Derelitta
1860s
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
7.8 x 9.5 cm. (3 1/16 x 3 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1975
Accession Number
1975.548.15
Tags
Art Historical Context
"Derelitta," a captivating albumen silver print from glass negative by Pierre-Louiserson, dates to the 1860s and measures a intimate 7.8 x 9.5 cm—perfectly sized for the era's popular cartes de visite, pocket-sized photographs exchanged like calling cards among Europe's elite. Pierson, a leading Parisian photographer associated with the Disdéri studio, specialized elegant portraits that captured the glamour and fantasy of Second Empire high society. This small-scale portrait of a woman exemplifies the technical precision of albumen prints, where a coating of egg white sensitized the paper to p...
About the Artist
Pierre-Louis Pierson · 1822–1913
Pierre-Louis Pierson (1822–1913) was a pioneering French portrait photographer whose career spanned the formative years of the medium. Born on December 13, 1822, in Hinckange in the Moselle department, Pierson developed an early fascination with photography during the 1840s, as the daguerreotype was still in its infancy. His early life and formal training remain sparsely documented, but by 1844, h...