CMA: Photography

Along the Old Canal

Along the Old Canal https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.128

Active in Burma and India during the late 1850s, Linneaus Tripe was a professional soldier and official photographer for the Madras Presidency in India from 1856 to 1860. More than 100 of his photographs of India were published in a series of six volumes classified according to the seven urban areas of the presidency. In this dramatic photograph of the sacred Great Bull, Tripe also documented the surrounding landscape and temple which, when built, was one of the largest buildings in South Asia. Created with the paper negative process, Tripe's image demonstrates his skillful use of the medium to record a dynamic perspective and a rich variety of shape, texture, and light.

Great Pagoda, Great Bull, Front View, Tanjore, India (Rajarajesvara Temple) https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.218

Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris

Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre, Paris https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.160

Venetian Palace

Venetian Palace https://clevelandart.org/art/1993.123

Camera Work: A Blind Musician - Granada

Camera Work: A Blind Musician - Granada https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.199.45.a

The monumental sphinx at Giza, which has the head of a man and the body of a lion, is one of the most iconic symbols of ancient Egypt. The country contains other, humbler versions of this mythical creature. The one here with the head of a ram is only nine feet long and held a statue of a human between its paws.

Sphinxes with a Human Head and with a Ram Head at Point Y. Karnak (Thebes) https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.331

Roman Aqueduct, Beaunant, France

Roman Aqueduct, Beaunant, France https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.233

Rue du Regard

Rue du Regard https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.35

Fountain of Notre Dame at Saint-Brieuc, Brittany

Fountain of Notre Dame at Saint-Brieuc, Brittany https://clevelandart.org/art/2008.114

Camera Work: Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A.

Camera Work: Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A. https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.199.37.d

Effects of a Shell Explosion, Fredericksburg, VA.

Effects of a Shell Explosion, Fredericksburg, VA. https://clevelandart.org/art/1999.180

Venice - Island of San Giorgio, San Lazzaro degli Armeni, the Lido

Venice - Island of San Giorgio, San Lazzaro degli Armeni, the Lido https://clevelandart.org/art/1986.170

A British-born photographer, Taylor lived in Marseille and became a member of the Société Française de Photographie in 1860. Taking photographs in city parks and the surrounding countryside, as well as in Ariège and Seine-et-Oise, he often worked with the establishment G. Arosa et Cie in Saint-Cloud to produce his ink-based prints made from photographs according to the publisher’s unique process. This print is likely made from a shellac base, for Taylor wrote several articles for British and American photographic journals on a shellac printing process in 1866 and 1867. After printing, the images would be mounted onto a heavy card stock and sold to be collected in albums. Here, the subject, a dolmen, or Neolithic tomb, reflects 19th-century interest in distant history and early monuments.

Dolmen, Cap del Puetch, Ariège, France https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.237

The Woodcutters

The Woodcutters https://clevelandart.org/art/1987.24

Road to Eaux-Chaudes, Pyrenees (recto)

Road to Eaux-Chaudes, Pyrenees (recto) https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.180.a

Western Portico of the Parthenon

Western Portico of the Parthenon https://clevelandart.org/art/1993.34

Boulogne Fisherman

Boulogne Fisherman https://clevelandart.org/art/1974.50

Santa Maria della Salute, View of the Grand Canal, Venice

Santa Maria della Salute, View of the Grand Canal, Venice https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.40

Camera Work: Lady in Flowered Dress

Camera Work: Lady in Flowered Dress https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.199.37.g

Little is known about this gifted photographer who produced photographic studies of the landscape and rural motifs during the 1860s and 1870s. This image depicts a lovely wooded landscape scene flooded with sparkling sunlight and rich shadows. Of all the landscape photographers active in the 1870s, Famin produced the closest equivalent of impressionism in his work.

Untitled (The Forest of Fontainbleau) https://clevelandart.org/art/1988.167

Taken to catalogue and document cultural practices, both of these photographs were intended as portraits of professions or ethnographic types rather than portraits of individuals. Hart’s image was part of his subscription series <em>Universal Gallery of Peoples,</em> which sought “to reproduce through photography the national costumes that are disappearing rapidly before the advance of civilization, to preserve for people the flavor, and for artists the memory of what once was beautiful and picturesque.” An unidentified photographer captured the picturesque <em>pifferari,</em> country musicians who wandered European cities around Christmas playing before images of the Virgin and on the streets. They were a common theme for French and Italian painters and photographers in the 1840s and 1850s.

Untitled (Pifferari) https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.234

This portrait of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), one of the most admired painters in France at the time the image was made, is an early example of celebrity photography. Made by Victor Laisné, this print exemplifies his ambitious attempts at commercial paper negative portraiture. Unembellished and direct, the composition portrays Ingres in profile, revealing the upper three-quarters of his figure. Little is known about Laisné and his brief photographic career in the early 1850s. He contributed a number of images of noted artists to an ambitious project-Théophile Silvestre's Portraits des artistes vivants et reproductions de leurs principaux ouvrages par la photographie [Portraits of living artists and reproduction of their principal works through photography](1853).

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres https://clevelandart.org/art/1999.272

What Shall I Say?

What Shall I Say? https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.131

View of the Great Wall, China

View of the Great Wall, China https://clevelandart.org/art/1996.248

A major figure in the development of British photography, Cameron elevated the portrait to new artistic heights. She never opened a commercial studio or accepted commissions, but she was one of the first photographers to sell her photographs through a fine art gallery. Friends, neighbors, family, and servants were cajoled into modeling for portraits as themselves and as allegorical figures from history, religion, mythology, and literature. Little is known about Emily Peacock, who posed here as the protagonist in <em>The May Queen </em>by Britain’s poet laureate Alfred Tennyson<em>. </em>Typically crowned with flowers, the May Queen is selected as part of the celebrations on May 1, a traditional spring holiday in many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere.

Queen of the May https://clevelandart.org/art/1984.166

Roger Fenton was a versatile and prolific artist who abruptly ended his brief, 12-year career as a professional photographer to return to the practice of law. Nevertheless, his architectural and landscape photographs have brought him recognition as the greatest British photographer of the 1850s. In this picturesque scene, Fenton focused on a single figure ascending a precarious wooden bridge that hangs suspended between two craggy surfaces. He often included people in his photographs to indicate scale and to enliven the composition. Fenton's wet collodion negative rendered the texture of the riverbed in minute detail, transforming the dark tones of the rocks and the random pattern of the light-colored lichens into a lively, abstract design. The slow speed of the negative, relative to the swift movement of the stream, turned the rushing water into a dense, white cloud.

The Miners' Bridge, on the Llugwy, North Wales https://clevelandart.org/art/1990.33

Camera Work: Principal Haldane

Camera Work: Principal Haldane https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.199.37.a

Vale of Neath

Vale of Neath https://clevelandart.org/art/1993.33

Camera Work: A Model

Camera Work: A Model https://clevelandart.org/art/1995.199.16.b

Echo Cliffs, Grand River Canyon

Echo Cliffs, Grand River Canyon https://clevelandart.org/art/2003.292