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Tableau vivant, Folies Bergères c. 1920

Tableau vivant (correct plural: tableaux vivants) is French for "living picture." The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers. The most recent hey-day of the tableau vivant was the 19th century with virtually nude tableau vivants or "poses plastiques" providing a form of erotic entertainment.

The phrase and the practice probably began in medieval liturgical dramas such as the Golden Mass, where on special occasions a Mass was punctuated by short dramatic scenes and tableaus. They were a major feature of festivities for royal weddings, coronations and triumphal entries into cities. Often the actors imitated statues, much in the way of modern street entertainers, but in larger groups, and mounted on elaborate temporary stands along the path of the main procession.^[1]

Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian and Edwardian era magic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strips (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s).

Since English stage censorship often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting risqué entertainment at special shows. In the nineteenth century they took such titles as "Nymphs Bathing" and "Diana the Huntress" and were to be found at such places as The Hall of Rome in Great Windmill Street, London. Other notorious venues were the Coal Hole in the Strand and The Cyder Cellar in Maiden Lane. In the twentieth century London the Windmill Theatre (1932-64) provided erotic entertainment in the form of nude tableax vivants on stage. Such entertainment was also to be seen at fairground sideshows (e.g.: seen in the film A Taste of Honey). Such shows had largely died out by the 1970s.

These "tableaux vivants" were often performed as the basis for school nativity plays in England during the Victorian period. Today, the custom is now only practised in a single English school - Loughborough High School (the oldest all-girl school in England, founded in 1850). Ten tableaux are performed each year at the school carol service: including the depiction of an all-grey engraving (in which the subjects are painted completely grey).

The new headmistress at Loughborough High School has done away with many of the traditions at the school. Let us hope that the tableaux remains. It was only performed three times this Christmas

Photograph by Hill and Adamson dated 1848, showing D O Hill sketching in Greyfriars Kirkyard, watched by the Misses Morris. Other tableaux in the same setting included The Artist and The Gravedigger.

Tableau vivant was an approach to picture-making taken up by pioneers of early fine art photography, including David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the 1840s. Other notable examples are Oscar Gustave Rejlander's Two Ways of Life (1857) and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's 'Xie' work with Alexandra Kitchin such as St. George and the Dragon (1875). Today, the approach is exemplified by fine art photographers and artists such as Justine Kurland, Roger Ballen, Jan Saudek, Sandy Skoglund, Gregory Crewdson and Bernard Faucon. It has also influenced current trends in photocompositing.

Pictures of this sort are sometimes casually called "staged photography," but this is an imprecise term – since the simple posing of fashion models in the street is also 'staged photography'. Tableau vivant is a more precise term to use, if the staged picture obviously draws on the traditions and conventions of either the theatre or painting. Observe also that early photography involved exposure times in the minutes, so that there was the need to hold a pose.

• D.W. Griffith used tableaux to emphasize dramatic moments in A Corner in Wheat. Derek Jarman used the technique for some of his art films, as did Peter Greenaway.

• Jean-Luc Godard, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin, used the tableau setting for the entire factory scene in Tout va Bien (1972).

• In television, the episode "The Festival of Living Art" of the American drama Gilmore Girls featured a series of tableaux recreating famous works such as Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper.

• "Mrs Henderson Presents" was a 2005 film starring Dame Judi Dench as Laura Henderson, the eccentric previous owner of London's infamous Windmill Theatre. The theater gained notoriety for featuring nude reviews in performances, as a way of avoiding London's Draconian censorship laws during World War II.

• In the episode entitled "In God We Trust" of season 1 of television series "Arrested Development", the Living Classics Pageant is a popular social event that focuses on tableaux to recreate famous works of art.

• In Gus Van Sant's 1991 film 'My Own Private Idaho', sex scenes are constructed as a series of tableaux vivants.

• Living statue
• Statuephilia
• Windmill Theatre

• Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants, available at Project Gutenberg. (1860 text describing how to produce Tableaux Vivants)
• Kate Matthews Collection (Photograph collection includes 83 examples of tableaux vivants)