 19th-century Parisian life. The clientele of his studio (his son Paul continued his work, taking some of the portraits in the article) reads like a who’s who: of Parisian culture Berlioz and Offenbach; Manet and Delacroix; Zola and Hugo. But
