Mlle Moncelet; Mlle Rousseau
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 in. (18.8 × 23.5 cm) Album page: 10 3/8 × 13 3/4 in. (26.3 × 35 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.588.1.76
Art Historical Context
In 1862, French photographer André-Adolpheugène Disdéri captured *Mlle Moncelet; Mlle Rousseau*, a double portrait rendered in albumen silver print from a glass negative. This medium, dominant in mid-19th-century photography, involved coating paper with egg whites (albumen) sensitized with silver salts, producing richly toned, highly detailed images prized for their clarity and warm hues. Measuring 7 3/8 × 9 1/4 inches, the print is mounted on a larger album page, evoking the era's popular photographic albums where such images were collected like trading cards. Disdéri, a pioneer of commercia...
About the Artist
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri · 1819–1889
**André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri** (1819–1889) was a pioneering French photographer whose innovations transformed portraiture into a mass medium during the Second Empire. Born on March 28, 1819, in Paris, Disdéri pursued diverse careers in commerce, acting, and politics early on, while studying art amid personal hardships following his father's death, which compelled him to support his mother, sibli...